Becoming more passionate and less obsessive

[Roch]

I’ve always disliked how obsessive I am. It causes so much suffering for me and it’s such an unattractive personality trait as well. I do find passion to be an attractive personality trait. I know I’d also be happier if I were more passionate. I think I do lack passion. I just need to figure out how to do this. 

[Roch]

I got some acupressure. They particularly focused on my heart and after that I felt more passionate and less obsessive. I also notice being too obsessive makes my voice sound monotone and just weird and unpleasant. Since people can sense I’m off by the sound of my voice and the rest of my body language they treat me accordingly which makes me feel even worse. 

[Roch]

I’ve been thinking of why I have such a bad fear of fear of failure. I’ve known about the fixed vs. growth mindset and I’ve definitely struggled with having too much of a fixed mindset. One of the reasons I probably have a fixed mindset is because of a terrible diagnosis I got in childhood. So as much as my parents might have tried, people’s fixed mindset about me rubbed off on them and it unfortunately affected the way they raised me.

 

Like if I struggled with something they would just let me not do it or get extra help. Even though other kids were probably struggling to the exact same degree a lot of the time.

 

One event that illustrated this was when I was roasting marshmallows. It was a bit of a nuisance at times, but I could deal with it. It’s kind of part of the fun. But my mom had to keep asking if I wanted help. I wanted to do it myself. This probably makes me sound super young, but I’m not. I’m just thinking about how much this has held me back. I’m trying not to blame my parents, but I do feel resentment towards this. I’m trying to overcome my fixed mindset and this explains why I have it.

 

Basically if I struggle with anything I’ll always struggle. Which is why I tend to give up on things when I struggle. Even my parents brought that up as a personality flaw. But guess where it comes from?

 

I’ve remember several times where I would be working hard at accomplishing something alone and someone would inappropriately help me. I also remember stuff like my younger sister making me win at card games that I could have won myself. So I pretty much have no real accomplishments. How the hell do people expect me to have a self esteem? All their attempts to make me have a self-esteem just made it worse. I guess I’ll continue working at achieving things and not letting other people’s fixed mindset get in my way. 

[Roch]

I’ve realized something about goal setting. You have to know how it fits into your day to day life. I can fantasize all I want about having a lot of friends, a girlfriend, not living with my parents and a high paying-job. I just can’t imagine how those things would fit into my day to day life, so they don’t happen.

But I was able to not play as many mindless phone games. I didn’t try to quit or reduce my time. I just figured out that what I really like is repetitive activities. So I got into needle felting which is highly repetitive, but not on my phone. So I simply replaced a lot of that time playing repetitive phone games with needle felting, a more productive activity. I actually enjoy it more than mindless phone games. 

[Roch]

I’m experiencing fear of success right now. I’m doing some accent training in a foreign language. I’ve been interested in foreign cultures and languages for a while. As a teen I got interested in Scandinavian languages

At first I was very nervous, but my anxiety calmed down as I did it more. The technique I’m using is talking in unison with a native speaker in a loop. I found it fairly challenging at first. I often couldn’t talk in unison and I would just be mumbly and quiet. If I got lucky I would get better at it after listening for a while. I had a bit apprehension about whether this method would work, but overall I was comfortable with not being perfect because that meant all this scary unknown success was in the future. 

So with this new way of doing things I find it easier to speak in unison. I also notice I’m speaking very loudly. I have more concerns about being caught now. It’s somewhat improving my monotone voice, but it’s partially because I’m excited about it. I notice certain situations cause me to have an odd/monotone voice and ones that help my voice. I’ll write more posts about that. 

[Roch]

I’ve noticed certain situations make my voice more monotone and odd and make me act socially awkward in general. I’ll probably think of more things, but here are a few things. My goal is to not have a monotone voice despite how I feel or other people interact with me. So I’ll be writing a lot about what situations make my voice monotone. 

• Feeling alienated. I could write several posts dedicated to this topic. I notice this tends to ruin the intonation in my voice. I kind of use monotone as a blanket term for all things I find odd about my voice. I also notice people stare at me more when I feel alienated. 
• Interactions I find tedious. I think this affects everyone to some extent. It’s hard for people to act all bubbly and fascinated by something they find tedious. But I notice I’m monotone when I’m in interactions I find tedious or repetitive. It’s not so bad when it’s something simple like ordering at a restaurant or cafe. But something like explaining what my art project is, can be extremely tedious to me. Maybe a somewhat monotone voice for this type of interaction is appropriate. 
• Being Canadian. So my parent’s first language isn’t English. So I often worry about having the wrong accent. When I watch movies and tv shows I notice people seem animated and accomplished compared to me. But they are Americans. When I listen to how other people my age around me talk they do sound more like me. I just interpret the Canadian accent as sounding more monotone and awkward compared to the general American accent. I guess if I really wanted to I could sound more American, but that isn’t really a priority. 
• Talking with monotone/odd people or people with foreign accents. Since I don’t want to talk like those people I find I kind of hold back my voice. Understandably this makes my voice more monotone and strained sounding.  I want to make sure I have a normal non-monotone voice despite who I’m talking to. I often have the ability to sound animated when I’m among people who are animated and engaged with me. Most people just aren’t that animated around me, so I often have a monotone voice around them. I get that not all interactions with people are super fun. Like other people I find my voice is more animated when I’m excited. I need to find a way to make that my baseline voice. 

[Roch]

So yesterday and earlier today I was pretty monotone, but I suddenly became less monotone. One issue I have is sitting still. Today I decided to just meditate on the unwanted feelings. Don’t know if it got rid of my monotoneness, but that’s one thing I can think of that I did differently. 

[Roch]

At the moment I’m studying Hebrew. It all started a few years ago or so when I was at a reiki class. Doing reiki seems to be an easy way for me to get into meditative states. After reiki I suddenly got obsessed with Jews in an inappropriate way. Like I would see curly haired guys walking down the street and wonder to myself if they’re Jewish. I was terrified of being caught staring and maybe saying some weird comments about Jews and looking anti-Semitic or weirdly obsessed. I also got obsessed with Jewish culture and somewhat interested in the Jewish religion.

It was getting out of hand, so I decided to “absorb” my obsession. I did it by trying to learn Hebrew. I have a tendency to have information overload. So I purposely made Hebrew hard for me and I was very wishy-washy about it. Eventually I lost interest in Jews and Hebrew. At least for a few years. Last year I had a mental breakdown I don’t want to get too into right now. My Jewish interest came back.

 

I started to have a “Jewish voice/consciousness” in my head telling me what the rational thing to do was. Sounds really crazy, but that’s the best way I can put it into words. I have a tendency to sound crazy, like an internet troll or overly emotional when I can’t quite think of the right words. So anyways, I listened since I was desperate and it actually helped pull me out of my mental breakdown.

Since this Jewish consciousness seemed to help me function and overall improved my sanity I decided not to push it away. I still needed to absorb the interest somehow. So I went back to Hebrew. I tried again and I still found it super hard. As an experiment I briefly tried out a Finnish lesson on Duolingo. I had no interest in learning Finnish, but I wanted to test out a theory I had about how my mind works. 

Based on those duolingo classes I found Finnish way easier. I don’t think Finnish is an easier language for English speakers. Like Hebrew, it’s non-Indoeuropean. I noticed I had way less information overload with Finnish. Maybe it’s because I’m trying to learn to read a new alphabet at the same time as learning new words. But one huge difference was the music I listened to. I listened to a lot of Finnish music and pretty much no music in Hebrew. Listening to Finnish music didn’t magically make me fluent in Finnish, but I think it explains why I was “naturally” better at it.

So my goal was to listen to more Hebrew music to get naturally better st Hebrew. At first it was hard to find music I enjoyed, but eventually I found the music scene I liked and really got into it. It was about time anyways. Nordic music was getting pretty stale anyways. I was looking for some non-Nordic music to get into and I found it. So for a huge portion of the year I listened to a lot of music in Hebrew. I didn’t have the mental health or discipline to truly study, but I was searching for some methods. Eventually I found some interesting methods for learning foreign accents. I decided to try them out since it’s free and i have nothing to lose. It was a huge step for me because I have a huge phobia of speaking foreign languages.

A huge part of it is because I don’t like having an accent. This is an ego issue I need to work out. It’s also an issue with black and white thinking. I know there’s a grey area where some people think someone has an accent and some people don’t notice one. I also need to work out what it means to me to have an accent. But with this new method I have hope that I won’t have an accent if I practice enough. I know people are into the critical period stuff and have a lot of limiting beliefs related to it. I don’t like telling people about this goal I have because I know they’ll tell me it’s impossible or I’m being crazy. Often in a patronizing way as if I don’t know about critical period theories. I know about them, I’m just questioning them. This foreign language phobia wouldn’t be so bad if I wasn’t so interested in foreign cultures. 

My foreign language study took a bit of a detour. So my original plan was to study pronunciation for two hours. What this meant at the time was mainly listening to a repeated loop over and over and try to talk in unison. At that point I could barely keep up, so listening to a loop for an hour straight kind of made sense. But I tried a more slowed down and broken down audio clip and my ability to follow along dramatically improved. I talk far louder, more clearly and I definitely notice I can keep the same time and intonation. So more chances of being overheard. With my original time block of 9-11 pm I often didn’t talk at 9 pm anyways. So right now it’s a far more active process. My throat got sore from these exercises. So maybe it’s a smarter idea to change the speaking exercises to 10:00 and maybe do silent exercises at 9:00 instead.  It’s a good way to warm up my ears and study stuff anyways. I’m still learning what techniques work best for me and how to organize it. I don’t even know if I want to communicate with Israelis. I’m pretty unsure of what to think about Israel to be honest. I’m not all that into middle eastern politics, but I know a lot of people hate israel for political reasons. I don’t know if I’d fit in with Israelis as people either. I think they seem pretty charismatic and strong from what I’ve seen so far. I could use more of that. A lot of times I think I’m an extrovert at heart, but I’ve been forced to withdraw because of negative experiences. 

[Roch]

I want to make friends, but I have weird hang-ups about friendship and relationships. One hangup I have is my name. I hate introducing myself and hearing my name. Especially at cafés. It just irks me. What irks me even more is when people who work at cafes remember my name. I just feel so violated. But I know saying no will make me stand out in a negative way. 

[Roch]

My Hebrew practice session started late. I’m making progress on the guttural sounds that used to hurt my throat. I’m finding some of the clips tediously easy. One step you’re supposed to do is gradually make the track quieter until it’s silent. A bit hard on my ego, but I can see why it’s necessary.

This exercise is like training wheels. I have to remove them one day. I guess I’ll do this with tediously easy tracks. I tend to slack off on those and get progressively worse on this. I noticed this issue on musical instruments. When I first started I found the slower versions easier, but now it’s not so simple. Sometimes I find it easier to say words faster. I know I’ll think of more techniques.

 

Another thing is that I take Fridays and Saturdays off. I find I actually improve the most on stuff when I take breaks. I’ve used this as an excuse to slack off in the past. Right now I’m aware the work portion is definitely very necessary even if most of my improvements don’t take place while I’m practicing. 

To stay motivated I have to keep remember the non-egoic reason I’m learning Hebrew to begin with. It’s not the sexiest language to learn, so there is some non-egoic motivations. I don’t have the whole get rid of your ego obsession everyone else has. In a way that obsession is egoic itself. Saying you have no ego kind of makes it seem like you have a big ego. What I am working on is being aware of why my ego exists and what it does. But I guess being aware of non-egoic reasons I’m interested in learning Hebrew or any other thing that requires effort helps me enjoy the process more. 

[Roch]

So today is a day off for Hebrew and I’m pretty happy about it being a day off today. I’m pretty nervous about starting to lower the volume of the native speakers. I just find it hard to hear myself talking, especially a foreign language. But I was more nervous about starting this to begin with and I went through with it anyways. So it’s always helpful to remember how far I’ve gone. I’m also thinking of how much this part of the exercise will improve my day to day life.

 

Once in a while I come in contact with charismatic people with great sounding voices. When I’m around those people I can copy how their voice sounds. If I can get better voice memory, which is having a better memory for how accents and tone of voice sounds along with me being able to reproduce it I’ll be able to do a charismatic voice whenever I want to! 

 

Usually when I'm around someone with a voice I don’t like my voice doesn’t sound as good. If I'm around someone with an average sounding voice it will depend on the situation or how I’m feeling that day. 

 

I’m also trying to pick up on the energy around me and copy it. It works pretty well. I don’t get stared at when I do that. When I was visiting Iceland I noticed this phenomenon a lot. I was really into Iceland, so when I visited I was really taking in the environment. People treated me like I belonged and spoke Icelandic to me. If I’m out of sync with the environment I get stared at.

Usually this is due to agitation. At this point getting stared at is worse than how I feel if I don’t act on my agitation. So I’m just trying to be present with the agitation. This ties into my meditation and also my Hebrew practice. I’m strengthening my mirror neurons so I can effortlessly interact with people. I often notice  that an interaction seems to be flowing well until I do something that interrupts the flow. That’s when people start to ask questions. 

Note: this was meant to be posted yesterday.

 

 

 

Edited November 12, 2018 by Roch

[Roch]

Ugh. I wrote an entry, but it got deleted. So basically I’ve been slacking off on meditation and eating healthy, so I’ve been feeling a bit off.  My Hebrew study didn’t go all that great today. I had more trouble getting the intonation right, but I’ve been getting better at some of the tricky sounds. I’m still trying to figure out how to structure my study sessions. I can’t be talking for two hours straight, but I’m going to dedicate a two hour block to study it. 

It seems like the days I’m good at controlling Hebrew intonation I’m also good at controlling English intonation. It used to be so rare that I’d have good intonation, but now it’s several times a week. My goal is to have good intonation despite how I feel or who I’m with. Right now I’m in the intermediate stage where I can get good intonation, but I need the right people and mood. But the bar is lowering for both. 

I really didn’t feel like practicing, but I did anyways. That’s a step in the right direction. My major goal in life is to do what needs to be done despite how I feel. It’s good to try to improve your mood, but I’m trying to transcend my mood.

It seems like ups and downs are natural for all skills you’re learning. Especially languages. I’ve had this experience in music as well. 

[Roch]

So I just meditated and I thought of some reasons why this study session didn’t go so well. 

• Like I said before. Some self-care issues. It takes work and I get lazy about it. I sometimes want a break from self-care. Unfortunately I pay the price. I just keep forgetting how rewarding it can be. 
• Didn’t listen to my inner voice. I wanted to get some fresh air, but I was too lazy to. 
• Disorganized study session. Before it was listening to and doing the exercises for two hours. It made sense based on my skill level and the way it was set up. Whatever I can think of next will be better, but until I think of a structured way of studying I will be in a bit of a limbo. 
• Lack of flow state. On sessions that go well I get into a flow state. I’ve been browsing some language learning sites to find more resources, methods and ways to organize my study session. Unfortunately this interrupts the flow state since the language community can be so egoic. I think I’ll take some time to research the flow state and tune into why I wanted to learn Hebrew and how I feel connected to it as a language. 
• Not being mindful of how I spend my time on language learning sites. I can find some good resources and methods that work for me. If I don’t I can often spend more time reading about other people studying languages and less on actually studying them. I can also get tunnel vision and forget about self-care, spirituality and researching other fields like music or even sports that might be relevant to learning languages. I get lazy about taking concrete steps to actually learning Hebrew. This ties into how I want to have more passion and less obsession. The issues I have when I spend too much time on the language learning community are issues with obsession. 

So to conclude this, I need to take some concrete steps to organizing my study sessions and probably keep my time with the language learning community to a minimum. I downloaded some Hebrew audio lessons. Unfortunately they’re all split up into A LOT of clips that are around 2:00 minutes on average. That could work great for some people, but not for me. Especially with a language learning player I have that can repeat small sections. So longer tracks work better for me. I’m going to have to fix this in audacity. It’s been bugging me for a few days. So tomorrow I’m taking care of those audio lessons. I’ll also do some more research on Anki. 

[Roch]

So I put together an audio course on audacity. It went pretty well, but what didn’t go well is that I read some things on reddit about language learning that made me panic about my progress going slow. I went on Reddit because the accent on the audio course seemed a bit off. But that doesn’t matter. I’ll just listen for information only. I shouldn’t have searched for that reason. I’ll stick to researching anki for a while. I did meditate, so I should be back on track soon. This will be way easier once I have everything organized and I can just stay away from the language learning community. Even if I don’t have obvious anxiety like I have now, it still interrupts the flow state and kills any enjoyment. I might just have to allocate time to research different study methods, but use the rest of my time to either do actual studying or pursue other interests and responsibilities. 

[Roch]

Tonight I probably won’t be practicing speaking Hebrew. Scratch that. Maybe this week. I’ll be researching methods, resources and organizing my study material. I’ll allow myself all the time on language learning sites I want. They have great information, but they make me feel bad about myself and obsessive. So I’ll accept that going on language learning sites has a lot of negatives and simply not pressure myself to study when I’m organizing myself.

I’ll dedicate the usual study hours to spend time organizing it and I’ll kind of ruminate how I am like now for the rest of the day. When I’m done organizing it I’ll cleanse my brain of the language learning sites. I’ll also think of self care things to prepare for a good study session like taking a walk, socializing, meditation or artwork. Like I said before those language learning sites really give me tunnel vision. 

A proposed schedule is

• 9:00 to 9:20 vocabulary or non-speaking stuff
• 9:20-9:30 break
• 9:30-9:50 speaking practice
• 9:50-10:00 break
• 10:00-10:20 vocab or non-speaking stuff
• 10:20-10:30 break
• 10:30-11:00 speaking practice

Not sure I care for this schedule. Maybe I’ll break it up to different times of the day. I’ll keep revising it. It’s mainly because of privacy issues. I am not ready for other people to hear my speak Hebrew. It’s hard enough getting questions about my artwork. I can’t imagine people asking me about the way I practice Hebrew. Based on my experiences with my artwork people will ask questions. I might be willing to speak Hebrew with someone in public, but even that is pushing it. Now that I think of it, so far Sunday is when my “bad days” usually happen. Maybe Sunday is a good day to do some organizing and research. 

[Roch]

I keep getting some ridiculous synchronicities related to Judaism, Hebrew and Israel. Like today I was looking up how to use anki and it had to be an Israeli guy. Later on today I looked up medical marijuanas and Israel came up again! Maybe a month ago I was trying on some clothes. The shirt I was trying on felt funny so I was curious about the material. It was written in English, French, Spanish and Hebrew! What an odd combination of languages. Or another time I was taking a break from this whole topic and decided to watch the Netflix movie The Kindergarten Teacher. After I watched it I googled it. Turns out it was based on an Israeli movie! 

[Roch]

Today had the potential to be a shit day, but it actually turned out pretty well. I couldn’t sleep last night too well. I meditated this morning. Since I didn’t have much planned I took a one hour nap. I planned to get some felting wool at the craft store with a coupon. They were out of felting wool. A bus that takes me to the local felting store happened to just arrive. So I took that bus. When I arrived I just got some wool. The scale wasn’t working so I ended up getting it cheaper for what I would have gotten at the craft store. I was pretty happy about supporting a local business. I decided to try out a new cafe and it was pretty good. I’m usually pretty depressed when I leave the house late. 

[Roch]

 Anki seems to work pretty well so far. I actually find it fun and low pressure. It’s not like duolingo where I keep getting wrong answers and information overload. In my case information overload generally happens when people give me some completely new information and expect me to respond right away. So I don’t do too well in language classes. They simultaneously go too fast and too slow. 

If you’re wondering why I’m writing about Hebrew it’s because it’s my dominant obsession at the moment. In my experience when I find ways to resolve obsessions, they disappear. This can sometimes be bad. Like with accordion. I was super obsessed with a some passion mixed in. Unfortunately the obsession and passion stopped because I didn’t properly organize my practice sessions.  My parents supported me by getting me an accordion and lessons. They didn’t do anything wrong. I just should have spent more time alone with that interest. Obsession and passion is like electricity. If you don’t harness it properly it will wreck havoc and eventually disappear. It seems like I can also start other interests with the flames of one.

I’ll tell you what happened with Hebrew.

• Suddenly got obsessed with Jews out of the blue. This obsession had nowhere to go. I could somewhat satisfy it by watching Woody Allen movies. But that wasn’t quite enough. So I often looked at people walking by wondering if they’re Jewish. I didn’t like the way this was going. I knew the obsession would soon get out of control and I might start talking about Jewish people weirdly and possibly look antisemitic or even become antisemitic. Another possibility I was afraid of was converting to Judaism. 
• Hebrew was the most logical way for me to channel that interest since it’s the official Jewish language. I already had an interest in languages. But I found it overwhelming. That temporarily killed my interest in Jews. I kind of did it on purpose. But due to some other life circumstances my interest in Jews returned and I welcomed it with open arms. I wanted to learn Hebrew for real. My mental health depended on it. 
• I still found it as overwhelming before, but I didn’t want to kill that interest. So I just kept trying. For shits and giggles I tried a Finnish duolingo course. I found it came more naturally to me. I barely put any effort into it. I put far more effort into Hebrew and I didn’t have much to show for it. Both Hebrew and Finnish are unrelated to English. Some language difficulty lists even rate them in the same difficulty category. So it’s a pretty good control language. The only difference was that I listened to a shit ton of Finnish music and not too much Hebrew music. Since I know I have trouble dealing with not being naturally good at something I decided if I could make myself naturally better at Hebrew. 
• I was on the lookout for Hebrew/Israeli music. I was pretty frustrated because my usual favorite genres like indie, female singer-songwriters, electronic pop or female singers in general didn’t work out for me. So I went through a phase where I listened to any music in Hebrew that I could. Even if it wasn’t my usual genre or even enjoyable as music. Kind of like weaboos who only like a lot of Japanese stuff just because it’s Japanese. I only enjoyed some of the music because it was in Hebrew. I kind of used that to my advantage so I had the patience to listen to a bunch of different Hebrew music until I found stuff I genuinely enjoy. At this point I will not enjoy music just because it’s in Hebrew. I just don’t have the patience.  That phase has served its purpose and it's pretty much done. 
• So the music I genuinely got into was Israeli rock. I wasn’t really into rock before that. Still don’t know why Israeli rock would be any better to me than regular rock. But I like what I like. So for a while I was semi-satisfied with just listening to Israeli rock and I didn’t really have the willpower to truly study Hebrew. I’m ashamed to say that did become somewhat of an out of control obsession. While I avoided talking about it most of the time, I did end up talking too much about it with this one guy who said he took Hebrew in college. I knew I was talking too much about it, but that’s the nature of obsessions. I just hate when obsessions go out of control and people think I’m incredibly socially retarded. I often know I’m getting carried away, but I can’t stop. So I cope by hiding my interest completely so I have no temptation to go out of control. I also shitposted a lot of Israeli rock to this anonymous app and it’s kind of become a meme. I had fun doing that. But that app is shutting down. Which naturally brings me to my current phase. 
• I’m now using the energy to try out a bunch of different language learning methods. Some of them are dry, but the whole obsession thing makes it less dry. I know that energy is limited, so the goal is to get fluent enough to actually speak Hebrew and enjoy tv, movies, books and other parts of the culture that could interest me. At this point in time I don’t know. I never knew I’d be into Israeli rock, so there’s probably a bunch of interesting stuff I don’t even know about that I’ll get obsessed with next. In terms of music I’m using a bit of that energy to start getting into regular rock, funk and anything else that would have influenced Israeli rock. I just want to trend towards expanding my interests. But for now my priorities are Hebrew itself. I’ll probably also get into some Biblical Hebrew. It’s what I originally wanted to learn, but there isn’t too much music in Biblical Hebrew. It’s also easier to learn pronunciation for modern Hebrew since I can find recordings of native speakers more easily. 
• Even this journal itself has helped expand a bit. It just keeps things moving. As I progress on this Hebrew business I’ll probably start talking more about other topics. I’ll probably talk more about this on another post. 

 

 

 

[Roch]

I’ve been having a journey with my health. Right now I’m going through a particularly rough part of supplements. So I get racing thoughts that don’t let me sleep. I’ve always had that problem, but it’s been extra bad lately. I know I should be sleeping. So there will be a lot of journal activity. 

I’ve been thinking of how this journal will help me achieve the goal in the title. So what I want in life is more passion and achievement and less obsession and inaction. Well the bad thing about obsession to me is that it makes you look weird and alienates you from people. As I’ve thought more about obsession it also sucks up a lot of energy that could be used to be productive or at least some action. That is why there’s a jobless weaboo/gamer stereotype. That is probably why nofap works for some people. Masturbating can suck up your energy. But so can any addiction or obsession. 

Even though this journal is fairly new it’s already helping me see things more clearly. Like how important meditation is. I notice my day is far better when I meditate. I guess a big goal I have in life is to live in the moment. It used to be a meaningless cliche to me, but now it’s making a lot more sense to me. That will also help my social life since charisma is a lot about presence and being able to really respond to your immediate surroundings. Obsessions and addictions can really get in the way. As into the Hebrew stuff as I am, it’s good to remember how relevant meditation is to it and how much better my study sessions go.

It also helps me get unstuck. An example that happened so far is how I’d practice Hebrew. The original proposal was to practice pronunciation from 9:00 pm to 11:00 pm. This sort of made sense at the time since I was mostly listening. But when I discovered a more efficient way of doing it for me that schedule stopped making sense.

It isolates me since it takes so long and with my new method it’s just too much time. So this week I tried reflecting on it and decided to maybe mix in other study material. When I was looking for more material I found some pretty useful stuff. So I expanded my study session. I’m still interested in getting a good pronunciation, but now I’m sort of back to the big picture. I want to be able to understand Hebrew and my new methods will help more. With the even larger picture I want to be more social.

My proposal for studying pronunciation is a half hour block at around 9:30. I need to get a good balance between flexibility and structure. I still don’t know what I should do for bad days or how to be able to independently pronounce words. I’ll just enjoy the process. I’ll just have some faith that I’ll figure out more.

 

 

 

[Roch]

Guess I’ve been taking a break from journaling a bit. It’s always highly inconsistent for me. I have a lot of activity and then I have pretty much nothing. I’m hoping I’ll get more consistent. I don’t even think anyone is reading this journal to be honest. I’m jerking myself off way too much. But I need to get that shit out of my system before I can write stuff that’s actually interesting to other people.

I like to post about learning Hebrew because I don’t really like telling people in real life. So I vent about it here. It’s more satisfying to vent in real life, but I feel so ashamed afterwards. I don’t even know why I need to “vent” about my interests. I’m embarrassed about it.

I have this simultaneous need to hide my interests, but show them as well. This makes me behave very weirdly about my interests. Like right now I “hide” my interest in Hebrew by pretending I’m practicing my French R sound. Hebrew and French both have similar R sounds. I actually understand more French than Hebrew at the moment anyways. So I joke a lot about learning French. I also joke about learning to read Arabic. Whenever I do my dad mentions Hebrew. Maybe he’s onto me.

I think I actually got interested in it because of Borat. People in real life know I’m a fan of Borat and Sacha Baron Cohen. But somehow my interest in him got expanded to Jewishness. That interest feels off because I’ve never been into religion. 

I kind of find Judaism as a religion interesting, but I haven’t studied much about it. I thought learning Hebrew would be a good way to channel that interest since I was already interested in learning languages. Learning Hebrew and my interest in Israeli music somehow feels divorced from my original interest in Jewishness. 

One reason I’m keeping this interest to myself is because of weaboos. They’re extremely obsessed with Japan and anime and it defines everything about them. They often can’t be interested in anything else. There’s something so cringeworthy  about weaboos. One of those things is that they usually can’t back up their obsession with actual skill. I’m not currently that profienct at Hebrew. So my obsession with Hebrew isn’t backed up by my Hebrew skills. I’ll probably keep it to myself until I get good. Which will definitely be awhile.

I don’t mind. I’ll work hard at it and enjoy the process. Since I’m so obsessed my bar for enjoying things is pretty low. I once sat through an extremely boring movie just because it was about Jews. It was still boring, but the Jews gave me something to grab onto. I’ll use that superpower to do helpful, but tedious things related to learning Hebrew.