Becoming more passionate and less obsessive

[Roch]

Studying Hebrew has been going fine. I’ve been having trouble finding the motivation and energy to practice pronunciation, but it didn’t go too badly yesterday besides not spending a whole half an hour. I’ve been dealing with too much health stuff, which is just a topic I’m not all that interested in. Because of my poor sleep I’m not sure how worth it practicing pronunciation would be. 

It seems like Hebrew and Judaism as an interest itself has involved so many synchronicities. It’s like the universe is telling me to go in that direction, but I don’t know why. At one point they were everywhere and driving me crazy. 

I’m continuing to have motivation to study, but I’m not as motivated to journal. This is my issue with writing. Sometimes I’ll write a lot and sometimes I’ll barely write anything. I’m just not consistent enough for a regular blog. 

[Roch]

I kind of want to briefly talk about my eyesight. It’s been an obsession for a long time, but it’s pretty relevant to my life. I’ll try my best to summarize, but if I’m being honest it will probably still be long. I just want to process this obsession without ruminating.

I think my vision issues were first noticed when I was a child. I couldn’t catch balls, but I had a bunch of other issues as well. So I got my eyes tested at five years old and I apparently had 20/20 vision. So they just assumed I had perfect vision and life went on. I do remember being interested in vision and eyesight since I was a little kid. But this interest has also caused a lot of pain. It’s pretty much my worst obsession. I have moments where I want to be an optometrist, but I don’t think it’s good for my mental health. 

The trouble started when my dad tested out my vision. I could not read a distant sign that he could see, so apparently that meant I needed glasses. I was actually pretty excited and happy. I also leaned too close to the computer. I still struggle with this to this day. I just struggle with seeing detail. Don’t know why. I like going on my iPhone because I can hold it close to my face.

People are confused why I spend so much time on my phone, but have trouble reading books or seeing computer screens. It’s because I can hold it so close to my face. I love to read, but my vision issues make it hard. I do score pretty well on vision tests and I’m not worried about going blind. But at one point my mom was. 

So at nine years old I got my eyes tested. Since they called it a test I thought I had to “try my best”. I leaned forward in my seat a lot and squinted and guessed at the letters. So he didn’t find any vision problems. He told me I wouldn’t need to get my eyes checked for several years. Unfortunately after that I started to make fun of kids with glasses. Mainly because I wanted to make myself feel good about my “good vision.”

When I was eleven years old I was going with my mom to her eye exam. Me and my sister spontaneously decided to get our eyes checked as well. So I remember him using machines the last eye doctor never used. One machine showed a balloon going in and out of focus.

When it was my turn to get my vision checked I started reading the lines in a cocky way. It was easy to see. Until I got to some really tiny and impossible to see letters. I thought it was those letters at the bottom of the chart most people can’t read. The eye doctor went silent and I asked him if I needed glasses. I had some doubts about my distance vision and I thought I might be slightly nearsighted. 

Instead he told me that my left eye has bad vision and it’s farsighted. I would need to wear glasses to read and watch tv. At the time the glasses were pretty weak. My right eye had no prescription and my left eye still had a weak prescription. I found the glasses awkward and they never quite felt natural. I was also self-conscious about wearing glasses. After that I got a different pair. I regretted getting that pair. The new prescription wasn’t much stronger. 

I was even more self-conscious about my new glasses and I also felt they were too weak to be helpful. One time I tried wearing both of my glasses on top of each other and I actually kind of liked the vision I got. On my next appointment my prescription got a lot stronger. At least in my left eye. My right eye was pretty much the same. But when I did the math I realized it was pretty similar to what my old glasses were put together. With that new prescription I got a contact lens for my left eye. I enjoyed the improved depth perception and vividness, but I quickly noticed vision problems. That made me go through a crazy ordeal I’ll mention on another post  

 

[Roch]

I’ve been feeling pretty shitty lately. I found it very hard to get myself to meditate. Today I meditated twice. I also noticed I spent too much time on language learning sites. So many crazy people and toxic mindsets. I also start to doubt my process more. When I doubt the process of stuff I do I just feel more unhappy in general. My mindset is probably pretty toxic as well. Like why am I so terrified of having an accent? I guess it’s drove me to research ways of learning new accents. I actually enjoy practicing accents and new sounds. I just enjoy languages in general as you can see. 

I discovered part of the problem is that my dad sees language learning as Serious Business TM. It drives him crazy when I joke about learning a language. Since he’s so uptight I get so worried about making mistakes and can’t really have fun. I’m just trying to remember how fun learning languages is. But the outside world makes it hard. I guess I need a thicker skin.  

I just feel like shit and I know it’s chemical. A week or so ago I would have been over the moon over my progress on the accent and intonation exercises. But now it’s become normal for me. I’m still trying to figure out how to get to my goal. But I guess I have to let the universe do some of the work. I still get signs and synchronicities related to Hebrew, but I still don’t really know why it’s relevant for me to learn it. I just suddenly felt like it four years ago or so.

I guess I need some cosmic justification for some of my interests. Mainly because I’m largely embarrassed about them. Still don’t completely understand why. Partially because a lot of these interests just don’t fit with who I want people to think I am. I want to be all outgoing, doing a lot of stuff and not having narrow interests. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Roch]

So my Hebrew studies have been less exciting in a good way. I’m still studying, but I no longer feel euphoric when I do well or crippling self-doubt when I don’t do as well. Just the way I wanted it to be. To me both feelings are bad. When I first started out my voice couldn’t harmonize with the practice material. When I showed any resemblance of harmonizing with it I got pretty happy.

After I bought an app for repeating sections of audio or video the whole approach changed. I discovered it was far more effective to go into even smaller and slower chunks that were often closer to a syllable than a phrase. When I did that I noticed my voice could harmonize with it sometimes. That made me feel euphoric. I still enjoy it when my voice can harmonize, but now I use it more like an indicator of what I need to work on. So if I can’t harmonize with something I’ll break it down more and practice what’s giving me problems.

One problem sound is the R sound. I can sort of pronounce it if I concertate and I’m somewhat lucky, but it really messes with things. Like there’s a word with some fairly easy intonation for me. But if I concentrate on getting the R sound right I can no longer harmonize with the sentence. When I do harmonize with it I mess up the R sound. So I’ll practice the syllable with the R sound alone for a while. 

So far I’ve never been caught practicing pronunciation. Maybe I have and people were just left. I usually practice at around 10 pm. Tonight I had a close call. I was practicing and I decided to take a break to go edit some practice material. As I was doing that my sister ended up being within earshot of my room. So she would have caught me if I didn’t take my break. My mom has also entered my room at around 10 before, but so far not when I’m practicing.

I also found this YouTube channel that reads Hebrew kid’s books. It seems pretty promising. It’s pretty cool because I can easily look up words I don’t know and it’s fairly simple. I don’t know enough vocabulary to truly understand them, but I think it should be good introduction to making my own flashcards. So far I’ve been using a pre-made 500 Hebrew word deck. I’ve heard it’s better to use your own deck, but to avoid excuses to not study I’m using that basic deck.