Passion, Patience & Apathy

This time of year is for me so full of good intention - a new year! fresh pages to fill on the calendar! hopefulness and creativity abound!

But it's as if all the forces are against me; the sluggishness after the Christmas break with the almost enforced lethargy and always available comfort food. The dark mornings. The dark afternoons. The sniffles and coughs and colds in the family. The hallway floor constantly needing cleaning up from the sludgy mud and leaves that seem to accompany anyone or anything through the front door.

I yank on my muddy hiking boots over my thick woolly socks for yet another wet and windy walk with the dog.

And yet.

I'm so excited by this website, by the opportunities its already creating for my passions to come into fruition - if you haven't already seen, there's a Winter Warmer retreat day coming up in a couple of weeks, and an online Hebrew course starting in January (both available to book online via this link )

And just yesterday I was contacted by three different people all asking me to share what I know, and create space for conversation in various formats - a visit to a school, a one-to-one preparing for Bar Mitzvah, and a potential group course for people preparing to set up home together with a Jewish flavour. It's remarkable how, with a tentative step into the unknown, creating this website and putting it out there to the world what I could be offering, the world, inevitably offers it to me.

And yet.

I fear I may be reaching the limits of my personal capabilities on this website; the tech is flawing me more than it's helping me (apologies if you've been a victim of this trying to sign up online!), I know what I want to do and I just don't seem to have enough time to achieve it, especially when I can't find the right setting on the editor page to create what I want.

But I persevere. I am driven by a fear that the January blues are going to hit me and my self confidence will crash, I'll fall into a pit of (at best) apathy and (at worst) self loathing, and this whole project will crumble before spring.

I must keep going and I I must be patient.

It dawns on me that, yet again, it's the balance of the soul traits I am aware of through my studying Mussar (jewish spiritual practice) that will provide me with what I need right now. I must find the balance between Patience (savlanut) and Enthusiasm (zerizut) and hold on to it dearly.

One foot in front of the other, and the horizon will take care of itself.