coming on here to write what I can't on facebook

To be melodramatic, etc. etc. Not feeling very good about being me at this very moment. Got a shit PWA, marketing, feel like I'm wasting my time here and will become increasingly so frustrated I'll explode. This is not why I came to this school. Maybe I'll never be a manager, maybe I just suck at it. I haven't felt creatively fulfilled or creative approaching anything since living in Israel. I've forgotten how to be inspired, how to be creative. I just feel empty where that muscle used to be. I know, I'm sounding ridiculous. But the truth is I haven't ever felt so alienated from theater. Maybe it's because I'm not actually doing it. I feel so trapped and rudderless right now. No doubt I'll learn some important skills from sitting behind a desk in marketing all year and blah blah fucking blah, but this is not why I moved 6,000 miles away and came to school here. Not at all. I just gotta keep my eye on the prize: take the MFA and go far, far away from here.

religious things

Yeah yeah, every religion and culture has its weirdness, and every religious person or representative of that culture gets used to them to the point that it doesn't seem weird, or, in some cases, straight-up batshit crazy. But maybe if some of your religious/cultural practices sound bizarre even to you, the religious person, that should make you think. I think, in particular, of things such as:

Pidyon HaBen, or "redeeming" a firstborn male child so that he doesn't have to serve in the Holy Temple in Jerusalem in the Messianic times, which by all accou

nts are just around the corner. I've never actually been to a Pidyon HaBen, but it involves putting the baby on a tray, exchanging him for silver coins, and paying a kohen a small fee to do this for you.

You're supposed to do this for a baby when he's 30 days old. We have not done this for Nani, so we're waiting for the kohanim to come kidnap him, any day now.

Shaking a lulav and etrog. You see, during the holiday of Sukkot, we build huts in our backyards and live in them (well, ok, eat in them. most meals.), to get back to nature and reflect on our dependence on God and the universe. Also, we spend up to thousands of dollars purchasing a giant herbaceous phallus and citric ovum, the

n gather them together in our hands at least once a day during the holiday to shake around. And how dare you suggest that Judaism absorbed anything from pagan cultures.

Kaparot, literally "atonements". Before Yom Kippur, the Day of Judgment,

we symbolically transfer our sins to a chicken by waving it over our heads three times. Then the chicken is slaughtered and given to charity. Many people today do this with money instead, which is by far less fun, especially for the chicken. Strikes me as hilarious that many Orthodox Jews scoff at Christians for believing that Jesus died for their sins, when only each individual can truly repent for her sins. Well then, what about that poor godforsaken chicken? Also, since we already transferred our sin

s to the chicken/money, why do we have to fast, again?