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Occam’s Razor

I wanted to go to shul (synagogue) on Friday night, but as we got closer to the time of the service, I started feeling lightheaded again. This made me wonder if there is a psychosomatic/social anxiety component to my lightheadedness. We ate dinner in the sukkah (temporary dwelling, in this case canvas walls on a cuboid metal frame with bamboo covering, to remind us of the temporary dwellings of the Israelites in the wilderness). I had some mild OCD thoughts, but brought myself out of it after a couple of minutes. E was very supportive. Afterwards, E and I stayed up late reading. Consequently, we overslept the next day and missed shul. We intended to get up about 8.15am. I actually got up about 9.30am to (ahem) answer a call of nature and thought about staying up and going to shul late, but went back to bed, again making me wonder how strong my social anxiety is about shul going. This aspect (hiding in bed, essentially) has been going on for years, far longer than the faintness.

We ate lunch in the sukkah, which E enjoyed more than the previous night, as it was warmer. In fact, it was so warm that E and I spent most of the afternoon out there reading. I finished reading this year’s Torah cycle, making I think nineteen consecutive years that I’ve read the weekly Torah cycle in Hebrew. It would be twenty-one years, but I missed half or more of the 2003-2004 cycle due to depression and burnout. Aside from that one year, I’ve persisted through many serious bouts of depression and burnout.

I stayed up late reading again that night, but got up earlier on Sunday morning than on Saturday as family friends that I’ve known for years were coming for Kiddush (refreshments) and I wanted to see them. The parents are friends with my parents; the daughter was originally friends with my sister, then became friends with me after she found my blog (not this one, a previous, non-anonymous one). I hadn’t seen her, her husband and oldest children since before COVID and I hadn’t seen her baby at all. After they left, we ate lunch in the sukkah again, but went indoors afterwards as it was colder. E and I napped and read indoors.

After Yom Tov, E and I watched the first episode of The Trial of Time Lord. E liked it. I already have thoughts about this most frustrating of stories, alternately daring and clumsy, clever and stupid, but will probably wait until later to avoid spoilering E. She did wonder why the sixth Doctor is “dressed like a clown” (in multicoloured patchwork clothes) and I had to explain that the producer had the idea that this made the character look bold, iconoclastic and unafraid of popular opinion, and no one, including the actor and the costume designer, could convince him that it actually made him look like an idiot, or at least like a totally unreal TV character and not a rounded person.

Today I had to work, but was able to work from home. I didn’t do a full day, as the work (sticking erratum stickers and copying dates from a spreadsheet to a database) is tedious and makes me feel ill after a while (staring at numbers on a screen), so I left an hour for later in the week. Also, if I’m called upon to do the Very Scary Task before Thursday, that will probably take about an hour, so I simply won’t need to do the extra hour.

***

As I mentioned above, I’m still struggling with periods of lightheadedness and faintness (admittedly I struggle to clearly differentiate the two). I initially thought it was stress or autistic burnout, then hypoglycaemia or low blood sugar. Now someone on a Facebook group for Jews with disabilities suggested PoTS to me. I’m torn between wanting to research this and potentially advocate for it to the GP and worrying that I’m becoming a hypochondriac.

After PoTS was suggested, I started noticing heart issues. I woke up a couple of times one night a week or so ago with indigestion-type pain over the centre of my chest. It went once I woke up properly. I felt similar pain when reading Saturday evening (possibly on sitting up after lying down). When I woke up from a nap on Sunday afternoon, I could feel my heart beating very fast for couple of seconds. Then I recalled occasional indigestion-type pain walking up stairs at times for quite a while now which I have been vaguely troubled by and guiltily put down to being out of shape (because of the pressures around E’s immigration, the wedding and flat-hunting, I haven’t done any serious exercise for over a year). Now wonder I wonder if there is more going on than I thought. I also see that PoTS could explain/influence some things I’ve struggled with for years: headaches, brain fog, poor sleep, tiredness, bowel issues, difficulty coping with heat, even my often red hands, although most of these things have other potential causes already identified e.g. I definitely have sleep apnoea. I guess it’s tempting to want a single, Occam’s Razor-satisfying, solution for all my issues. Autism plus medication side-effects plus sleep apnoea plus stress plus, at times, various mental health issues seems too much – too much to deal with and over-causation generally.

But, as I said, I worry about becoming a hypochondriac. I have told E about the PoTS suggestion and potential heart symptoms, but not my parents. I don’t want to worry them, although I’m open to a charge of hypocrisy here, as I’ve criticised them for not being open with my sister and me about their health before. Part of my reason is simply that, living with them and E, I find myself needing to consciously separate from my parents and do things just with E, even if it’s discussing this.

***

I’m currently thinking a lot about my relationship to mitzvot (religious commandments) and how to make that healthier without becoming antinomian (rejecting religious law). There’s a lot I’ve been thinking about, but I don’t have much time, so I’ll be brief. I think a lot of non-Orthodox Jews see mitzvot as “traditions,” things that are fun and meaningful to do, but also on a fundamental level optional (I know this is not necessarily how non-Orthodox rabbis view them, but I’m talking about the laity. And, to be fair, much of the Orthodox United Synagogue laity would view them the same way). If you can’t do one or miss it for some reason, it’s not the end of the world. You can exercise some latitude with it too, do it differently or at a different time. And that seems how non-Jews view them too. Whereas Orthodox Jews see them as something commanded by God, not just in general terms, but in great detail and not doing them in that way is a serious sin, damaging your relationship to God and risking punishment.

The latter approach seems to get me into unhealthy OCD-type areas, but the former just seems wrong to me.  I’m left trying to find a way to navigate between the two.

I’m currently reading I Am for My Beloved: A Guide to Enhanced Intimacy for Married Couples by David Ribner and Talli Rosenbaum, two Orthodox Jews and qualified sex therapists who write about sexuality and relationships for an Orthodox Jewish audience. They write in there that sex should be about “intimacy two people experience together” rather than something goal-driven (e.g. it should last for X minutes and result in orgasms for both parties).

I wonder if there is a way to apply this to mitzvot, to see them as about experiencing connection with God rather than saying either it’s up to me what I do (which would imply that it is voluntary or that God has no strong views on the matter) or saying that I have to obsess over the last detail, which triggers my OCD. I am already doing this to some extent with davening (praying), where I sometimes less important skip passages (I almost never do a full Shacharit (Morning Prayers) now) and try to concentrate on key passages, but not beat myself up if my concentration slips.

The Time-Traveller’s Life

It’s very late, but I’m not tired, for reasons that will become apparent. I am feeling a little overwhelmed, so – blog! I don’t think blogging stops me feeling overwhelmed, but it does help to process my thoughts and feelings.

I spent a lot of Shabbat (the Sabbath) asleep again. I went to bed late on Friday night (I was finishing reading Timewyrm: Apocalypse – it got pretty good near the end) and slept for about eleven hours. E tried to get me up for shul (synagogue), but I didn’t manage it. I’m not sure how much was autistic exhaustion/burnout and how much social anxiety. I don’t think my social anxiety overall is worse since COVID, but my shul-related social anxiety might be. I’m not sure how to work on this. Then, I was in bed for another two hours after lunch. I’m not sure how much was resting, how much sleeping and how much shutdown (?), but some of it was definitely sleeping. I feel extended meals with my parents are draining and, these days, often trigger something approaching shutdowns.

I feel like I’m struggling with a lot of minor health issues at the moment. Aside from the ongoing (and possibly life-long) struggle with autistic exhaustion and burnout, I still have sleep apnoea issues. I don’t always wear my mouth splint when I sleep, as I’m not sure it helps; when I do, I remove it in my sleep anyway and I don’t know if I leave it in long enough to help at all. I certainly don’t feel less tired. I threw away some of the packaging from my splint the other day and noticed something there that wasn’t on the instruction leaflet: it seemed to be a disclaimer saying it wouldn’t work if one’s front upper teeth naturally rests in front of the lower front teeth instead of on top of them. This is the case with my teeth and I wonder if that’s why it’s not working. I would like to actually talk to someone about this, but NHS, etc., etc. (By the way, did I mention I have to get another blood test because the GP’s surgery messed up the form for the previous one? Not the first time this has happened. I don’t even get upset any more, it’s just one of those inevitable negative parts of life, like death, taxes and the return of David Tennant and Catherine Tate to Doctor Who.) Then there’s the ongoing possible hypoglycaemia issue that is making me worried about fasting on Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement), starting Sunday night, particularly combined with low blood pressure. It’s hard to get doctors to take any of this seriously.

Beyond all this is a general feeling of overwhelm which I know will be around for a couple more weeks at least, because of Yom Tov (festival) preparations, covering for J at work when he’s off for a week and possibly having to do the Very Scary Task again, the forthcoming flat survey and then, hopefully, moving itself, which is stressful even if E and I are climbing the walls wanting to leave.

***

I’ve been thinking a bit about masking or unmasking. My thoughts on this are emerging slowly and I will probably write a lot more about this over the coming weeks. I guess I’m lucky that I don’t have many unusual stims or quirks that I suppress and need to unmask. Unless I’ve been suppressing them for so long that I no longer know they’re there, which I guess is possible. I do have some minor stims, but I don’t think people really notice them. It can take a lot of effort and energy to make eye contact and show appropriate body language, but I don’t think it would be helpful to stop doing that at this stage, especially as I’m not around strangers that much. So unmasking for me is more about being myself in a wider sense.

Before I was diagnosed autistic, I just felt I didn’t fit in anywhere and even wondered if I was unconsciously finding reasons not to fit in just to be a loner. Now I still feel I don’t fit in, but I feel it’s more because I am someone with wide-ranging interests and a willingness to meet people who aren’t like me. My experience of E and my wedding was that my Modern Orthodox and even moderately Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) friends accepted a lot of things that I was worried they would not accept (Doctor Who fandom, E not being as frum (religious) as me, an atypical Jewish wedding party), so maybe I should be more comfortable being myself in those environments. However, I still feel like I have to hide my religious and political views among people who don’t have similar views, which is sad. In particular, this is hard in group therapy/support-type environments, which are supposed to be “safe spaces,” but aren’t always.

I think I’m not exactly a straightforward sample of any group I belong to (Orthodox Jew, Doctor Who fan, geek, Oxonian, I don’t know what else). At any rate, Facebook’s algorithm really has no idea of what I would like to see. Over the last few days I’ve been thinking of myself as a time-traveller who has learnt how to live and interact in a period from books and is now going to that time period in person and discovering that there are a lot of small cues and behaviours, turns of phrase and slang, that people in the past had that aren’t recorded in the books and have to be learnt or imitated on the fly. The alternative is to brazen out being different. I have this feeling among frum Jews, but also among Doctor Who fans, among geeks, even among autistics. So it’s hard to know what is autistic masking and what is just trying to communicate in a way people can understand.

***

I’m still thinking a lot about where I am religiously, particularly with davening (praying) and Torah study, given that two rabbis have told me to cut back on these, especially communal prayer and Talmud study, to avoid burnout.

I’m not davening at the same time as the community as one rabbi said and I feel a bit bad about that, but I am at least davening with more kavannah (mindfulness) than in the past. But I do find it hard to have in mind both the content of the prayer and the idea that I’m standing in front of God at the same time. I can have one or the other, but not both. It strikes me that this is possibly one of those things that lots of people experience, but no one talks about.

With Torah study, I’m still studying mainly Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) and Jewish philosophy. I am trying to study Tanakh “properly” rather than just reading it. For me this means not just reading the Hebrew (which I’ve been doing for years), but looking words I don’t understand up in dictionaries rather than just looking at translations (an easy, but bad, habit to fall out of) plus using the Medieval and modern commentaries I have access to and, in the case of the Medieval commentaries (which are mostly in rabbinic Hebrew), trying to look words I don’t understand there up too. As far as I’m aware no one has ever produced a rabbinic Hebrew-English dictionary. I do have a modern Hebrew dictionary that claims to have Biblical, Talmudic and Medieval Hebrew entries. I don’t have access to modern commentaries on all of Tanakh, sadly. I am collecting the Koren Maggid Studies in Tanakh series, but I’ve found the quality variable, although mostly high. Today I also looked some geographical points up in the Atlas of the Bible that I picked up somewhere years ago, which was quite enlightening, although the atlas isn’t scholarly.

I think I need to teach as well as to study, which is something that has taken a long time for me to realise or to re-realise. Not only is it a mitzvah (commandment) to share Torah wisdom and sin not to share it, but it’s a helpful way of getting my own thoughts in order, particularly with my own chiddushim (novel interpretations) as well as getting feedback and stimulating questions. I want to try to get back to writing divrei Torah on the sedra (essays on the weekly Torah reading), probably not every week, but some weeks, and sharing them. E and I want to get back into the habit of discussing the sedra every week, which we stopped doing in the run up to the wedding. In addition, a  friend I made through the Jewish autism video call suggested a regular video call between her, E and myself to discuss Jewish topics which I’m looking forward to as well, both as a way of learning and teaching and as a way to have more Jewish communal contact while I’m not managing to get to shul. I’m excited about these plans for the new year, which is good, as I feel like I’m struggling with a lot of Jewish things at the moment.

Unattainable Ideals

I worked from home today. I couldn’t face doing a full day of sticking erratum stickers in prayer books and manually searching grids of squares on our database to search for duplicated records, so I did two hours work in advance yesterday and have forty-five minutes more to do tomorrow. I worry that the duplicate checking is not at all accurate, but I’m not sure how I could do better given the way I have to do it (purely by scrolling through of hundreds of records plotted on a map grid). E and I went shopping afterwards and work plus shopping left me pretty burnt out. I found the crowds and noise in the shops increasingly difficult to handle and one shop (a Polish ethnic shop where we looked for farro) had a smell that made me feel ill and I had to breathe through my nose while were in there. Sometimes I worry I’m not autistic “enough” and other days it hits me in the face. I only managed about five minutes of Torah study because of this. I’ve done very little Torah study lately, but feel too drained, and too confused about where I am with Jewish observance at the moment, to care; I’m not sure if this is good or bad.

E said that a child, or at least a work experience intern, could do the sticker sticking and duplicate checking aspect of my job and she is right. It’s not the whole of my job, thankfully, but it is a large chunk of it, and while a child couldn’t do the rest of my job, the work experience intern probably could. I do often find myself wondering why I did two degrees (one from Oxford) to end up doing this. Yes, I know I’ve shared this before, but it’s driving me towards burnout. E and I both want me to move to something more satisfying, but at the moment we’re focused on the flat-hunt. I might see if I can make more progress towards working as a proofreader and copy editor in the coming weeks. It’s hard, though. And I do want to earn more money to make life better for E.

I also wonder a bit what would have happened if I hadn’t gone to university at all. I can’t imagine I would be in a worse job and I might have avoided burnout, although I had a mini-burnout at school. Then again, no burnout, and no burnout-inducing jobs, and I would never have realised I was autistic or met E.

***

I get emails about how to get a job in the charity sector. I technically do work in the charity sector anyway, but the weekly email has general ideas about CVs and job interviews. I’m not entirely sure why I still subscribe to the emails, as my CV is written fine, it’s the massive gaps between short periods employment and sector changes that are probably off-putting, while my interview technique problems basically stem from my brain not being wired for interviews because of autism and not being able to claim reasonable adjustments for various reasons.

Anyway, today they sent a list of “5 key transferable skills you probably didn’t know you had”. They are:

1. Communication
2. Enthusiasm and dedication
3. Organisational skills
4. Teamwork
5. Interpersonal skills

Apart from the fact that 4) and 5) seem pretty similar, 1), 4) and 5) are pretty much out for autistics, unless they’re working with other autistics. 3) is questionable. Autistics can be systematic and organised, but we can also have serious executive function issues preventing organisation or (in my case), letting me get partway there, but also self-sabotaging and never quite making it. So only 2) is a truly viable autistic skill, which means that we can only really work in jobs we’re actually enthused about. No wonder the only autistics who can get and hold a job seem to be the ones who can find one related to a special interest.

***

We hear a lot about the Hollywood/TV/social media/pornography/the Kardashians presenting an unrealistic body image for women to attain and making them depressed (or develop an eating disorder) when they fail to reach it, and that’s true. But I feel like stories about tzaddikim (saintly people) in the Jewish world make have given me an unrealistic and unattainable image of how ethical I should be and I feel self-critical for not reaching it. And the types of fiction I have read and watched since childhood, all eccentric scientists, wise old wizards and super-logical detectives, has given me an unrealistic and  unattainable image of how intelligent and how original a thinker I should be.

***

I read therapist Elisheva Liss’ Torah/psychology emails each week. This week she asked if her readers connect with any values or practices cognitively rather than emotionally. I replied:

This may not be the answer you expect or want, but I uphold most of the mitzvot in a cognitive way. Like a significant minority of autistic people, I have alexithymia, meaning I have difficulty recognising and understanding my emotions. Positive emotions like happiness and joy are particularly hard to “tune into.” Sadly, I find that negative emotions like sadness, depression oneliness and despair have a habit of making themselves known more easily.

I have a few positive emotions around Judaism. I get a feeling of peace on Shabbat [the Sabbath] and I get some kind of positive feeling (I’m not sure what exactly — joy? connection?) when I think of a new Torah chiddush [new interpretation] or (more rarely) read some insightful Torah idea. I sometimes get some kind of positive feeling (again, I’m not sure exactly what, I think “connection,” but I’m not exactly sure in what way) sometimes when davening [praying]. Unfortunately, aside from the Shabbat feeling, these feelings are too infrequent and nebulous to make them the focus of my religious life. Fortunately, I am a very cognitive/intellectual person (I guess I have to be, with alexithymia), so I can cope with this, but it’s been hard to share my feelings about Judaism with my wife (raised less religious) and I worry how I will impart them to children when they hopefully come.

Staying Sane

I haven’t blogged publicly all week. There hasn’t been anything seriously wrong, just a lot of work stress (covering for J and doing the Very Scary Task) and a few other stressful things I didn’t think I should talk about in public. There are occasional flashes of worry about Mum’s health (still waiting for biopsy results) and how soon E and I will find somewhere to live, but I try to keep those under control. I am nervous about my uncle being here for theweekend, as the house will be crowded and noisy, which neither E nor I is really comfortable with. It’s harder for E as I have to keep reminding myself that I’m used to my family and she isn’t, even if the coping strategies I evolved as a child are sometimes dysfunctional. I keep thinking of how nervous I would be to stay with her parents (and their dangerous drama queen dog).

I’m not doing much Torah study. It’s partly lack of time and energy with everything else that’s going on, partly, I suppose, that I’ve lost momentum. I guess I’m also a little disappointed that When God is Near: On the High Holidays, my main Torah book at the moment, is a disappointingly conventional frum (religious Jewish) book, given that the author, Rabbi Yehuda Amital, was an unconventional figure: Holocaust survivor raised in traditional pre-war Eastern Europe who broke with Haredi ideology to become a Religious Zionist, served in the Haganah (Zionist underground) and then the IDF, founded a hesder yeshivah (rabbinical seminary combining religious studies with military service) was very hawkish, then broke with the Religious Zionist establishment to become a very dovish supporter of a land-for-peace deal with the Palestinians and who founded the left-wing religious political party Meimad. But the book seems quite a conventional pre-Rosh Hashanah/Yom Kippur (Jewish New Year/Day of Atonement) book.

I’m not sure when I’m going to find more time for Torah study. It saddens me, but I’m just not connected at the moment and don’t know how to reconnect while taking the time I need for myself to stay sane. I think I am davening (praying) with reasonable kavannah (mindfulness) so at least I have some connection to God and Judaism. Also, trying to build a strong relationship with E while living with my parents and trying to keep everyone happy (an impossible task, according to my rabbi mentor) or at least on speaking terms is, I suppose, a religious task (building shalom bayit/domestic harmony).

I was hoping to go to shul (synagogue) tonight, but now I feel tired, although I haven’t done much today other than walk to the library with E and do my usual pre-Shabbat chores. I feel a bit down too. I think I’ve been busy all week and now that I’ve stopped, I’ve got time to think about everything.

What I’m doing to stay sane has mostly been reading Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire or watching Doctor Who with E. I’m enjoying The Goblet of Fire more than the earlier Harry Potter books. I find Harry a more interesting character as an uncertain and awkward teenager than as a naughty schoolboy and the plot is more interesting than the first two books, although maybe not the third. I’m certainly reading it faster than the earlier books despite the longer length.

It does annoy me that Rowling’s world-building is so inconsistent. Her magic doesn’t really seem to have any rules. Some spells are said to be easy and others hard, but all of them just seem to involve pointing a wand and saying some cod Latin. Are there kavannot (Jewish mystical directed thought meditations) that wizards and witches need to learn? It’s very strange.

It’s inconsistent in other ways too. I tried to work out how many students are in Hogwarts. I estimated 280 (5 students in Harry’s dorm x 2 dorms in a house (male and female) x 4 houses in a year x 7 years, assuming it’s a typical English secondary school), but then after calculating this I read that at the Yule Ball, there’s seating for 1,200, which seems ridiculously excessive even including Hogwarts staff and the foreign students visiting for the Tri-Wizard Tournament. I feel Rowling should have worked this stuff out in advance, even if she didn’t intend to make it explicit.

The business about wizards not using technology is inconsistent too. Technically cauldrons and quills are technology, but even if they mean “no technology from after the Renaissance” Harry has a non-magical watch (it stops working after being taken in the lake). Ron’s Dad illegally collects Muggle electrical plugs, but he doesn’t know how to say “electricity” which just seems really weird.

And why do the post-carrying owls mostly seem to arrive at the same in the morning if they’re flying in from different places? (A few do arrive later, admittedly.)

It is a good book, but it is also making me want to read Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea books, which I have heard have a much more thought-through magical system (even though I said to myself I would stop reading children’s books once I finished all the Harry Potters).

Doctor Who-wise, E and I watched The Enemy of the World and The Web of Fear, two highly-regarded 1960s stories that were mostly missing from the archives until being rediscovered in 2013 (Ten years ago! Yikes!). Actually, episode three of the latter story is still missing, filled in on my DVD by a reconstruction marrying an off-air audio recording to still photos.

E preferred The Enemy of the World, finding The Web of Fear slow. I suppose it is slow, I just think of it more as atmospheric and suspenseful. E finds most six-plus-episode stories slow, which is a pretty common view among fans, plus she has liked most of the twentieth century Doctor Who that we’ve watched, so I can’t really complain. I preferred Web, although Enemy is an unusually atypical story for the time, focused on character more than monsters. I like stories with strong atmosphere and a sense of place; Web, with the London Underground filled with web-like fungus and stalked by Yetis has that in droves (actually, E liked the Yetis). It has stronger characterisation than most of the other (and often similar) stories from that season. I noticed Ralph Watson’s Captain Knight was rather surlier than I remembered, a man out of his depth and at the end of his tether, although still likeable.

Tom Baker (fourth Doctor) has always been my favourite Doctor, but in recent years Patrick Troughton’s (second Doctor) more subtle portrayal has rivalled him for my affections. I do wonder if, on some unconscious level, in the past I thought that unmasking was only possible if you are a charismatic lunatic eccentric like the fourth Doctor, but now I’m beginning to realise you can be just quietly be yourself without drawing attention to your weirdness much like the second. Or maybe I just see autism everywhere these days.

I feel like I am concentrating on this stuff to avoid all the stresses in my life right now, but maybe that’s not a bad thing.

Teleologies

We saw a couple more flats today, both good, but not perfect. What is? Especially on a budget. Both were valued higher than most flats we’ve seen up until now. We think we need to push our budget to the limit to get what we want, sadly, which makes us worry we’ll be living paycheck to paycheck (to use E’s American phrase), but we want somewhere we feel comfortable. One flat was good enough that we are keeping it in mind in case we can’t find anything better, but we want to see other flats in this price band to compare with and see if this is atypically good, bad or just normal.

I have my usual Friday faintness/lightheadedness/headache/exhaustion feelings. I’m not sure what is what, exactly. Solpadeine helped my headache, but eating and glucose tablets didn’t help the other issues. I actually feel exhaustion is less an issue today, so the problem is probably more blood sugar. I think I’m going to go to the doctor about this in the next week or two (depending on work schedules).

***

Regarding my post from yesterday about Torah study, it occurs to me that I do a lot of unstructured Torah study thinking about things I’ve learnt at odd moments (e.g. while walking, doing housework, doing mindless tasks at work), not just “revising” them, but trying to put them together to draw new conclusions or find new insights. I wonder if other frum (religious Jewish) people do this? It’s not something I hear talked about, certainly not for “ordinary” people (not great Torah scholars). I sometimes feel there’s a fear of chiddush (novel interpretations) in the frum world, but for me, it’s a big part of why I study Torah.

I also feel I need the “big picture” from my Torah study, a sense of what Judaism is “about,” what its goal and purpose is, why we do all these mitzvot. The idea that we do mitzvot and study Torah just “because God said so” seems limiting, because I don’t believe in an arbitrary God who commands things for no reason. Unfortunately, the Orthodox world, particularly the Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) world does not really talk about the big picture. At best people speak of earning Heavenly reward (which doesn’t interest me much) or releasing spiritual energy in Heaven (the kabbalistic understanding of mitzvot and Torah study, which I don’t really understand or agree with).

Out of curiosity, I posted this on the Orthodox Conundrum Facebook group today:

What do you think the ultimate aim of Judaism is? I don’t mean “Doing G-d’s will/performing mitzvot/learning Torah,” but rather where that will and those mitzvot and Torah study are taking us.

1. The aim of Judaism is to bring an era of global awareness of G-d and world peace.
2. The aim of Judaism is to improve our souls/character traits.
3. The aim of Judaism is to let us earn Heavenly reward.
4. The aim of Judaism is to build a Jewish society in the land of Israel.
5. The aim of Judaism is to ensure the next generation are observant Jews.
6. Judaism has no aim. It just is.
7. None of the above.

NB There deliberately is no “Some/all of the above” option. Please pick just ONE answer.

The poll is flawed for several reasons: Friday is the worst day to find Jews with the time to post thoughtful answers; I couldn’t actually work out how to do a proper poll and asked people to respond in the comments, which takes more time, so probably limited the response further; I probably didn’t include every possible answer; and I asked people only to give one answer, not “A and B.” I’m open to the idea Judaism has more than one aim, but I wanted to get a sense of what people believe is the MOST  important aim of Judaism, not a lot of “All of the above”. The purpose of the poll, as I explained to someone in the comments, was sociological, not theological i.e. not to establish the ultimate aim of Judaism, but to find out what Orthodox Jews think the ultimate aim of Judaism is.

I haven’t had enough results to get any real scientific idea of what people think, but of the few I got, I was pleased that A got most responses, as that is what I would answer. However, a couple of people thought it was “hubris” on my part to suggest what God’s purpose for Judaism is and/or didn’t seemed to think that Judaism had a purpose, although they would not respond to my questions about whether they think it has no ultimate purpose at all or if they think God has a purpose for Judaism, but we don’t or can’t know it.

I feel really uncomfortable with the latter outlook, not just because of the obscurantism (and the implicit criticism of many Jewish figures who felt Judaism does have an ultimate purpose). I think it ties in to my problems not being able to pray or study Torah as much as I would like. If I think that the ultimate aim of Judaism is to become a better person and/or to make God known in the world through good deeds and kiddush hashem (sanctifying God’s name – essentially behaving in public in a way that makes non-Jews and non-religious Jews feel positively about Judaism), then, even if I can’t study so much Torah or daven (pray) so much, or so well, or with a minyan (prayer quorum), I can still try to be a good person and a good representative of God and Judaism. But if there is no purpose, or no discernible purpose, to mitzvot or if the only purpose is that they release some kind of spiritual energy that does good things (which is basically what the Yeshivish view of Torah study is), then there isn’t really any way to substitute anything for them, except perhaps accepting suffering with good grace as the will of God, which I admit IS a valid religious impulse, but having lived that way for much of my adult life, I hoped to find a more proactive way to be Jewish.

It’s probably no wonder I’m drawn to figures like the Kotzker Rebbe (who felt that Torah study was intended to promote ethical growth) or Rabbi Lord Sacks (who felt that Jews should play a role in the public sphere to represent Judaism and promote a harmonious, compassionate society) rather than those like the Vilna Gaon or Reb Chaim of Volozyn (the original proponent of the “Torah study releases spiritual energy” viewpoint) who focused very much on Torah study as the ultimate goal of the Jew.

***

It’s getting late and I don’t feel great, so I’m going to post this without commentary, beyond the fact that I need to heed it. It’s from an essay by Rabbi Sacks for this week’s Torah portion (Shoftim) entitled The Greatness of Humility.

There is a fundamental difference between two words in Hebrew: anava, “humility”, and shiflut, “self-abasement”. So different are they that Maimonides defined humility as the middle path between shiflut and pride. Humility is not low self-regard. That is shiflut. Humility means that you are secure enough not to need to be reassured by others. It means that you don’t feel you have to prove yourself by showing that you are cleverer, smarter, more gifted, or more successful than others. You are secure because you live in God’s love. He has faith in you even if you do not. You do not need to compare yourself to others. You have your task, they have theirs, and that leads you to co-operate, not compete.

My Jewish Identity

I got up early even for a work day on Thursday (admittedly only by a few minutes), but I was tired and a bit tense and down. I’m not sure how much was exhaustion, depression or anxiety. I was certainly feeling all of those things at work. A number of things I’d read (to many to list here) had set me thinking again about socialisation into the frum (religious Jewish) community and how much this depends on communal prayer and paired or collective religious study, at least for men.  If parts at least of the Orthodox world allegedly see women as baby-producing machines, then to some extent men are also see men as Talmud studying machines and warm bodies in the minyan (prayer quorum).

I increasingly wonder where my Jewish identity is located nowadays. I try to have an inward sense of God (which is hard with alexithymia, difficulty recognising my own emotions, including my love for God), connection to Jewish history and connection to present Jews (which is harder sometimes than connection to historical Jews for a lot of reasons, from social isolation to politics) and to live according to Jewish ethics. I try to pray with kavannah (mindfulness) when I pray at home and to study by myself every day (even if I pray less than I “should” and only study for a few minutes some days and rarely study Talmud at all), but these are not seen as significant by many Orthodox Jews (sadly, but truthfully). Can I have a sense of being an Orthodox Jewish man without doing the things that an Orthodox Jewish man is “supposed” to do? I can have my own Jewish identity on my terms, but would that still be an Orthodox identity? You could move from the social convention to the halakhic and say that as I’m not able to do all the things I should and perhaps actively should NOT be doing them (I have spoken to a rabbi who said this), then not doing these things is how God wants me to behave. But (a) this is a negative identity (I don’t do…) and I’d like a positive one (I do…) and (b) it effectively means that I have a halakhic identity, but not an Orthodox one, which is a weird place to find myself when I’ve always identified as Orthodox, even before I was frum.

(There is the related issue of social acceptance, but I’m not going into that now.)

Work on Thursday was not terribly interesting, as usual, but I did have to make some signs, which allowed me to do something I enjoy a lot, namely experiment with fonts, one of the few artistic things I have much interest in. The font names fascinate me too. I found myself dreaming of a Dickensian novel about Franklin Gothic, his friend Felix Titling (yes, that’s a real font), his lost love Lucida Bright, the orphan boy Poor Richard and the evil landowner, Sir Baskerville Oldface.

When I got home, I wrote some emails to formally end our attempt to purchase the nice flat in the death-trap block. Unfortunately, it’s still hanging in the air, as our solicitor is out of the office and the estate agent phoned twice this morning to try to speak to me. I didn’t as I had a headache, but I hope I wouldn’t have taken the call anyway. He has also emailed offering more information. I have sent another email firmly insisting that we want to withdraw, but he hasn’t replied yet. I want confirmation that he has withdrawn our offer by Monday.

I don’t know what has caused the headache I woke up with today and which has continued on and off all day, sometimes with faintness and light-headedness, even sitting down. It’s on my right eye at least some of the time, so it’s probably a stress headache, as that’s where I seem to get them. I’m not sure if the faintness and lightheaded [1] is connected. I’ve had what seems to be a blood sugar slump every afternoon this week. I’m not sure if this is more frequent than usual or if I’m just noticing it more as I’m recording it now, similar to the way I seemed to have more autism symptoms once I started noticing and recording them pre-diagnosis, even though you can’t become more autistic. If it is more frequent, I wonder if it’s stress-related, given the flat situation. Can hypoglycaemia be psychosomatic?

I woke early with the headache, but went back to bed after eating breakfast and taking paracetamol and then slept late (hence missing the estate agent’s calls). It was a chore day, with E cooking for Shabbat and me doing the washing up, cleaning and various other Shabbat prep chores. I may have to leave some chores as I don’t feel well.

E and I are alone for Shabbat and indeed until Thursday night, as my parents are away. Shockingly, it’s the first time we’ve been alone for any period since our Hendon mini-moon, two days after our wedding. It’s been hard and we’re looking forward to time alone together despite the flat stress. I hope I’m well enough to enjoy it, although it will be special doing the Shabbat prayers and routines together.

[1] Are ‘faintness’ and ‘light-headedness’ synonyms? I feel that they are, but I tend to use them differently, with faintness expressing something in my whole body and light-headedness only in my head. Maybe this is not right. I am good with words, but not with interoception.

I am Gandalf (According to Bing AI)

I’m trying to cut down on the parts of these posts that aren’t interesting/informative about my life to my blog friends or helpful to me to process emotions, so I won’t blog about the fun day E and I just had in Borehamwood (not intended as a Tu B’Av date, but effectively one).

I finished reading The Guide for the Perplexed by Rambam/Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon/Maimonides. I’m not going to review an eight hundred year old philosophy book. I didn’t understand all of it, particularly the parts criticising other philosophical ideas of the day. I definitely did learn things from it, although many of the most interesting ideas were familiar to me from being repeated or quoted elsewhere. I’m glad I read it.

***

I messed around on the Bing AI yesterday and today, creating pictures. A few observations:

Yes, these AI really do still have trouble working out what human hands look like and how they grip.

Bing created some quite nice pictures of dogs playing cards, but has trouble remembering that you don’t hold the picture side outwards when playing.

It did create some scary pictures of Henry VIII. Some weren’t bad, but one was clean-shaven.

Bing would not create pictures of Donald Trump and Joe Biden (no surprise), but it wouldn’t create pictures of Richard Nixon either, so I wondered again at what point things stop being “politics” and become “history.” It wouldn’t produce pictures of any US presidents that I tried (as far back as John Adams) or recent British Prime Ministers or monarchs, but did produce pictures of Sir Robert Walpole (the first Prime Minister, in the early eighteenth century) as well as Henry VIII. Then I tried to create an image of Hitler and it terminated the conversation. “I’m sorry but I prefer not to continue this conversation. I’m still learning so I appreciate your understanding and patience. [hands together emoji]” I found this patronising. It’s a snowflake AI! Yes, I understand why they don’t want people producing images of Hitler. But still. I did wonder how Anglo-centric its history restrictions were, so I searched for Bismarck. I’d forgotten that Bismarck gave his name to a lot of things, and I didn’t even know there is an anime series of that name (more or less), so the four pictures I asked for turned out to be two statues of men in uniform, a battleship and an anime man in military uniform with battleships in the background. Then I asked for Metternich (nineteenth century Austrian statesman) and got four images of a picturesque Alpine-type village. Possibly the AI needs some history lessons.

Bing says it can’t produce pictures of fictional characters, even if the names you type in aren’t actually those of fictional characters and it just thinks they are. However, it did produce some surprisingly accurate pictures of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man from Ghostbusters, even if one was black (black marshmallows?) and one a bit Asian-looking as well as one or two apparently influenced by Slimer in the same film. It produced some reasonable images of Sherlock Holmes (although one looked more like a Raymond Chandler detective, smoking a cigar), so its definition of “fictional character” is flexible. (Reminds me of The Simpsons: “But Homer, Sherlock Holmes is a character!” “He sure is!” Dialogue quoted from memory, don’t sue me if I got it wrong.)

It also created some scary pictures of supposed Doctors from Doctor Who. And also thought that “all the Doctor Whos” might refer to a row of female Muslim doctors in headscarves. (It could be that it read “Doctor Whos” as something other than a proper noun, so I don’t know if this helps us understand its understanding of fictional characters.)

Doctor Who or Peaky Blinders?

I asked it to create pictures of [my name and E’s name]. They mostly looked like nepo children, or rock stars who were probably also secretly nepo children. One guy had his shirt collar done up, but the second button open on one side and closed on the other, with a second collar underneath the first. It’s strange how AI can get things 99% accurate, but make a weird mistake that even a five year old human being would not make.

I asked it to create pictures of my Hebrew name and it produced four bearded figures. At least two had a Jesus vibe, and one was basically Gandalf.

I asked for pictures of a Jewish wedding and it produced these weird SUPER-creepy images of a guy in a suit with these mounds covered in what looked like talletot (prayer shawls), one of which was tall enough to be a bride, maybe, although she would have been over six foot tall, far taller than the groom. No faces visible, men or women, so it could be published in the Haredi press, although one picture had what might have been women wearing surgical masks in the background. Also, there were candlesticks (?!) and Bing had “fingers” trouble working out how many candles go in a candlestick.

Then I asked for Jewish dancing at a wedding and I got Hasidim wearing top hats apparently doing disco dancing.

A lot of the pictures are vaguely scary. I don’t know if it’s a sort of “uncanny valley” thing about things looking almost lifelike, but not quite right, with multiple fingers, distorted mouths, no faces or that collar issue I mentioned above. But somehow even the ones with no obvious mistakes look creepy. Is it because I know they’re AI-generated? Maybe some psychologist could do some double-blind test about how people react to AI images versus actual photos, or pictures produced by a human artist. I also find it strange that I find it creepy that AI can create pretty lifelike pictures of people who don’t exist, even though human artists have been doing this for centuries and I don’t find that creepy at all.

Because of E and my idea of writing a story about neurodivergent penguins, I searched for neurodivergent penguins. The pictures were reasonably normal (a little scary), but there was a cute text:

Neurodivergent penguins are penguins that have different ways of thinking, learning, and behaving than the typical or expected norms. Neurodivergent penguins may have conditions such as autism, ADHD, dyslexia, or anxiety. They may also have unique interests, talents, and personalities that make them stand out from the crowd.

Neurodivergent penguins may face some challenges in their lives, such as being misunderstood, bullied, or excluded by other penguins. They may also struggle with sensory issues, communication difficulties, or executive functioning skills. However, neurodivergent penguins also have many strengths and abilities that can help them overcome these obstacles and thrive in their own way.

One of the ways that neurodivergent penguins show their affection and appreciation for each other is by giving pebbles. Pebbles are small rocks that penguins use to build their nests and attract their mates. Pebbles can also be seen as a symbol of love, friendship, and support among neurodivergent penguins. They may give pebbles to other penguins who share their special interests, who understand their needs, or who make them happy. This is called penguin pebbling, and it is one of the main neurodivergent love languages.

Penguin pebbling is observed in several neurodivergent conditions, highlighting its presence in different contexts. While not all individuals with these conditions exhibit this behavior, it can be seen as one aspect of their neurodiversity. Neurodiversity is the concept that recognizes and celebrates the diversity of human minds and brains. It rejects the idea that there is only one right or normal way to be, and instead embraces the differences and variations that exist among people.

“Penguin pebbling” is a neurotypical “love language” apparently (there’s a lot I could say about this, but I won’t for space and time reasons), but AI has apparently mixed it in with real penguin behaviour. I guess it shows the kind of mistakes AI can make.

Trauma. Also Doctor Who: The New Adventures

This post is about twice as long as usual and the second half is sort of about Doctor Who, but it’s really about my changing relationship with Doctor Who, which I hope is more interesting and relevant to my readers.

Today seemed less productive than yesterday. I spoke to my rabbi mentor, had therapy and went out briefly with E, then out again later for dinner for date night. I did some Torah study, although it was hard. I guess if I had to pick the things that make Torah hard to engage with from a contemporary perspective the top three would be: 1) religious violence, 2) long genealogical lists and censuses and 3) sacrifices. And Pinchas (this week’s Torah portion) has all of them!

I woke up feeling tired and was unfocused (although not tired) all day. This seems to happen a lot lately. E feels the same. There seems to be a lot to do and we just shy away from it and procrastinate or get overwhelmed. I wonder if the problem is our uncomfortable living situation, living with my parents, or just life in general? We have done a huge amount of emotionally and physically exhausting things in the last six months. E is certainly struggling a lot with living with my parents and she has made me realise that maybe I do too. I didn’t feel like I had an alternative before, despite my two years living away from home – although I was mostly coming home for Shabbat (the Sabbath) so maybe that was part of the problem? (I also lived away from home when at Oxford, but that was slightly different as I was mostly home for holidays and Oxford is an unnatural environment anyway.) E says that when I stayed in her apartment in New York for a week I seemed much happier and less tired, even though I was sleeping on the sofa, which would not normally be optimal for me.

In therapy I discussed the idea of trauma in terms of my childhood experiences at home and at school. I mentioned my reluctance to speak of my experiences as “trauma” in a recent post and my feeling that as I haven’t experienced abuse, war or the like, I should not talk about having experienced trauma. My therapist thought that anything attacking the self can be seen as trauma. I think childhood experiences at home and school did cause some kind of trauma or quasi-trauma and left me feeling “unacceptable” in some ways, even though that was not my parents’ intention, which led me to have difficulty enforcing boundaries, including with my parents.

My therapist said that the situation with E, me and my parents probably has “too many moving parts to solve” and that I should try to have empathy for myself in this situation and that I should give myself permission not to have to solve it. Instead, I should try to take small steps towards a solution, acknowledging that I will not reach the total solution and just try to ameliorate things.

Speaking of which, E and I went out for date night. The cafe/restaurant we wanted to go to had been block booked for an event, so we went to a different one and had a really good time. There was no background music! None at all! Amazing!

***

“You’re struggling to make the change because the old behaviour is still meeting a need. Instead of shaming yourself, identify the deeper need and allow it to exist. Then get curious about a new way to meet it.” This appeared on my Facebook feed, generated by the algorithm (wow, finally something useful!). It’s from something called Dissociative Identity Disorder Devon. I don’t have DID, but this resonated with many aspects of my life: procrastination, particularly online; my internal “Shoulds”; my difficulties with my parents (see above) and fitting in to society (general society and frum (religious Jewish) society). I don’t have time to go into detail now, but I might return to it here in the future. Just as a very general example, I have beaten myself up for literally decades over my internet procrastination. If I need a break, I reason, I should actually read a real book, which I would probably enjoy more than most of what is available online (which is at best “junk food” reading, insubstantial commentary and jokes, at worst just unproductive anger and argument). But internet browsing probably serves needs: to feel connected, particularly to blog friends in other countries; to let my brain idle; to see something new and unexpected (admittedly it is often new levels of idiocy and aggression).

***

I weighed myself this morning for the first time in months. My weight was the same or possibly increased, despite E and I both thinking I look slimmer and my trousers seeming baggier lately. It’s not impossible for these things to go together, but it’s a bit weird. That said, I’m not surprise if my weight is up as lately my self-control regarding junk food has been appalling. I’ve mentioned that with my self-control focused on my living situation, there’s a loss of self-control elsewhere and, I guess, comfort eating, thankfully small scale.

***

To recap some stuff I’ve written about here in the past: I became a Doctor Who fan in the 1990s, when Doctor Who was off-air, bar one TV Movie in 1996. It was really considered a joke to the general public. But to the fans, it survived in comic strips in Doctor Who Magazine and several lines of original novels: The New Adventures (Seventh Doctor) and The Missing Adventures (past Doctors) produced by Virgin Publishing before the TV Movie and two ranges of novels produced by BBC Books when they took back the licence after the TV Movie, informally referred to by fans as the Eighth Doctor Novels and Past Doctor Novels. These were considered noteworthy by fans at the time for several reasons: they encouraged fan authors, including new authors, and the series moved forwards, in terms of overall narrative (this is where Gallifrey was first destroyed), character growth and stylistic innovation. This contrasted with other spin-off novel series (e.g. Star Wars, Star Trek) which weren’t allowed to innovate and develop in those ways.

At the time I could have given you a long list of reasons why these novels were “doing Doctor Who wrong,” but now I feel hugely nostalgic for them. In part, this is probably because of the distance I feel from contemporary TV Doctor Who and Doctor Who fandom. They’re not really “doing Doctor Who wrong” either (I don’t think that’s a meaningful thing to say), but they don’t really appeal to me at the moment. I re-read a bunch of the 1990s novels over the last ten years or so and found most of them readable and a couple of them extremely good (the standouts: The Left-Handed Humingbird and Lungbarrow from The New Adventures, Alien Bodies and The Infinity Doctors from the BBC range, although I don’t own many of the BBC books. Also a special mention for the long short story Nothing at the End of the Lane in the Short Trips and Side Steps short story collection). Then a few weeks ago I found three New Adventures I’d never read in a charity shop and bought them. I finished reading the first, Cat’s Cradle: Time’s Crucible, the other day.

I thought it was good. Not exceptional, but interesting and enjoyable. And that has prompted me to spend time on eBay looking at out of print novels that I could potentially bankrupt myself buying, if I decided to complete the collection, including all the incredibly rare ones.

Even before this, I realised a while back that I didn’t just want to write a novel, I wanted to write a New Adventures novel, or at least a novel that seemed to me like one, with solid plot and characterisation, but also subtext, bad jokes, meta-textual references that only someone with the author’s cultural tastes would fully understand, apt or ironic quotations at the start of the book and probably a long author’s preface/afterword where I thank too many people and explain too much of my writing process. If I get my novel written, I might even manage to do some of these things. Genuine New Adventures authors won’t appreciate my politics, though, except for Gareth Roberts. The New Adventures and The Missing Adventures were a staple part of my reading at an impressionable age, so it’s probably no surprise they’ve influenced my literary tastes and writing style. Maybe trying to write serious literature didn’t work for because it didn’t have that level of playfulness.

Another, more recent (2013) book I read recently, The Doctor: His Lives and Times, combined real-world factual chapters about Doctor Who’s production with faked primary sources documenting the Doctor’s adventures as if real. It was the type of thing that could have appeared in Doctor Who Magazine in the 90s. So that book (The Doctor: His Lives and Times) got me looking again at Doctor Who non-fiction, critical analysis and meta-textual speculation (not quite the right term, but attempts to construct coherent fictional timelines out of stories produced on an ad hoc basis over sixty years and the like) rather than production commentary.

Sigh. A few months ago I felt that Doctor Who, my biggest autistic special interest over the years (I think Judaism is more and less than a special interest to me), had limited appeal to me now. The last few years of the TV series series did not inspire me, nor does what we know of what is coming next. And now I feel reinvigorated in my fandom, but not for contemporary Doctor Who. I’ve mentioned in the past my nostalgia for the DWM of the 90s. In many ways I feel like I’m turning into a fan of Doctor Who as it was in the 90s as much as a Doctor Who fan in general. It was so liberating, having an essentially unwanted (by the public at large) fictional universe to play with and places to play with it, both in non-fictional analysis and new fictional stories, which sometimes combined playful or heavy-handed meta-analysis. Then I went to university in the early years of the new century and started writing for the Doctor Who Society’s fanzine and doing this sort of thing myself.

So now I wonder where this will go. I’m currently watching some rare Doctor Who novel auctions on eBay and wondering if I will end up spending as much £60 or so on four rare, but “important” out of print novels. I shouldn’t, especially given E and my financial situation, but it somehow seems REALLY IMPORTANT that I do it, just as it seems REALLY IMPORTANT that I should set aside the many worthy unread books on my To Read shelf and re-read novels like Original Sin and The Dark Path or even Lungbarrow (which I’ve read three or four times already and which I think is amazing, so there). I guess at a time of emotional stress and upheaval (how many major life changes have I undergone in the last six months?!) it’s good to have something to hold on to like this. I mean, I have E, who is amazing, but can hardly be expected to be at my beck and call 24/7.

After The Event

I still haven’t blogged the wedding, and I’m not going to do so tonight. I hope to get to it in the coming days. But I wanted to quickly set down some thoughts from Shavuot, the Jewish festival that just passed (the English word is Pentecost, but that confuses people as it has nothing to do with the Christian Pentecost).

Each day of the two-day festival went much the same: I went to shul (synagogue) in the evening, had dinner with my parents and E, read for a bit with E, then went to bed (I didn’t go to tikkun leil (all-night Torah study). In the morning, E dragged me out of bed (almost literally) and I fought sleep disorder-induced exhaustion and social anxiety to get to shul, very late, but still for a chunk of the service and which I enjoyed once I was there, but ate too much in the kiddush afterwards. After lunch, E and I napped, then on the first day, we went on a long walk and on the second day E and Mum went to a women’s tea and Torah event while I stayed at home and read.

It was enjoyable, and E enjoyed it too, but I felt a bit religiously disconnected. On Shavuot we celebrate receiving the Torah, but as I study Torah every day, it can feel hard to connect it to just one day, particularly as I missed the Torah reading in shul due to over-sleeping. I often go through Jewish festivals feeling I should be feeling some kind of noticeable spiritual feeling or connection. Maybe that’s not how it works, either in general or for me with alexithymia (difficulty recognising and understanding my own emotions).

Lately I feel like I’m juggling a lot of stuff. A lot of this is in the wake of my wedding, but also two years after my autism diagnosis I’m still trying to understand what that means for me, especially for my Jewish life. I’ve mentioned in previous posts that I’m juggling, or soon will be juggling, practical things like writing wedding thank you notes, finding somewhere to live with E and trying to set up a secondary career as a freelance proofreader and editor. At the same time, I’m trying to find the right balance between the Jewish life I want (which would feature quite a bit of prayer and Torah study) with the wider life I want (doing stuff with E and writing fiction) and balancing that against my various current diagnoses (autism, sleep apnoea, social anxiety, alexithymia).

I used to feel that, with my current and past diagnoses, my life has been a bedieved, something that is only religiously justified after the event. As in, you shouldn’t pray with no intention to concentrate, but, bedieved, after the event, if you prayed and your mind wandered, that would be OK and you shouldn’t repeat the prayers. I felt that the life I was living was not an ideal frum (religious Jewish) life and was only permitted because I was depressed, autistic, living with less religious family, etc, etc.

Now I’m married to E, I very much feel that our marriage is NOT a bedieved, that we are supposed to be together. But if we are supposed to be together, then the things that brought us together were supposed to happen too, which largely means our various diagnoses. Which in turn means that my life wasn’t/isn’t a bedieved. Which means God wants me to live this life, with all the ways it is imperfect from a strictly frum perspective. I don’t quite know what this means for me. I’ve discussed it/am discussing it with my rabbi mentor and also with a rabbi from the Ma’aglei Nefesh rabbinic mental health service, but I feel I’m still finding my way forward between wanting to study Torah and pray, but also wanting (or rather needing) to work and to build my life with E without burning out again, as well as to do things that matter to me and help keep me mentally health, like blogging and fiction writing, and also reading fiction and watching the TV programmes that help me switch off.

It would be nice to have a snappy conclusion here, but I don’t have one. I’m a work in progress and this is a topic I keep returning to here. But maybe I am inching forward; at any rate, being married to E does feel like a big positive change, even if I am not sure exactly what the ramifications are at this stage.

Stressed (and Unable to Think of an Original Title)

I feel very stressed, about wedding stuff, family stuff and Pesach (a month away). I’ll go in chronological order, but I wanted to put that up at the start.

I posted on a Facebook group for people who have medical issues that prevent them keeping Jewish law about my alexithymia (difficulty recognising and understanding my emotions) and the problems that gives me with observing Jewish law (e.g. loving God). People seemed supportive and gave me some suggestions, which was good. Maybe I’ve finally found somewhere I can talk about these issues, which was difficult in non-Jewish support spaces.

I managed to get to shul (synagogue) on Friday night for the first time in weeks! I was tired, but I got there. I didn’t do much Torah study in the evening, though, as I was tired – although, given what I was told by the mental health helpline rabbi, maybe I did too much. It’s hard to gauge. I read a Batman graphic novel (prompted by watching The Batman in the week) and started Children of Dune, the third Dune book, but I didn’t get very far with it.

I did decide that I shouldn’t push myself too hard at the moment to read prose fiction (let alone non-fiction) when I’m feeling stressed about the wedding and Pesach. It’s OK to spend my free time over the next two and a half months watching TV or reading graphic novels, if I’m too stressed to read prose much.

Today was similar, although without shul, just Torah study (getting through the first of this week’s two difficult Torah portions (Vayakhel)) and a bit of reading. I wanted to do a few small (I thought) chores after dinner and get to bed early, but things got out of control, hence blogging to off-load even though I intended not to blog today.

My uncle phoned to say my cousins won’t be coming to my wedding, because it’s too expensive. I think my uncle and aunt are still coming, although there are still some issues to discuss. It’s sad, but I guess I wasn’t expecting them to come, as they’re almost all adults now with other responsibilities, except for the youngest, who is still at school and we already knew he couldn’t come, because he has an exam the next day. My sister was lucky that they were all able to come for her wedding, but that was five years ago when they were all in a different place, metaphorically and, in most cases, literally.

I need to put together a wedding “To Do” list. I have several different and incomplete lists and need to compile them into a master list (and hope I don’t forget anything). I wanted to do this tonight, but I ran out of time, so I’ll have to do it tomorrow.

I was trying (and failing) to clear the decks tonight, with Torah study and the To Do list as tomorrow we’re going to my second-cousin’s house. I have lots of second-cousins, most of whom I’ve never met, but I have two (brother and sister) about my age who my sister and I grew up with. We get together every six months or so, along with my parents, my second-cousins’ mother and her husband, and everyone’s spouses and children (except me, as my spouse (civilly, if not religiously) is in America and we have no children, which is always hard). I do like to go, but I also struggle to find anything to say and deal with the noise and peopling. Wedding planning now gives me a reason to leave early after an hour or an hour and a half and get the bus home, which is probably win-win.

One final stress factor today has been the sleep study I had done in November. I have found the receipt for the return postage of the equipment, so I can prove I returned it. What I can’t find is any paper that says what hospital was supposed to be analysing the results. The postage receipt has an address and postcode, which I googled, but it’s just an office somewhere that receives the equipment, not the hospital that would know where my results are, and I can’t find a phone number for it anyway. I thought they sent me some papers, but if they did, I must have thrown them away, as I can’t find them now. Unfortunately, when it comes to papers, I either keep everything or throw away everything. I find it hard to keep the right things and throw away the right things. I guess I was assuming that everything would go according to plan and the hospital would just send my results. HAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

As the GP surgery’s receptionist couldn’t find any relevant information on my record, I think my best course of action is to try (try being the operative word) to get an appointment with my GP and find out where he referred me to. Which is a total waste of his time and mine necessitated by NHS incompetence. I still can’t believe some people think the NHS is brilliant and the only problem it has is not enough money.

Bandwidth

I was too exhausted to go to shul (synagogue) again on Friday night. I was wondering if I “give in” to exhaustion too easily these days, as I’ve often struggled to go to shul, particularly in the winter, but forced myself to do so and been fine once there. Then I remembered there was a choir this week and decided I definitely couldn’t cope with that, so I stayed at home.

Mum and Dad wanted to talk a lot about the wedding over dinner, which I didn’t really want, but couldn’t really stop them. I can’t even remember what we concluded in the end, although we didn’t decide anything without E’s approval. Afterwards, I wanted to do some Torah study, but I remembered being told by the mental health helpline rabbi that I shouldn’t overdo things and increase my exhaustion and anxiety, so I just read Judges: The Peril of Possession (on the biblical book Shoftim/Judges) for a while. It put Shimshon (Samson) in a light in which I had never really seen him before, as a Jew rebelling against the concept of Jewish distinctiveness and his own mission. To be honest, I’ve never connected with Shimshon, but he was more relatable here, though still pretty much a failure.

I had the intermittent headaches I’ve been getting for the last couple of weeks over Shabbat. They last for a few seconds, then go away again and come back seconds or minutes later. This doesn’t sound so bad and they aren’t too intense, but it’s hard to know whether to take medication for them when they come and go. They are always in one of the same two places, either on the left side of my forehead or in my right eye. My Mum cheerfully suggested I should ask the doctor for an MRI as I may have a brain tumour! (Yes, health anxiety is an issue in this house.) I think I should wait until the wedding anxiety calms down before I think about that, unless they become more intense or frequent, not least because I had an eye test a few weeks ago and the optician didn’t see anything wrong. I did take painkillers tonight, as the pain in my eye was distracting.

Because of the headache and the rabbi’s advice I did almost no Torah study today. I read a short essay by Dr Tanya White about theodicy and Iyov/Job which I had printed before Shabbat (Sabbath) and a couple of short essays on the weekly Torah portion. I had wanted to read more of The Guide for the Perplexed or the very long opening section of the coming week’s Torah portion, but my head/eye hurt too much and then once the medication kicked it, it was too late.

I did quite a lot of recreational reading, so I’ve nearly finished Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

I did some wedding and non-wedding related chores this evening, but not much. I feel a bit bad about wasting the time, but I probably do need some less-intense time. I wish I could have used it in a more structured way, but I got distracted by stuff online (AKA procrastination).

***

I’m wondering if I should set aside five or ten minutes a day for novel research reading. Not so much because I would achieve much in that time, but just to feel like I’m setting aside time for it and that it is still “in play.” I still regularly jot down ideas for it, so it is in play on some level, but this would feel more structured and might act as a reminder that in a couple of months I will have less stress and more time.

***

Something slightly weird happened on Friday that I don’t want to go into here, but now I feel vaguely bad for ever stopping following blogs, even though there is obviously no obligation to read someone’s blog indefinitely and people have stopped following mine. Possibly I’m over-thinking again.

***

I feel this blog has got very autism-centred. Maybe that’s not a bad thing, but I used to like it when I could include digressions on politics or literature. I just haven’t had much time/energy/brainpower/bandwidth/spoons/whatever you want to call it for that lately.

Purim, Being Pathetic, and the Autistic Talking Service Parrot

It was a rather stressful day again. Volunteering went wrong from the start. It wasn’t set up in advance, so we would have been delayed fifteen minutes just catching up. Then a table collapsed. I was worried I had not put it up correctly, but it turned out that a leg had just snapped off (I assume from corrosion). Unfortunately, when it collapsed, it squashed a large carton of mango juice, spraying juice everywhere, so we had to tidy that up before we could really start. Then it turned out that we had all misread the number of bags of food needed this week and we were sixteen short when the volunteer drivers came to deliver them. They ended up being added to tomorrow’s workload as it was late (the food bank operates on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, but I only volunteer on Tuesdays). I had to get home as I was talking to my rabbi mentor at 3pm, so I missed coffee even though I could have done with the sugar boost of a biscuit or two and even though I like the social interaction of sitting with the others even if I don’t say much.

Other stuff: there was some family drama that I inadvertently started. Not going into it here, but I wished I’d kept my mouth shut. I cooked dinner after talking to my rabbi mentor (the call was helpful), but didn’t do much else this afternoon. I feel like I’m struggling to hold everything together at the moment and even minor stresses like those today can feel like massive, intractable issues.

***

Other issues: I’m going to volunteer next Tuesday even though it’s the minor festival of Purim. There is a Megillat Esther (Book of Esther, read Purim night and day) reading where I volunteer, as it’s a Jewish institution, so I can listen there and volunteer afterwards. Unfortunately, I’ll have to get up very early, despite being likely to be drained the previous day with work and the evening Megillah reading (crowded, noisy). J wanted me to cover for him in the afternoon in case we have to do the Very Scary Task (he’ll be getting drunk at his Purim seudah (festive meal) as per custom), but now I’ll be out of communication for a bit in the early afternoon. I did check with him and he said it was OK, but I feel a bit guilty. I felt I should volunteer nonetheless as we’ll be several people short next week. I vaguely feel like I’m ruining J’s seudah deliberately because my seudah will probably be alone and I don’t approve of Purim drunkenness (or other drunkenness), even though that’s not really what’s happening.

The other Purim issue is struggling to do mishloach manot (gifts of food to friends). I can’t give to my parents (which I mistakenly did for many years) because we’re in the same household. I only really have two friends in the area; one I haven’t seen for the better part of a year (although I will be inviting him to the wedding) and he’ll probably be either at work or at a seudah somewhere else when I get back from volunteering (the gifts have to be given after hearing the Megillah, but before sunset). The other person is J, but I don’t know exactly where he lives and it seems vaguely inappropriate to give gifts to my boss. The timing issue might also be relevant there too.

I can’t find any charity doing a system where you can give money to them to buy food to send to someone, only for giving money directly (which is also a Purim commandment, but a separate one). I’m not sure what to do. E wondered if I can give money to be included in my parents’ mishloach manot gifts to their friends, but I need to check with a rabbi if that “counts.” This is the type of thing that makes me feel a pathetic Jonny No Mates, something that will be reinforced by the four or five sets of mishloach manot my parents will probably receive from their local friends. This is just a part of the reason that Purim is not fun for me. Actually, I do have friends, just not necessarily Jewish, local or in the real world rather than the virtual one (you can’t send virtual gifts of food).

***

I wrote to the rabbinic mental health email helpline again a while back about my struggles with spiritual growth and Torah study when dealing with autistic exhaustion. The rabbi sent back a long email that I need to re-read and process, but summarised in the quote that “personal and spiritual growth is welcome only where it enhances your wellbeing, and if you find it causes you anxiety or exhaustion- it is “off limits” for you!”

I am not sure what to make of this at the moment. I don’t think stopping growth or Torah completely would be good for me, but I keep thinking of my first burnout/depression when I was sixteen and the doctor told me to stop working for a couple of weeks. I stopped for a bit, but then went back to it. Realistically, a week or two off wouldn’t have stopped my slide towards major burnout a couple of years later, which was driven by undiagnosed autism, but I feel it shows I should take this kind of thing more seriously.

Incidentally, that first burnout/depression started on Purim, which may be another reason it’s not my favourite festival.

***

Someone on the Orthodox Conundrum Facebook group opined again that for non-married adults, the choice is between transgressive sex or “pathetic celibacy.” I suggested that Moshe (Moses) and Yirmiyahu (Jeremiah) were celibate and not pathetic. I was told by the first person and one other that they were great people and we can’t compare ourselves to them, which wasn’t really my point. (Also, this is a classic frum (religious Jewish) debating/pedagogical tactic: when famous biblical or Talmudic figures do something the speaker wants others to do, they’re examples; when they don’t, they’re exemptions who we can’t copy due to their special status. Frum girls are brought up on the Talmudic story of the woman who covered her hair even when home alone despite this being unnecessary according to Jewish law; if anyone suggested she was too holy to copy, they would get short shrift.)  I said that fulfilling the will of God isn’t pathetic and was also told that “pathetic” was being used in the sense of “inspiring pathos” which seemed pedantic and unlikely, and that something can be admirable and pathetic at the same time.

At this point I gave up on the argument, but it touched a nerve as for years I did feel pathetic for failing to attract a spouse and did want people to pity me, on some level, but I also feel, particularly in retrospect, that it was, at least on some level, difficult and admirable for me to stay a virgin for so long (by the time I get to my wedding, I will be just two months short of my fortieth birthday). I am reluctant to describe myself as “pathetic” in either sense.

***

E and I were talking about service animals and I decided I need a talking service parrot that will sit on my shoulder and make small talk to people for me when I can’t do so.

***

I just read an old Dilbert comic strip the joke of which was that Windows 95 was new and exciting and I felt ridiculously old, although not as much as when E and I went to the Museum of the Home last year and I heard a small girl look at a landline phone and say, “I’ve seen one of these before, but I don’t know how to use it.” It was possibly a rotary dial phone, but even so.

Wedding Anxiety, Religious Anxiety

I feel quite stressed and anxious, partly about the wedding, partly aware that E is struggling with things at the moment and I can’t help her. I’ve contemplated jumping on a plane just to give her a hug, but she said not to, and, for reasons I won’t go into here, it might actually make her situation worse, in practical terms, if I did, so I just have to wait. It’s very frustrating. I guess now I know how my parents felt for years when I was struggling with depression/burnout and they couldn’t do anything for me.

Once I get to that point, my thoughts start to spiral out of control worrying about how two people with so many diagnosed and suspected neurodivergence/mental illness “issues” between them, and such an insecure income as a result, can actually be happy, particularly when my parents aren’t able to help any more, practically and financially. At least we’ll be together, that counts for a lot. It’s scary, though.

Other than wedding/marriage/future stuff, I’m worried about Purim, the minor Jewish festival coming up in about a week and a half. I’m actually more worried about Purim than Pesach at the moment. Pesach is a more major festival a month later that triggered my religious OCD much more than Purim in the past, but I think that’s under control now. Purim triggers a lot of things, like OCD, social anxiety, perhaps autistic sensory issues, social overwhelm and so on as well as feeling like a loser for having no (local) friends. Ugh.

***

In terms of the last few days… on Thursday I had to do the Very Scary Task at work. I think I’m getting better at it, but it’s still hard and I get flustered and confused on the phone, especially if J isn’t around. On the plus side, I did get to go out to the Post Office and do some shopping which at least broke the day up a bit. I spent the afternoon doing a very boring printing and scanning job that is not yet finished. After work I went to Sainsbury’s and was so distracted and confused that I nearly left my food behind. I also collected my glasses with new lenses and left my spare pair so the new lens prescription can be put in them. I have to remember to wear the spares on our wedding day otherwise my glasses will turn tinted from the sunlight/camera flash (the everyday glasses have reaction lenses, but the spares don’t).

I was exhausted again on Friday. I probably would have been OK if I could have had a mental health day (autism day?), but even minor Shabbat (Sabbath) preparation finishes me off on Fridays recently. I felt too exhausted to go to shul (synagogue) again, which upset me a bit. I feel as if I’m drifting away from the Jewish community, while still believing and practising Judaism privately, and the Purim anxiety is a part of this. I don’t want to do it, but it’s what my mental/autistic health seems to demand right now and I feel that if I go away, the community won’t come after me they way they would for someone more involved and connected. I’ve never really felt fully a part of the community, except maybe for two or three years in the shul I grew up in, before we moved. Three years out of nearly forty is not a good record.

My uncle is here for the weekend. We had a good time at dinner, but there are aspects of the family dynamic that I find uncomfortable. I mentioned the other day that E and Nephew joining the family has changed the family dynamic, which it has, but there’s been another, more subtle, shift for a decade or more that I don’t feel comfortable with, but it’s not really my place to do anything about it. The problem is that I get sucked in and say things that I later regret. Speaking of which, I said something completely different (unrelated to family stuff) that I immediately regretted for religious reasons. I am trying not to beat myself up about it and accept it was a slip of the tongue, but I expect myself to be perfect.

I had a headache that got bad enough that I took tablets for it on Shabbat (the rules about taking medication for minor ailments on Shabbat are complicated. In the past I was very strict with myself; now, as in other things, I’m trying to tell myself that sometimes it’s more religious to be more lenient. It’s hard, though). I lay on the bed for a bit after dinner because of the headache. Lying down made it worse, but I propped myself up by the headboard and covered myself with my weighted blanket and adjusted the Shabbat lamp so there was only a little light.

After a while the headache went and I wanted to do some Torah study before it got too late. Like last week, as it was late, I went for depth over length of time, studying some Talmud (reviewing the page I’m on) and a chapter of Shoftim (Judges). It took about forty minutes in total. After that, I read for fun for a bit, finishing Greenmantle and starting Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban before going to bed.

Today was more of the same, really, until Shabbat ended and the anxieties I mentioned above kicked in.

***

I worry that I over-shared on the Orthodox Conundrum blog Facebook group on Friday. There was  a thread about Orthodox men not wanting to date women who study more Talmud than them, or better than them, and I asked if the reverse is also true, wondering if I got set up on so few dates in the Orthodox community because I didn’t go to yeshivah (rabbinical seminary). To be fair, there were plenty of other plausible explanations for my lack of dates, but, as you know, I’m paranoid that my failure to go to yeshivah or to study Talmud at a high level marks me as a “bad (frum/religious) Jew” even though I know that the idea of universal male yeshivah study or Talmud study for all but an elite is a product of not much more than the last century, not the entirety of Jewish history.

Perhaps relatedly, on Friday night/Saturday morning, I dreamt I was back in school. I had done my BA and MA, but, somehow, not my A-levels, so I had to come back to do them, but I was in the middle of burnout again and felt I couldn’t finish the course. Of course, I probably did have burnout when I did my A-levels, but it was mild compared with the burnouts during my BA and MA. I think the dream is about me trying to come to terms with not being the academic success that my achievements at school led me to think I would be, particularly in terms of secular academia, but also in terms of the frum community, where so many people seem to be able to study Talmud at a much higher level than me and where this seems to count more than other types of religious knowledge and perhaps even than being a good person in some circles.

***

It turned out that I did not copy all my music (or my non-classical music) to my phone. I need to delete some phone apps and try again…

You Will Own Nothing and You Will Be Happy

On Friday I was too exhausted to go to shul. I had the headrush, light-headed, feeling I’ve lately associated with autistic exhaustion, although I worry that it might be a symptom of something else. I also found that my vision was very focused on the area in front of me and I had less clear peripheral vision, as with anxiety. I felt like this intermittently all evening.

I got through dinner. I was too tired to study the Talmud or The Guide for the Perplexed, so I read a chapter of Sefer Shoftim (The Book of Judges) and the corresponding chapter in Rabbi Hattin’s book on it. That still took nearly an hour. I read Greenmantle for a while as I wasn’t tired and went to bed late.

I got up a little earlier than usual for Shabbat, but still felt tired. I went back to bed after lunch and slept properly, rather than dozing lightly as I had done throughout the winter. This was because Shabbat finishes a bit later now, so I had time to sleep. I did about twenty minutes of Talmud study, which wasn’t much in terms of time, but I reviewed the page I started last week and understood it somewhat better, although still not perfectly.

After Shabbat, I deleted 2,500 photos and videos on my phone to make room for music. Most were from WhatsApp, a lot from my old shul, which used WhatsApp a lot, some from other organisations. I kept various family photos, but ditched most of the rest. I did this because I tried to transfer music from iTunes to my phone a while back and failed, which I assumed was due to lack of memory. I’m worried that my iPod will die soon and I need a contingency plan for listening to music. I would also like to move to a music storage/playing device that would allow me to use cordless and/or noise cancelling earphones, cordless because headphones have a low life expectancy for me which I assume is because of how I treat the cord and noise cancelling because it will make my commute less painful. New iPods are not for sale any more, as far as I know, and I don’t like buying second-hand electronic devices, certainly not expensive ones.

I copied some music across to my phone, but I ran out of memory about halfway through. I’ve got a lot of classical music copied that I rarely listen to that I have since deleted to make more room, but it’s barely affected the phone’s memory. I’m going to have to delete most of the music soon to get back the phone’s memory. I do buy music quite regularly, so I really need more. Also, the phone music app isn’t particularly user friendly and I can’t work out how to find particular songs easily, play whole albums (which I do a lot) or play a playlist (I’m not sure that these even copied over from iTunes). Other Android music playing apps feature adverts.

The options seem to be (1) buy more memory (possible); (2) buy an iPhone so I can use iTunes directly (no, I’m not rich enough); or (3) come into the 2020s and subscribe to a streaming service. It seems ridiculous that after having bought so much music, I’m effectively going to have to rent it too if I want to listen outside the house. I like owning things, not because I’m materialistic, but because I like my things to be where I left them and not suddenly be deleted because it’s decided that they’re unfashionable (as many of my tastes are) or politically incorrect (more relevant to my DVDs and books than music, but still possible). I still remember the video streaming deletions of the summer of 2020, loads of classic film and TV suddenly verboten on grounds of racism. I think most were restored after protests, but it’s a disturbing precedent.

This prompted a whole train of thought about “You will own nothing and you will be happy.” Googling, it seems that this is not an actual mantra of Davos neoliberals, as is sometimes claimed by the far-right and far-left, but did come from a discussion paper for the World Economic Forum. The actual title is “Welcome To 2030: I Own Nothing, Have No Privacy And Life Has Never Been Better”. The paper is here, if you’re curious. The paper is supposed to sound utopian, albeit with some worries; I think it’s flipping terrifying, in the same way that most utopias are terrifying, from Utopia to The Shape of Things to Come to the deliberately ambiguous utopia/dystopia of Brave New World. I was glad that I had guessed some of it for my novel, but I will certainly give the article a re-read and comb it for new ideas (when I get time to write, sigh).

I didn’t do much Torah study because of this, but I did join in a “silly” thread on the autism forum, which was supposed to be for joking around and letting off steam, but did lead to people sharing some heavy stuff in a supportive environment, so I’m glad I participated. I’m in a fairly good place right now, but it’s good to offer support to others.

Getting Better All the Time

I got up about 10.30am today, which was earlier than I expected, as I thought I would be exhausted after yesterday. However, I wasted what I had of the morning as I was too exhausted for anything other than internet stuff. I’m not sure if I’m going to go to shul (synagogue). I want to and I don’t feel exhausted to the point of illness, as I have on recent Fridays, but I do still feel exhausted, am getting the “headrush”-type feeling I associate with autistic exhaustion and I am at least trying to notice the signals my body is sending me and not try to push through them in the belief that “doing something” is always better than “doing nothing” (relaxing/reading/watching TV or literally just lying still and recuperating from the noise and busyness of the world).

I had a Pesach anxiety dream last night, but it was a “can we make Pesach in time?” dream, not a Pesach OCD dream, which was good.

It feels like my life is getting better lately, but not uniformly. I don’t think any of it is getting worse.

Good Things

Getting fully married soon is good. Wedding planning is eating up a lot of energy, with less for cooking and housework and none for writing, but I can live with that for a few more months.

Volunteering has become my main social activity. I don’t say much, but do occasionally make a funny remark and people laugh. It’s good being around people. It’s slightly awkward that they’re all twenty years or more older than me and retired (hence time for volunteering), but it means I’m not comparing myself to them. I don’t expect people of my parents’ generation to be living lives like mine. I often get on better with older people anyway.

Work is difficult, but bearable and at least my boss seems to tolerate my mistakes. I do worry that he secretly thinks I’m an idiot, but I’m trying not to care.

I’m trying to give myself more breaks and more relaxation time (at home, not yet at work), as indicated by my remarks about possibly missing shul today. It’s hard. As I said in a comment today on Paula’s blog, since my teenage years, I’ve found it hard to set aside more than half an hour or so at a time for reading fiction or TV; it feels too much like “wasting” time that should be spent on something “productive.” Yet not relaxing means I can sucked into hours of internet procrastination instead (much of it designed to make me feel angry and threatened), because of the addictive “junk food” nature of internet links (“Just one more”).

Getting There

I have a lot to do still regarding proofreading. I want to set up profiles on more sites and chase the person I worked for to get a review, although I think it’s probably too late (I’ve been focused on the wedding). I know I have a lot to do to build my brand before this becomes a significant revenue stream and it does seem that it will take a long time to do, maybe never.

I am accepting that my novel(s) may not ever get published. I would like to write more despite this, even if it’s just for E. I still need to type up notes for my new novel, plus research and actually write the thing. Unfortunately, this all takes time, time I don’t currently have. However, I enjoy just thinking about it, so that’s good!

I feel like I fit in a bit better on the autism forum and am connecting with some people, although it can be hard, especially when I try not spend too long on there. I do wonder how some people can say that they feel an affinity with all autistics and no allistics, which seems very strange and stereotyping (and possibly an example of autistic black and white thinking). I find autistics, even high-functioning ones, to be as varied in personality and interests as any other cross-section of the population, albeit with certain traits or interests that come up perhaps a bit more than in general society.

There is sometimes drama on the forum, but I try to stay out of it. It can be hard to work out what I should post there and what on my blog. I definitely feel that the Jewish aspect of my autism is not really recognised there and there is still some Impostor Syndrome regarding traits that others have that I don’t, whether it’s the fact that I have some ability to make small talk (even though I don’t like it and it’s draining) or the fact that I increasingly think I like reasonably bright light and strong contrasts rather than preferring muted lights as most autistics prefer. Again, the fact that many people on the forum assume their experience is universal for autistics is probably not surprising when you consider that difficulty with perspective-taking is a classic autistic trait.

Still Struggling

Religious life is still hard. Going to shul is draining and I don’t always have kavannah (concentrate) well there. Davening (praying) at home can actually be much better on that score. Shacharit (Morning Prayers) are a lost cause, but the other services can be better, although I’ve got a long way still to go.

I am doing quite a bit of Torah study most days, and fairly difficult stuff at the moment, not fluff (Talmud, The Guide for the Perplexed, Aviva Gottleib Zornberg’s Torah essays which combine traditional Jewish thought with contemporary literary criticism, philosophy and psychology). Even so, I feel like I should do more, although maybe I don’t need to.

I am also aware that I’m going to have to compromise religiously with E when we get married, but I’m trying to keep in perspective the fact that the compromises will largely be on chumrot (stringencies) or, if not, will be for the purpose of shalom bayit (domestic harmony), which is a legitimate halakhic (Jewish legal) concern that can counter-balance some laws, even some biblical ones. I also think that E and I will grow together religiously in ways that I can’t manage alone e.g. I think she will help me get back to going to shul on Shabbat mornings and take more of a role in the community. I am also trying to stay aware that I can legitimately make compromises with myself over religious engagement because of my autism e.g. less shul attendance, pressuring myself less to daven, or daven with kavannah or study Torah when exhausted. I find it hard not to strictly “follow the rules,” (which may not always be actual halakhah, but the customs or even whims of the community) which may be another autistic thing and not halakhically necessary.

I do worry a bit about how E and I will cope if we have children, as we would like, given our respective “issues,” but I think first we need to see how we cope as a couple!

I do still have some Impostor Syndrome in different areas, particularly with my Judaism, but also feeling I’m not autistic “enough” or not coping with life “enough,” but I guess things are getting better overall.

Wedding Thoughts Part 3

Also, Reasons to be Cheerful, Part 3, with thanks to Ian Dury and the Blockheads.

This is one of those days when I don’t have much to say today, but I’m going to say it anyway, as I need to process.

I went to volunteering in the morning. Someone brought rugelach pastries and florentine biscuits because it’s her birthday this week. I’m not crazy about florentines, and, unusually, we actually have some at home at the moment, but I had a rugelach as I felt exhausted from the morning’s exertions. Then watching everyone else eat got too much for me and I had a digestive biscuit too. I much prefer them to florentines. (Note for Americans: digestive biscuits are what you call graham crackers. They were originally advertised as preventing flatulence (!) and so were called digestive biscuits. However, they have no medically-proven digestive benefits, so they aren’t allowed to use that name in the US. I don’t know how Graham comes into it.) So much for dieting. Actually, I’m not dieting, and I’m not even trying too hard to avoid treats (although maybe I should try a little harder). Just as going on clomipramine suddenly sent my weight up, so reducing the dosage has reduced my weight, although not as much. Once you know that your weight loss/gain is largely not driven by what you eat, it becomes hard to stay motivated not to eat the odd bit of junk.

I left a bit early, as there were more people than we needed and I wanted to go to Sister’s early enough that I could get home before the Zoom calls E and I had planned with wedding photographers. This was not brilliantly successful, as I found the area around North Finchley Bus Station confusing and the TfL directions unhelpful. I wandered around the area for quarter of an hour before finding a bus stop for the bus I wanted, but I don’t think it was the nearest one. Then I had to wait ten or fifteen minutes for a bus.

I stayed at Sister’s for a bit over an hour. I wanted to spend some time with Nephew, who I hadn’t seen for a while, and it made sense to do it while I was in the area and Mum and Dad were there watching him. He’s grown a lot since I last saw him and is focusing his eyes much better now and generally looks more alert and interested in his surroundings. He’s too big to cradle now, so I carried him on my shoulder for a while. I think he liked the fact that I was “bouncing” a bit on my feet when standing still. Sister has bought him some flashcards to help his focusing, with black and white pictures of animals or patterns/shapes (black and white because young babies can only see strong contrasts, apparently). We showed him some of these and he seemed to be interested in them.

I got home in time for the Zoom calls with wedding photographers, but not in time to do much. I wanted to do some more Torah study (I had done a little on the bus), but was too tired. Both calls were good and it is hard to choose between the two photographers, even without taking into account that we have another two more calls tomorrow. One has done more Jewish weddings and would allow us to print the photo album directly; the other seemed slightly more professional (although this is hard to tell and probably not significantly different), but we would have to get a third party to print the album. Both seemed to react well when I said I have autism and social anxiety and am worried about how this will affect the photos. I worry about looking rigid and unemotional. I didn’t mention the tremor, as it doesn’t seem to show in photos and I worry a bit that speaking about it makes it more likely to happen by making me worry about it more.

I was exhausted even before the calls. Volunteering seems very tiring lately. I was even more exhausted afterwards. I spent too long procrastinating online, but then felt not tired briefly and managed to spend fifteen minutes reading The Guide for the Perplexed by Rambam (Hebrew acronym for Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon, generally known in the non-Jewish world as Maimonides). It says something about the internet that reading a twelfth century philosophy/theology book seems so much calmer and more intelligent than browsing online. However, I still struggle to follow many of the arguments and those I do understand often seem based on a faulty pre-scientific Aristotlean worldview. The book makes me want to take a history of philosophy course to learn which arguments were debunked and how and what still has validity. When I finish it (which won’t be for months, I’m not yet halfway through), I hope to read Rabbi Dr Samuel Lebens’ A Guide for the Jewish Undecided with more contemporary arguments for God and Judaism. Maybe I’ll read some of Menachem Kellner’s books on Rambam too, and re-read The Guide, which really demands multiple readings, with this context in mind.

***

I realised today that I was feeling calm and happy. It seems that work is a big source of my stress and low mood, as well as environmental factors at home. Someone on the autism forum said the other day that the environment is the main cause of anxiety in autistics and I can believe it. However, it is hard to achieve an autism-friendly environment, especially if you have to work and doubly so if you can’t work from home. At least moving out of my parents’ home should give me some more control over my home environment even if there is nothing I can do about my work environment for now.

***

Lately I’ve been having itchy eyes. I wondered a bit if it was hay fever already (it started in January). I took anti-histamines on a couple of days without results, but they may be out of date (do they stop working?). I’m not entirely sure what’s going on, but it’s uncomfortable.

***

For euphemism watchers: I saw a blogger post a trigger warning today about an “unaliving incident”. It took me a while to realise that this was a reference to suicide. Google tells me that “death” is censored on the TikTok algorithm, so “unalive” was used instead and has taken off elsewhere. Ashley used to talk about the “euphemism treadmill” (the term is Stephen Pinker’s) whereby a word gains negative connotations and so is changed to something less offensive, which quickly gains the same connotations, so the word is changed again, and again, and I think that that’s similar to what’s going on here. I guess it shows that the euphemisms are not just imposed by those wanting trigger warnings and the like, but also by those trying to subvert those warnings. It also makes me think of the Doctor Who story Paradise Towers, where gangs of feral teenage girls have their own argot including “made unalive” for “killed.”

Overwhelm (Again)

It’s been a quiet few days, so I haven’t posted. I had a headache on and off on Friday, not a bad one, but a persistent one despite medication. That contributed to my not going to shul (synagogue) in the evening, combined with the usual end of week exhaustion.

Shabbat (the Sabbath) was quiet. I did some difficult religious study: a bit more of The Guide for the Perplexed, focusing on an argument for the existence of God (largely irrelevant now, as based on an Aristotlean worldview that is no longer held); a complex Talmudic section that I will have to go over again to have any kind of chance of understanding it; and an interesting, if depressing, article I had printed out from Rabbi Jonny Solomon about the lack of interiority and spirituality in the Modern Orthodox community.

The fire alarm went off on Saturday morning. Rather disturbingly, even though it’s right outside our rooms, neither Mum nor I woke up, although I had a weird dream about the fire alarm going off. Dad at least woke up. Still, even though I knew I’m a heavy sleeper, it’s disturbing that it failed to wake us. What if there had been a real fire? I’ve never been so worried about not being woke…

I didn’t get much response on the piece I posted on the autism forum about being Jewish and autistic, just two comments, plus the first commenter responded to the second one. There was one interesting comment where the commenter said they’re autistic, queer and blind and that while there are a lot of queer people in the autistic community, they feel their blindness separates them from everyone else in a fundamental way and suggested that’s similar to how I feel about being Jewish. It’s not a perfect analogy (I don’t see my Judaism as a disability), but I suspect there’s a lot of truth to it in terms of feeling fundamentally different and unknown, even unknowable, in a community that prides itself on its tolerance. I guess it feels that some things, while not intolerable, are inconceivable to outsiders.

On the plus side, a couple of people friended me on the autism site, including the person I tried to friend weeks ago.

I woke up at 9.45am today (Sunday) and got up rather than going back to sleep, mostly because I was too hungry to sleep. It was good to get up a bit earlier, even if I spent a long time online before getting dressed. I feel I wasted the day, although I did manage to do several things, and I was fighting against low mood/depressive and anxious feelings for much of the time.

I did some Torah study. Unfortunately, it’s a very difficult parsha (portion) this week, mostly legal, with complicated and unclear syntax in many places and, to make matters worse, lots of places where Jewish law rules completely differently to the apparent literal meaning of the text, while still basing itself on it. I also managed to quickly put together a “Save the date” note on Canva (I hope to send it out before bed) and went for a walk. I didn’t manage anything else, although I would have liked to have done so, but maybe that’s enough for a depressed and anxious day.

***

E set up an online countdown timer to our wedding.  I look at it quite a lot. I’m glad we’re down to double digits in terms of days now, but ninety-eight days is still nearly three months. I miss E a lot. She’s hoping to get some idea of when she’s coming to the UK soon. It will be good when we’re in the same house, even if we aren’t sharing a bedroom/bed.

***

I’ve managed to fix the wedding Dalek, at least for now, but I worry it’s going to be too fragile to take to the wedding. Sigh.

***

I posted the following on the autism forum.

I struggle to advocate for myself in the workplace. I have to deal with things like using multiple documents at once or doing things with multiple steps which is hard with executive functioning issues. I have lists of what to do, but I still make mistakes sometimes, not least because I don’t always remember to look at the lists. I also have to make and take phone calls occasionally. Periodically, there are days when I have to make a lot of important and very difficult phone calls, which means dealing with social anxiety, spoken word processing issues, telephone issues and problems talking to people and remembering the correct responses or even problem solving on the spot. That doesn’t happen too often, thankfully, but it did last week.

I feel uncomfortable with this aspect of the job, but I’ve had long periods of unemployment and don’t want to risk losing this job, which in other ways is good (relatively high pay considering the hours and workload; a very understanding and laid-back boss). When I try to think of possible adjustments, autistic rigidity kicks in and I feel like there are no adjustments I can ask for that would be both reasonable and useful. I don’t feel that asking not to use the phone is not [1] reasonable, given my contract. I actually don’t know what reasonable adjustments I would like, I just know that I feel a certain level of depression and anxiety in the workplace, not to mention feelings of inadequacy and overwhelm. I just feel I have to deal with it somehow or lose the job.

I would be grateful for any possible suggestions.

[1] I actually missed out the crucial word “not” in the forum post and couldn’t work out how to edit it! I had to add a comment to clarify.

Halfway There Day

Yesterday was my half-birthday, for those of you who take note of such things. I don’t really see any significance, but my oldest friend was born on 19 January and another friend on 20 January, so the date leaps out at me. I am now closer to my fortieth birthday than my thirty-ninth, which vaguely troubles me, although it shouldn’t.

I also worked out that if E and I get one of the two wedding dates we’re currently aiming at, both in the second half of May, we’re more or less halfway now between the civil wedding last August and the chuppah (religious wedding). We should have more of an idea this week if that’s a realistic date.

***

This week was the baby blessing week for Nephew. I couldn’t go in the end because of difficulty finding somewhere suitable to stay. I was OK home alone. I didn’t go to shul (synagogue) on Friday night because I felt too tired, which was a shame and vaguely troubling in terms of how frequently it seems to be happening. The house was cold and I have chapped hands again, but otherwise things were fine.

I did some Torah study: Talmud and The Guide to the Perplexed, which is currently full of stuff about the Aristotlean view of the universe as a series of living spheres, one inside the other, definitely not made of atoms and definitely not containing any vacuum. It’s interesting from a historical point of view, but this bit is not really relevant to modern day theology. Hopefully it will get back to more relevant stuff (from a contemporary perspective) soon.

I finished reading Dune yesterday. I intend to go on to the second book, Dune Messiah. It was a good book, but hard to get into, and weirdly structured.

I slept too long as usual, about twelve or thirteen hours at night. I still went back to bed after lunch today, more because I was cold than tired. I think I drifted into that state of mind between sleeping and wakefulness and was late for seudah (the third Shabbat meal).

It was a struggle to do things after Shabbat. It always is, as I feel lethargic, even at 5.30pm. I did manage to tidy up and do a bit of Torah study. I did a little novel planning too. I would have done more, but I had a headache for a while.

***

I tried to friend someone on the autism forum a while back. We have some things in common (librarians, Doctor Who fans). He didn’t respond to the friending and accompanying message, but has chatted with me on threads since then. He’s got other friends. Friending doesn’t really do anything other than allow direct messaging, but I do feel weirdly unliked from only having two friends, both people who are not there any more and who didn’t stay on the forum long. But I’m nervous about friending people (in general and after this). I wonder if the friend request didn’t go through properly to this person and if I should send it again, or if that would make things worse if he was deliberately not responding to me.

I also wonder if it’s worth friending other people. I would be open to making friends on the site, which would realistically only happen if I friended people, but I don’t see it as essential. Still, I wonder what to do. I feel really self-conscious about being the only (open) Jew on the site, but can’t stop mentioning it. I don’t think anyone is antisemitic, but a lot of people have funny ideas about Jews, particularly if they haven’t met any (which is feasible as Jews make up about a half of per cent of the UK population, largely concentrated in just a couple of cities).

The Visa

The good news: E’s visa has arrived! So now we can plan the wedding in earnest. It will be a while before she can even come of the UK, as she needs to work out what she’s shipping here, what will stay with her parents and what will be sold/given away/thrown away. It’s a bit frustrating, as I was focused on this stage for so long that I almost forgot there was a long way to go afterwards and that she wouldn’t be able to get here for a while. At least now we can begin to move things on.

Otherwise, it’s not been a great couple of days. I was exhausted yesterday. I still made it to shul (synagogue), but felt really tired afterwards. I did more than an hour of Torah study after dinner, but, once I’d also included time thinking about the implications of what I was reading, I didn’t have long to read for fun before feeling too tired and having to go to bed.

I don’t think I slept well and I woke up exhausted again, after dreaming that the next episodes of Doctor Who were really amazing (which I do not currently expect it to be, given the return of David Tennant, Catherine Tate and Russell T Davies). I managed to avoid sleeping in the afternoon, but did lie down for forty minutes and felt like I struggled to do much Torah study, although I think I actually did a reasonable amount.

I struggled a lot with feeling religiously inadequate over Shabbat (the Sabbath). I won’t go into the whole train of thought. I realised a lot of it is related to how other people see me, which is probably due to autism and social anxiety as much as how religious I actually am. I know that it doesn’t matter what other people think, even if they are important rabbis, but I find it does still matter to me.

After Shabbat was over, I found the text E had sent me about the visa and sent out some texts and emails about that. I was feeling tired and surprisingly a bit low, which I think is primarily exhaustion, and I just wanted to vegetate in front of the TV. I ended up watching GoldenEye, Pierce Brosnan’s debut James Bond adventure. It has a slightly uncertain tone as the film makers tried to work out where James Bond fitted in a post-Cold War, post-feminism world. Nice character parts for a young-looking Robbie Coltrane and Joe Don Baker (still being typecast as eccentric CIA agents a decade after classic BBC eco-thriller Edge of Darkness).

As for baby blessing news, it continues to get more and more complicated. Watch this space. The uncertainty is stressing me out, as are some health concerns my parents have (both have separate concerns). I don’t want to go into details, but it’s confusing and potentially worrying and I don’t know what to feel right now.

Same Old Scene

I struggled a bit with Shabbat (the Sabbath) again. I got to shul (synagogue) on Friday night despite feeling very tired. I found dinner with my parents exhausting. I know “selective mutism” is something a lot of autistics suffer from. I don’t really experience it, but I have noticed that when autistically exhausted from peopling (rather than just tired), I can become monosyllabic. By the end of dinner, I was communicating in gestures more than speech. It wasn’t conscious. It’s a bit frightening.

I fell asleep for an hour after dinner and then was too tired to move for an hour after that, so I didn’t do as much reading as I would have liked. I spent an hour reading The Guide for the Perplexed, but only managed a few pages as it was based on Medieval neo-Aristotlean philosophy which I didn’t really understand so I made slow progress. I’m not sure how much relevance those passages really have for contemporary Jewish thought. I also wonder how they were understood in Early Modern and Modern Eastern Europe, although not many people would have been reading it there – not many rabbis, let alone laymen. The Kotzker Rebbe is supposed to have said of the Guide that “If you are wise, it is a guide; if not, you will be perplexed,” which is probably true. I read a few pages of A Fire Burns in Kotsk and a couple of chapters of Dune, but not much else.

I slept late again this morning. Mum and Dad were out for lunch, so I ate by myself, reading the latest Doctor Who Magazine. I’m not at all optimistic about the return of Russell T Davies, David Tennant, Catherine Tate and others, or the deal with Disney. I worry it’s just a return to the worst aspects of Davies and Tennant’s first run, with added Big Business. As when Davies was showrunner previously, DWM is now full of coy preview articles that tease the new episodes without giving anything away, which I just find irritating. I don’t like spoilers, but just being told endlessly that the next series is going to be amazing when I’m not going to see it for a year or more is annoying, even if I wasn’t convinced that it won’t be amazing. I skim DWM more and more.

I dozed off for a bit after Minchah and ate seudah (the third Shabbat meal) after sunset, which is not ideal. I was too tired to do very much at all in the afternoon, although I did some Torah study (Shoftim/Judges in Hebrew and with a modern commentary) after Shabbat and also some work on the plan for my novel, but I mostly got distracted and procrastinated online. I think the beginning of my book is quite good, but after about chapter five, when the plot really kicks in, I run out of incident and jokes, which is not good for a satirical thriller. I’m not totally out of ideas, but there are definitely fewer as it goes on. I sort of want to just start writing (I feel like an athlete with muscles tensed to run, but unable to go yet), but I want to do more research to generate more ideas, both external research (reading relevant books) and internal research (thinking about my characters and how their world works). I’m feeling pessimistic about this actually resulting in a readable full-length novel, but I’m trying to tell myself I’m working for my own amusement. Then I read stuff online, as I did tonight, where people are saying, “We want more positive frum characters in books and TV” and I want to do something towards that, even though I think setting out to produce a “positive” image of the frum community would backfire badly (and this book is much lower than previous ones in frum content). I think/hope once I actually start that will generate more ideas. As I’ve said before, I’m a bit of a “pantser” in that some of my best ideas come up once I’ve begun writing, but it’s uncomfortable to bet on that.

***

I thought quite a bit about that post on the autism forum about connecting with people (where a lot of people said they connect with animals and soft toys more easily than they connect with neurotypicals) and also the lukewarm response to my post on the Facebook group about being autistic in the frum (religious Jewish) community. I feel it’s not really an option from me to cut myself off from other Jews or other people in general. I feel a specific religious commandment to try to love other Jews and people in general. Plus, I do feel connected to other Jews, whether I like it or not. I’ve been angry for days at the new Israeli government and I know that’s because I identify as an Orthodox Jew, and if other Orthodox Jews are corrupt, self-serving, racist or homophobic, I feel that my identity is attacked. If nothing else, people will assume I’m the same. So there is a connection there whether I like it or not.

I do wish I knew how to move forward with my life, whether that involves the frum community, the autistic community or both, or whether it involves my writing or proofreading or something else. I do know that, realistically, I should wait until I’m married before really doing anything new, but it’s so hard waiting without knowing when that will be or even when E’s visa will arrive. It feels SO HARD waiting and being separated.

I watched an episode of The Simpsons tonight where Homer complains he hasn’t done anything with his life at the grand old age of thirty-nine. That’s how old I am! At least he has a full-time job, three kids and a wife who he actually gets to live with! I am nowhere near as fat and I’m not bald (not even thinning) so that’s something.