Running to Releave Stress

I feel at times that there must be a direct relation between the amount of time that I spend on sites like Facebook and my level of frustration with the world.  When will I ever learn to just walk away.  Every few months I have a time when I tell myself that I will delete my Facebook profile and not come back to it.  I have yet to succeed in this.  There is just too much junk going on out there that it just makes me feel like what is the point? Why do we spend all our time there? Maybe it's just me, that I just don't seem to have anything else to do with my life.

Recently I was listening to a podcast from the Jillian Michaels' show where she was saying that we always have the chance to tell them to go to hell tomorrow.  I have prided myself in recently being able to hold myself back from exploding at the very people who have been causing my frustration and have been venting to close friends who I know are looking out for me.  But I feel that maybe this isn't working how it should that I have to figure out a new way to relieve all this stress of the world.  Before I came back home for the summer I had taken up running after reading many many blogs about how it has helped others get over their stress and what not and found that it has been a sort of therapy for me. A chance to wipe everything off and then wash it all down the drain in the shower afterwards.

Once all the holidays are over I'm hoping to get the chance to get back out there and start running again.  It's just I feel again like those contestants on the biggest loser who go home and get sucked into everyday life, there just isn't the time to work out, or the weather isn't right, I seem to find myself making the same excuses that they make granted I'm not running for the same reasons they are but that's not the point. The point is that I'm just going to have to push myself harder to get back into shape since even when I go back to school I'm not going to have access to the same paths that I fell I love with just before leaving.

Yom Kippur 5773

This year when I was sitting in shul on Yom Kippur I made a real effort not to talk. Its something that has been very difficult because usually my mom and my sister are sitting there making all kinds of jokes and I feel that on the holiest day of the year one should be able to control themselves. I did something that I have never done before, I brought a book along to shul because I knew that it was going to be a long day and there were going to be times when my mind would wander and what better way to control those mind wanderings that through reading.  It wasn't a Jodi Picult or Nicolas Sparks novel because those would defeat the purpose of the day, I brought "Em Habanim Smecha" a book about Israel, unity of the Jewish people and redemption.

I had been doing very well for most of the morning resisting the temptation to talk durring the services.  As the room filled up it came to my attention that the noise level seemed to rise.  In the row directly behind me there was a group of old women sitting together and for a while they were quiet.  And then they began to talk, they were talking about all kinds of things- not that I was trying to eavesdrop but becaue they were so loud I couldn't concentrate on my reading.  It took all my self restraint to not turn around and shush them like they were children talking in the services.  It is beyond me how adults can at times act just as little children do. But there is a double standard, if a child behaves badly they are scolded for they behaviour but who is going to discipline a 50, 60 or even 70 year old woman?

It's funny when I was in middle school and even in high school I used to sit in the back with all my friends and we would talk I don't deny that we weren't perfect.  And there was this woman who always sat in the back row with her daughter, we called her the shush lady.  She was a very stern looking woman who would always look over and shush us if we got too loud.  Is this what I'm turning into? Sure hope not!  A few weeks ago I returned to this synagog after over a year of being a way and she is still there, looks the same and even her daughters look the same maybe a little older but it's funny how our lives seem to change and other just seem to stay the same.