Dating, Students (not “dating students”, that would be very wrong) and More

I’m starting this on my lunch break at work, finishing it off later (spot the join!).  I only have ten minutes left, but I have a restless need to write something, I just don’t know what.  I’m up to date with typing up my research notes for my book, so it has to be the blog.  I don’t have much to say, though, so apologies if this is brief and/or boring.

The main thing that happened the last few days is that I’ve come to a decision regarding the person I was being set up on a shidduch date with.  At the weekend it will be four weeks since I was set up with her and I still haven’t had any direct contact with her and, aside from one ‘interview’ only brief conversations with her rabbi, who is supposed to be arranging things, but who has largely ignored my voicemail and text messages.  I have heard from him briefly to say that he and she are still inquiring about me.  This strikes me as increasingly pointless, even though I know it is the norm in the frum (religious) world.  They aren’t going to find much about me by asking the rabbis I told them about who (a) are predisposed to like me (as far as I know) or else I would not have given their names as references and (b) would be forbidden for saying anything critical about me unless it was something extremely major because of the laws of lashon hara (forbidden speech).  It’s rather offensive to think that I might be suspected of something so extreme that they would be justified in mentioning it.  It is all taking a long time and I am constantly calling and not getting through and not having my messages returned.  I don’t know if the fault is primarily with my potential date (PD in the future) or her rabbi or both, but I’ve decided that if I haven’t heard anything by Sunday, I will email the person who set me up on the date and ask her to pass a message on to PD saying that if she wants to go on a date, please could she contact me by phone, text or email and if I don’t hear from her directly within a couple of days, I will assume that she isn’t interested, because going through the rabbi just isn’t working.

I don’t know what will happen there.  I’m guessing either PD has found out something she doesn’t like about me and doesn’t want to go ahead (in which case I’d like to know ASAP) or she does want to go ahead, but is having communication problems with the rabbi, in which case it will all depend on whether she is ‘modern’ enough (or brave enough) to consider going on a date without passing it through him.  If it all falls through (and only one of those three options ends with us going on a date) I don’t know whether I will be rushing to date anyone else, but I do at least have some other options open to me and I’m currently having to push them off because I’m waiting to see what will happen here.

On the plus side, my mood has been a bit better recently, at least on work days, when my job provides some distraction, even if social anxiety and Asperger’s do rule when I’m interacting with students – a lot of my interactions seem to end with me feeling like an idiot, or that I’ve handled the situation wrongly.  I think I am learning, but slowly.  There’s a quote from US President Calvin Coolidge that I can’t find at the moment (I know what book I saw it in, but the book is at my parents’ house) where he said to his successor something like, “Many people come to see you and nine-tenths of them want something they should not have.  If you stay completely still, they will eventually run down, but if you give the slightest encouragement, even a nod or a cough, they will start up all over again.”  That’s a bit how I feel on the issue desk, dealing with students who insist they never knew that books have to be handed back on time, that they didn’t know that the due date is stamped on the inside page, that they already returned books that they have actually lost, or that there are no computers free in the computer room (when they mean that there aren’t enough computers free for them to sit with their friends and mess around) and so on.  One has to stonewall them and let them run down before insisting that they have to pay or return their books or sit separately or what have you.  This is hard for someone with social anxiety and an urge to please people stemming from low self-esteem.  My boss has been off sick since the middle of last week, so I am still on the issue desk a lot, interacting with students and staff a lot as the whole team is being stretched to cover her absence (we’re understaffed at the best of times; welcome to the public sector).

Despite this slight improvement, mornings are still a real struggle.  I just feel so tired and unmotivated.  I’m getting seven to eight hours sleep on work nights, but it’s just not enough for me at this time of year and I still crash at the weekends, missing shul (synagogue) and not doing the chores I would like to do on Fridays and Sundays, all of which is very frustrating.  Yesterday I hoped to go to my shiur (class) in the evening, but missed it because I had a headache and felt a bit faint, which was probably exhaustion.  I don’t know if things would be better or worse if I were dating.  Dating might give me an emotional boost, but it might just be an another physically and emotionally draining thing to fit in.

On a previous posts, Angelfire suggested taking vitamin B6, zinc and omega-3 supplements.  I had a look in the chemist for kosher supplements today.  I couldn’t find vitamin B6, but they had vegetarian zinc and omega-3, which the London Bet Din says are kosher (actually, my OCD is making me slightly worried about the omega-3…).  I thought about buying both, but realised to test this scientifically, I should only make one change at a time.   I went for the omega-3, because it’s more associated with depression and because I’m now semi-vegetarian (a Rav Kook vegetarian, vehamavin yavin) and only eat meat and fish on Shabbat and Yom Tov, which means I haven’t had fish for several weeks so I probably need that even aside from the depression.  I also hope to look into getting a light-box on Sunday…