My world is pretty small these days. Most of my days are occupied with various iterations of scheduling with my 3 hevrutot–L. on Monday morning, J. on Monday afternoon, S. on Tuesday morning, J. on Tuesday afternoon, etc. Periodically I study the dappim (2-sided pages) I have to do on my own in a coffee shop. I’m on a section that’s particularly sloggy, looking forward to getting to the other side of that. At regular intervals I do something related to my internship, which happens to be located in my neighborhood–which is great, and I’m learning a lot so far, but not necessarily the thing that leads me to exotic vistas. It’s all OK though; it makes a certain amount of sense to keep the external reality rather contracted when there’s so much happening in terms of input, etc.

It’s very interesting to have switched from such intense output mode (writing a book and all) to such intense input mode (studying Talmud all day every day). I find that it’s made me rather quiet–like with this blog, I just haven’t felt like I have a lot to say, even though there’s plenty what to say about this whole process and the stuff I’m learning. I’m mostly just trying to shut up and learn, and I suspect that later this fall I’ll have more to say about the process I’m undergoing now than I do now, while it’s happening.

So far I’ve probably been over at least once close to 40 of the 50 dappim on which I’ll be tested in late August. I feel fairly confident about some of them, and with many more I’ve barely scratched the surface, and will have to spend much time with before I’ll feel prepared with them. That’s OK, though. I’m hoping to have had a good pass on all 50 before the end of the month, so that I can really use August for review and going over stuff that still doesn’t totally make sense. That will fill my days well enough.

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