A Variety of Thoughts

1. JTS, and especially its prayer environment, is seeming a socially warmer space these days. I remember mechina and year one, especially, feeling like the whole environment was "cold" enough to freeze water, and feeling utterly lost and alone, because besides my "next door neighbor", pretty much no one spoke to me, and I saw all the post-minchah chatting going on all around me. Today, I not only had peers to say hello to, a dean and one of my former teachers said hello. I remember noticing, in year 2, that people tended to be happier and happier in rabbinical school the farther they got in the process (exempting various ending-of-rabbinical-school stresses, I'm talking about general comfort with the space and the people inhabiting it), and I'm definitely feeling some of that shift at this point.

2. I've been noticing for a while this tension in myself, in relation to wedding planning (but also in general, it's just in this wedding related sphere that it's become a bit more noticeable), between wanting attention and wanting to make space for others and Not to be noticed. I'm sure it's a tension that is universal, but for me- it feels very strong, especially because I seem to feel a virtue in avoiding notice, in focusing attention elsewhere than myself, in being the helpful hands "backstage". And yet, when I do that too much, I get unhappy that no-one is noticing me. There have been a few instances already in this planning thing where I've noticed two options, and I have this feeling as if I Should be withdrawing, less noticeable, etc, and realized that if I pushed myself in that direction, I'd regret it later. And so I gave myself a little shift of energy to be a little bolder, and went with the slightly splashier presentation of self, as it were, and honestly- I've been glad. How to balance that with this notion that it's virtuous to not ask for lots of attention? I don't know yet.