Aaargh. Starting a new chapter is always rough, and today is no exception. Yesterday’s activity was mostly about organizing all of the quotes for the rest of the book (I have this screwy system; yesterday mostly involved reading through all the notes I’ve taken for all the books that I’ve read or re-read for this project–quite a few, really–and organizing them by chapter instead of by author. (I’m no dummy, don’t worry, it’s not like I deleted the “by author” docs.) Bleary but necessary.

Today, however, is supposed to be the first day of writing, and as is typical, I can’t quite succeed to get off and running right away. It’s like that bird critter in Harry Potter to which you have to bow and approach slowly before it will let you get close to it. So I’m nodding and curtseying, and at some point in the next day or so, once I wrap my head around what it is I’m supposed to be doing now, I’ll really get into the groove of things. The first few days are always a struggle.

In other news, I have a hevruta! Yay! I’m going to be learning once or twice a week with a friend, in the early evenings. We met a couple of days ago, and it was so nice to be back in a busy beit midrash. Everybody was all bushy-tailed and enthusiastic, it was great. As much as I love the seminary beit midrash and the kinds of conversations that happen there, there really is a different kind of an energy when it’s more of a yeshiva thang. It’ll be a nice change of pace for me, I think, and in any case, it’s good to be studying again. It’s only been about 3 months, but it feels like it’s been much longer. Hooray for Talmud Torah!