I’m unmotivated.

Then again, you’re the only one that reads this
so what would be motivating me?

I’m hurt, distraught, and angry. And yet, everything in my head and heart are telling me you have everything you want and couldn’t really care less. You have other people, to text, call and skype with every day. But I really spent the year lost, kind of isolated, and just appreciating the fact that I had a good friend that I could always count on. So where is she? And is she ever coming back?

I think I have built a reputation for myself that it must be a special occasion to provoke me to write in this. But not today, I’m actually just writing because I haven’t since January 25th. So what’s been going on you might ask, kind reader. Well actually, if you’re reading this you probably know what’s going on for the most part. Life is good. Good in the sense where I’m happy. Regardless of: missing people, defunct friendships and not knowing where I’ll be next year. Therefore, I think it’s pretty awesome that I still use “good” to describe life right now.   The next weeks should be not too bad since they include: Cacti, generational leadership shenanigans x2, hopefully lacrosse games and maybe even some track meets. I cannot wait for it to get warm, spring is wonderful, so is sunshine.That first day when it’s really warm out and you know there aren’t any more freezing days left. That’s what I can’t wait for. Spring has always been so promising for me, it meant summer was close and summer is just wonderful. I actually have nothing left to say.Smile. 

I find myself once again in one of my favorite places. The ledge at the end of Terminal C of Newark Airport. Sitting on the ledge I can see both the planes landing and taking off and it’s the best time of day. The sun is rising over New York City and my mind is pensive as always with thought.

Sometimes I feel slightly separated from reality, like who does what I’m doing right now. Then again I can’t be too separated from reality since I AM posting this from a blackberry, who does that though? I just used this little device to take a picture of the sun rising over the city, I look at the picture and something’s missing. I might have missed the memo from six and a half years ago. But I think its something more; it takes my mind and mentality so long to process after a traumatic event. That’s when I get the feeling that I’m a complete space cadet.

In other news from the galaxy. I didn’t get to update on Israel because I think there was too much to say.Also because I was dying of strep (throat, not to be confused with strep ankle) Within the too much to say was my epiphany I had that it’s okay to want to start over, yet again. It’s okay to seek happiness, and it’s much better with someone by your side. Israel just does something to me that nothing else can and I’m yet to figure out what that something is, I guess another trip is in order.

I now head for warmth and happiness for just a short time. But it’s these excursions that make everything amazing, along with the people they are shared with.

And for my favorite end of post statement:

Hey, I’ve got nothing to do today but smile.

My lack of blog is not to say that there is a lack of things to blog about. For instance, life is beautiful. I have plenty that I could write about on a day to day business about my encounters, conversations, inspirational quotes, rap artists, anything. But instead I don’t, I wait and reflect. But I’m tired, this won’t be long. I  made the firm decision to not have a new years resolution this year beyond the fact that I just want to grow as a person. The tail end of 2007 already gave me the opportunity to begin this growth and I just want to fly with it.  I changed my mind about writing about what motivated me and I’ve decided to just end this. Here’s to 2008.  
Next post in Jerusalem. :) 

I was thankful for so much over Thanksgiving, my graduation from high school and completing my time in a place that changed me and inspired me like nothing before and the extended family that resulted from it, my continued involvement in the organization that has impacted me so much over the past five years and that extended family, my childhood best friends and how my oldest and dearest of them could be home with her family after a not so good night-before-thanksgiving, and also my literal extended family that was sitting with me, but being thankful for the college experience I have had thus far, never popped into my head.

 I wish honestly and truly that I could project myself to the place I was eight months ago, emotionally, mentally and physically. Living south of Tel Aviv in Hod Hasharon, Israel sharing a pretty grotesque room with two of the most important people in my life. Waking up every morning, where almost the entire Solomon Schechter School of Westchester’s class of 2007 would pray together as the powerful sun of Israel shone on the porch outside our building. Our services would be interrupted frequently; sometimes by other American kids on similar programs or by Russian or Israeli kids just heading off to their normal day at school, and even once by an ailing dog that we to this day hold true was later murdered by one of our counselors. No matter how much objection went into to the overbooked and hectic itinerary as an old favorite of mine says “every breath we drew was hallelujah.” That perfection was furthered by a brief trip I made back to the US in February to land myself into another perfect situation with perfect people who made me feel like what I was doing had purpose and my emotions mattered, and I mattered and the friendships and relationships built were substantial and purposeful. I treasure every moment spent in both places and I look back now and view both those experiences as things that I took for granted and did not appreciate at the time.

I now sit here, in an uncomfortable situation where I feel like relationships fluctuate as much as my emotions and I can no longer even be an extroverted Debbie Downer because the shoulders I have to lean on are far away and exist through a computer keyboard or a phone.  This weekend was a brief moment of return to “that place” where I felt like everything fit. All the pieces go together so well when I am home or surrounded by people that feel like home [where the heart is, duh].  But I don’t want to close my self of of the possibility of my heart growing make somewhere else home. Somewhere that’s not New York, Eisner Camp, NFTY or Israel. I feel like my heart can grow to appreciate where I am now, like it’s grown to love my currently transatlantic relationship and made that too, a form of home. I have extended my life recently and taken on new responsibilities and new friends and appreciated every second of it. I have one new friend who I don’t know how I ever lived without, and can’t imagine ever losing touch with after only two and half months, so clearly I still have it in me to extend and embrace. I know I have the capacity to extend my realm of comfort and appreciate the people who I am constantly surrounded with here, in person. My problem is, I can’t find the how. How do I make myself comfortable in a situation unlike any other? How can I find shoulders for when I need to be the Debbie Downer that I sometimes am? How can I open myself up to a forum here where I can express my views and make an impact? I just don’t know, and that is where I find myself, at 2:22 AM on a Wednesday morning, wondering and uneasy.

  I’ve come to realize, over what amount of time I am unsure, that for the most part, I detest change. I love being familiar with things or being put in situation where familiarity grows quickly. I can think of my 25 or so closest friends who know me better than I know myself, and they are all from different places. So how long will it take me to find those people here? I am comfortable when I am surrounded by people who get me, who understand me, who see things through a similar lens. I can’t find a solution. I don’t see running from here and finding somewhere new a solution. I think in the background of my mind I see it as a form of failure. Failure and I are enemies. While failing [almost literally] in high school, I was thriving at something else. I feel like this is my future and I am not staying true to myself if I don’t take it seriously. But these people are also supposed to be my future, and that’s hard to grasp.I

‘m not sure if I’d find exactly what I’m looking for anywhere, and I think I’m too scared to try.I don’t know how I can generalize all of my emotions into writing when I am inhibited by the dangers of posting in such a public forum. But maybe inhibition is what I need, the further I am inhibited maybe the less radical of a person I’ll be and then maybe I’ll be more like people here, just a college freshman with the same to offer as everyone else. Yet, I love being radical, I love being awkward and loud, I love being innovative and imaginative and having something to show for it. I love knowing that my social circle exist of people very similar to me who appreciate me for more than just the material things that hinder the social realms of society.

Right now, I most definitely feel awkward but not in a good sense of my awkward weird loudness but in an awkward I’m on the outside want to crawl into a hole way. I hate it, I hate being like this and having it boil down into my blogging about it. Blogging sucks, but I might as well keep going. Life sucks, but why not keep going?So it goes.

I see the future holding brighter days. San Diego, Love, Israel. So in my mind, maybe to get some sleep, maybe to hold some hope, I digress. 

medical specialists suggest that maybe I’ve been getting too much sleep and that’s why I’m tired. So i’m blogging to put sleeping off for a few minutes. I’m sitting in my room realizing the reason most of my floormates are watching A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila is because there is nothing better to do, but I will sit and enjoy my alone time, since the moments I get alone are few and far between. This is a pretty tough week, I have a lot of things due and I’m just barely getting by with doing them. I want it to start feeling like the end of the semester so I can get all the things that come with the end of semester, sofabeds and all.

I wish I had better things to write about, that I could remember the things that widen my eyes in every day life but somehow everything gets lost in the hustle bustle. Either that, or there are things that I simply cannot write about because I am not like other people who can absolutely write all on blogs and completely disregard just how public they are.

I could not be more excited for thanksgiving, besides being with all my friends, I deeply miss the leaves changing in the boondocks.

And like a few others, I cannot believe that SO soon I will be back in Israel :).

On that note, sleep.

Between the insanity of this weekend starring three seasons of Sex & the City and the absence of my main distraction, I feel the need to blog. I promised myself I wouldn’t write about Sex and the City because although it has provoked many thoughts in my head over this weekend where I legitimately spent just enough time relaxing, it’s just such a weird concept. Four middle-aged women in New York City, fashionably conscious, beautiful and classy for the most part. Regardless of the fact that I could center this blog on sex… and the city, I won’t.

Instead, I’ll separate my mind from the sex factor and think about the greater theme: four friends, who live completely separate lives and yet at the end of the day all manage to catch up with each other. I wonder who the three other girls sitting at that Saturday morning breakfast table with me in x number of years will be. Or if I’ll even have that. Lately I think a lot about the future. Not usually so far in advance but the near future. I am excrutiatingly critical to myself when it comes to my concerns about the future. Why do I worry now? Why can’t I for once live in the present? I guess when I look at the bigger picture, a large aspect of my life is temporarily frozen so without looking ahead, I can’t really see clearly at all.

I think of the months to come, and they are much better than the months behind me. Thanksgiving, Biennial, Birthday, the unfreezing of my life, Israel. Everything ahead just seems so perfect, and everything now just seems so… meh. So maybe looking ahead is what will keep my head up. I don’t know where I got the idea that living in the moment was right, but I think, much to my denying, none other than Sex and the City has made me realize that living with the future in mind is important, and right for some, certainly for me.

sometimes, when i’m bored or in deep thought that I want to get out of, I read postsecret. It’s a habit I started a long time ago when I think the website was like postsecret.net or someting and one day, I forgot about it. PostSecret was recalled to my attention by a lovely lady and I cannot even believe what a phenomenon it has evolved into. This one just caught my eye today and I realize, I’m really really normal in the long run.

I need to relax.

my title is goofy because I just got back from six flags. It was a great time, regardless of multiple two hour lines.

I’ve come to a point in my life where the way I label situations has transformed. I had a little post-yom-kippur need to make things right with a few people the other night. Both decisions to do so were right, and good at times. One of them involved a promise of which I am not holding my breath for; where my aforementioned transformation occured. If I suddenly have this new empowerment to recognize when people are just bulling me with empty words and promises, I will ultimately end up a much happier person.

There’s yet another step in the right direction.

And for another, I got much needed words off my chest.

“I love you I love you I love you I love you”- Natasha Bedingfield.
ha.ha.ha.ha.

When I ran for Regional Board junior year, I wrote my speech about trains and compared the work of an MVP to the Metropolitan Transit Authority. Last Sunday I found myself on a train of the countless trains I’ve taken over the last five years. Completely exhausted from my early wake-up to get into the city to be the youth voice in a commission meeting, as one of my latest responsibilities to this organization that I love, I was captivated by a sign with bold yellow print. “Last year 1,944 New Yorkers saw something and said something, don’t keep your suspicions to yourself.” Since all of my NFTY travels have obviously been post 9/11 each time I took mass transit I saw the signs saying “If you see something say something” An MTA and NYPD joint effort to make New Yorkers feel safe by notifying authorities about suspicious activities that could be connected with terrorism. I quickly think in my head, 1,944. With a little math I realize that implies that every day in 2006 approximately 5.3 people PER day in NEW YORK notified police of some suspicious activity that they though to be terrorism. I immediately got really upset, how paranoid and racist can people be? I imagine the number of middle-eastern-esque people I see on the train every time I take it and how if I thought every single one of those people was a terrorist then I’d never take the train. As much as the patriotism and unity of New York has diminished since 2001 it still is remarkable how many people live in a constant state of ‘looking over the shoulder’ paranoia. Basically, I’m not sure how I feel about this all. Granted, most New Yorkers haven’t spent a significant time living in the middle east to become less paranoid, but maybe there is a huge lack of education. Granted, if there was no ’see something say something’ out there then maybe in terms of terrorism New York would be less safe of a place. Who knows? Nobody. All I can hope, is that when I have kids they are smart and educated as well as tolerant. As I imagine it, at least 3 of the 5.3 people per day who are the say something-ers are just intolerant. It’s unfortunate.

I have more to write on, lots to say but I think I should study.
Midterms are an unfortunate event.