Bye-Bye Labelr (for now)

For the past day or two, it has been nearly impossible to access this blog because it imports data from a site called labelr, which was helping me to archive my blog topically. When their site went down, mine couldn't load.
Well, it's been removed, which should make things much better.

Also, the posting pace will probably slow considerably because I'm working 1 1/3 jobs. The only time I have to sit and think (and blog) is on the bus. I also use that time to prepare classes and get other work done. Unfortunately, blogging has become somewhat burdensome.

The other reason to stop blogging is because I used to be much more confident that I have a clue what I'm talking about. I'm really just not so sure anymore. It's kinda like this - I'm living in a different culture. In my 'home' culture, I was on much more solid footing. Here, I see things that would be offensive or just not done in the home culture, and I think it's wrong, but really it's just part of the new culture (and I'm not talking about substantive things like morals and ethics). In the new culture, I'm an outsider, but don't really want to become an insider because, like I said, I'm not too crazy about it. I'll never really 'make it' in this country as an outsider (and by 'make it', I mean achieve even the degree of professional success that I acheived at UMD), but I don't really want to join the ranks of the other outsiders in the American Yeshivot and Seminaries, basically dealing with imports from the home culture because it's too hard to break in to the new culture. And there's also the matter that average Israeli Rabbanim, by and large, can absolutely learn average American Rabbanim under the table. Granted, that's not all that goes into being a Rabbi, but at the end of the day, American Rabbanim, on average, just haven't spent nearly as much time in the Beit Midrash.

Thus, my confidence is somewhat shot as nothing seems stable anymore. I'm trying to adjust to spending most of my day behind a desk. Trying to find some time to learn, daven, and play ball beyond work and family. Blogging? I don't really have time to think original thoughts, let alone record them. And even if I did, as I mentioned, my confidence in both their originality and their accuracy is shaken. More on that at a different time.

So we'll see how things go. I've got some ideas for making this all more palatable; we'll see how it goes.