Everyday Bookish Problems

A gift might come with a curse. 

For instance, my much praised capacity of doing hundreds of things before breakfast: which includes, in a random order, preparing breakfast for the family, cleaning a bit the house, updating my social media accounts, answering various questions about the day before projects, reading a couple of pages, learning at least 10 words in a new language, communicating in a couple of languages, writing a small yet inspiring blog post. Sometimes I can do even more. Some days, like the days of this week, I am just foggy.

I´ve read yesterday - while on my way to a well deserved hairdressing day - a fantastic article about brain fog in times of isolation which at a certain extent is relevant for the times we are living but in my case may be not necessarily the case. Isolation is sometimes a lone dream as I am hardly on my own for more than 4 hours the day. Sometimes even less or never.

On a day by day basis I can properly operate within this frame of the controlled chaos - which includes also answering 100 5yo questions while trying to find the right word for a translation in an exotic language or keep a normal phone conversation. I can´t hardly remember my life being any different so I have no idea how it is to live completely alone day in day out. 

Until, like in the last days, I am simply losing any interest. My daily projects are just annoying - and most of them right now are, but business should go on because I have to do my bank account happy - none of the books - many of them - I am reading are not appealing enough to finish them at once, I have a long list of movies to watch but none sounds too exciting for my brain. For at least seven days, every single free time I spent playing with my Duolingo Yiddish course, which is far from perfect, but at least keeps my brain busy with some intellectual activity. (I hope to finish it soon and review it one day). At least once the day I am watching or taking part to some online discussion on my history and politics topics of interest. Meanwhile, my books for review are accumulated in my Kindle or on my writing desk, while I am fighting hard with my lack of concentration and writing laziness.

But despite my panic signals sent by my other part of the brain that I should really start being productive again - you see, I cannot be out of my capitalist paradigm, no matter what - I am perversely enjoying those confused moments. I don´t remember when I went through a similar situation the last time, but I suppose as we change along our life journey, the challanges and situations we cope with are changing too, therefore there is an uniqueness in our personal encounters. 

Many years ago, I was very impatient and frustrated that I simply could not pray at all. I was able to spent many many hours with the prayer book in the front of my, but I was lacking any interest, motivation and pleasure too in opening my mouth and saying the words. It was just a spiritually inert me with a heavy book in her hands that stayed most of the time closed. Then, I´ve read about how the Vilna Gaon used to say that even you don´t have the kavanah - the devotion - for praying, one must keep reading the words of the prayer, as an everyday practice, and the right feelings will come eventually. 

This is such a great advice, as it works - in my case, at least - with reading, writing and...workouts too. But all those activities do make good to both the brain and the soul. Therefore, from my bookish dry cave, I am forcing myself to read and write and do workouts, although right now, I can just spend time in the garden, listening to the birds and doing absolutely nothing. 

That´s all. That´s how life can be sometimes.