It all begins with the bathroom floor.

Suppose you dropped 90 brand new lithium carbonate tablets all over a (relatively clean, but still…) bathroom floor.

As you looked at them strewn all over hell and back, how would you react? Would you be overcome with a sense of helplessness that made you cry? Would you become enraged, knowing that your insurance company wouldn’t pay for another month’s supply?

I just picked them up and put them in the bottle, and decided to go about my business for another month, knowing that there would be plenty of times for me to feel despondent or enraged over my month-long relationship with this refill.

3 lithium a day sometimes just isn’t enough.

Lately, it hasn’t been anywhere near enough.

So I am doing something new; for the next year I am going to look at the world through a different lens, and I am going to start with God.

I have always seen God as a bit of a feckless shitbiscuit (more on this, later). This year, I am going to open myself to a healing God, and I think I might be able to do so without losing contact with humanity. At least I pray as much.

I think I’ll be able to do it, because this made me cry so much this morning: http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/braestrup/

I love the idea of being “religious, but not spiritual” so much that I have claimed it for myself, but I think I have missed the mark; I want to improve my aim.

So here’s the plan:

I will spend the next year working on my Jewish life, learning, creating a community, attaching myself to people. I will write about it here. Sometimes I will even be funny. I will change some people’s names.

When I was telling Kate about this today, she said I always sounded calmer and more confident when I talk about Judaism, and I should go back to school–who knows, maybe after this year, I will think about it. I’ll only do it if I don’t have to miss a single minute of Habibi’s life and I get to be funny.