I’m not an avid participant of #TBT (Throwback Thursday) on Instagram and Facebook. But every once in awhile, I feel compelled to post something a I see my newsfeed fill up with nostalgia.

Israel has been on my mind the last couple of weeks, and as I drove home, I thought what better way to take part in #TBT than to post pictures of the best summer of my life.

In 1995, I headed to Israel with a youth group consisting of about 40 friends. We had spent every Saturday and one night a week for the past school year training to become leaders/counselors, learning about Israel and bonding. This trip was the ultimate bonding experience. We spent 6 amazing weeks traveling the country, sleeping in the desert, repelling, clubbing and drinking, spending a night in a shelter, and simply making incredible memories.

The most memorable week for me, although also the one I least enjoyed, was the week we spent in the “army.” I use the word army loosely because even though it felt rough to me, it’s only 1/8th of what the real army is probably like. We woke up at 5 am and had to make our bed, get dressed and be out of our tent in like 5 minutes. We prepped for breakfast and then cleaned all the pots and pans afterwards. We hiked or ran in the desert at night alternating carrying a stretcher and full jerry can on our backs. We learned to shoot M16s. There was nothing relaxing or fun about it to me.

I think back to that week, or maybe it was only a few days, and try and picture what it is like for every Israeli at the age of 17 or 18 to enter a real training camp. I think about them now as they get ready for a possible ground invasion of Gaza. And as I think about all of that, I know that that week I spent was a piece of cake. There was no danger whatsoever. Nothing was going to happen to me if I didn’t run fast enough or if I missed the target completely when shooting the M16. No one was shooting back at me and there was no threat of a rocket falling out of the sky.

I am lucky to have been able to spend those 6 weeks in Israel and make the memories that will be with me for a lifetime. I can’t wait for the day that I can send my children to have that same experience. This is why I am thankful for Israel itself and for all those that defend it.

Last week was kind of a whirlwind as I went back to work and by Tuesday afternoon was on a plane to the CA office. With going to both offices, a board meeting and a travel day on Friday, it all flew by. It wasn’t without its stresses and annoyances, especially with things that are still open ended from when I left two months ago.

Everyone has been commenting on how refreshed, relaxed and tan I look. I’ve been hearing “You look great” so much that I’m really wondering what the hell I looked like before the break. My one true friend at work said that I just don’t look tired and angry anymore…we’ll see how long that lasts 🙂

Yesterday evening as it sunk in that it being Sunday meant I had work the next day, and then this morning as I drove the tedious commute, I was back to feeling tired before the week even began thinking of what was ahead of me. It’s not that things are crazy yet, but it’s that all the same problems are still there. I knew they weren’t going to go away, but part of me hoped that the distance would make me feel less frustrated by them. It didn’t. Which is why I’m glad that last week I let my boss know that I didn’t want to continue in my current position.

I always knew when taking the sabbatical that even if I decided I no longer wanted this job that I’d have to come back to formulate an actual exit strategy. I can’t leave everything up in the air, so I knew I’d be coming back for some length of time to help them find a replacement and keep things going. So that’s where I am at right now. It will be a few months.

The decision I have to start making for myself is whether to stay with the company in another capacity. This is the luxury I have by working in the family business…I have been given the option to create a new position if I want to. I mean, the position has to make sense and has to be approved by the board, but I still get the opportunity.

I have an idea, but it needs to be formulated further. There is also my idea and then where others have started to take that idea which might not fit into what I’d like to do, so that’s still a work in progress. I know some of you have been wondering what’s next. I’m not completely sure yet, but I’ll continue to share. The journey is by no means complete as career is only part of it. I am just getting started.

In one of my first posts from Europe a couple of months ago, I talked about going to visit the Jewish neighborhood in Prague and said I’d write more about it after visiting a concentration camp the next day. After my visit to Terezin, however, I was at such a loss for words that I never ended up writing about my experience. I don’t know if it was loss for words exactly or I was just not sure how to capture all of the feelings and emotions stirring within. As my trip went on and I saw more Jewish neighborhoods and heard more stories from local guides, the words kept getting farther away from me. It felt too big to explain and so I didn’t.

Over the last few days, I’ve seen friends posting articles, news clips and opinions on Facebook about what is happening in Israel. I’ve been introspective and unsure of what my part should be. Sometimes social media seems so trivial, but sometimes it feels heavy and important.

Today as I scanned my newsfeed, there was a post from the New York Times with the headline, “Palestinian Death Toll Nears 100 as Hamas Promises More Attacks on Israel”. To be honest, I didn’t read the whole article, but many people don’t. They just read that and the little blurb below it, so it angered me that the headline appeared to be so biased. Israel is defending itself in the same way that the US would be if rockets were being shot into NYC. I never comment on articles by any of the publications I follow on Facebook, but I couldn’t help myself.

I wrote, “I’m disappointed that the choice in headline is so one sided. It’s a shame that this is happening on both sides, but there seems to be little reporting on the attacks to Israel’s largest cities and civilians as well. If the US was attacked like that, you don’t think we would attack back. Israel isn’t targeting the Palestinian civilians.”

I was expecting comments from others with opposing views. I was prepared or so I thought. One person, or perhaps organization, responded with a comment that wasn’t deragotory or unexpected, however when I looked more closely their profile picture was a picture of Hitler. I don’t think I can even explain the barage of emotions that welled up inside of me.

Having grown up surrounded with Jewish traditions and spending 15 years in a Jewish day school, I have always been very aware and proud of my Jewish identity. I’m not very “religious” but I am very in tune with where I come from and the culture and traditions that I want to preserve for myself and my family. I once got asked by a friend in college whether I would identify myself as American, Hispanic or Jewish. At the time, I wasn’t sure how to answer her, not really knowing why I had to choose. And although I still don’t think that I have to choose, and I identify with all three, I would put Jewish first. It is so much a part of who I am that I can’t imagine it not being the first “label.”

Having had family impacted by the Holocaust, lives lost and lives broken, makes be incapable of being OK with someone hailing to Hitler. My grandfather never talked about the affect that losing his parents and brother had on him, at least not to me, but he didn’t need to talk to us about it for us to know the hurt. And he’s just one story.

During my recent trip to Europe, I felt very differently from all the times I’d been to Western Europe. I was in countries that were invaded and inhabited by the Nazis. In Prague, our tour guide told us that the reason there were still 5 Jewish synogogues standing in the city was because Hitler wanted to preserve them as a museum of an extinct race. It’s eerie to be in countries where you can feel the ghosts of your ancestors. You know you have to experience it and visit these sites in honor of them…to preserve their memory and the lives they lived and could have lived. I didn’t make it to Poland, which I know would be even more emotional, but I still felt closer to my grandfather than I felt I ever had.

This is all a long winded way of saying that the land of Israel is necessary. When you see people saying “Am Israel Chai,” it is not just speaking to those living in Israel, but to the Jewish community around the world that must keep Israel alive. We must defend its right to exist in the same manner that we defend our right to exist. That people wish Hitler had succeeded saddens and scares me.

When we say “We must never forget” when talking about the Holocaust, we are also saying that we must never let it happen again. If there’s bias in the media, we have to refute it like so many of my Facebook friends have been doing over the last few days. We refute it with facts instead of emotions and hope for the safety of all of our brothers and sisters.

Am Israel Chai

When my parents sold and moved from the house that spent my teenage years about 9 years ago, my room still looked pretty much the same way it had the day I left for college. It had it’s two twin beds with bed covering and pillows that made them look like couches, blue tinted wood built ins for my books, pictures, stereo (with record player) and desk. I don’t think I ever actually sat at my desk although I remember loving the chair when I got it at age 12 with its teal blue seat and a flower shaped back. Back then we had one home computer which was in a shared den downstairs.

When they were selling the house, I didn’t get too emotional like some people get when their parents sell their childhood home. Perhaps I felt more like our previous house had been my childhood home. What the move signified for me was that I had to pack up my room and really determine what was worth keeping. By having left it the same since I moved away, there were boxes full of notes and letters with my friends throughout the years. I definitely have hoarding tendencies.

In junior high and high school, we used to not only pass notes in class but write letters to eachother when we were in different classes and then pass them to eachother in the hallway or stick them in eachother’s lockers. I don’t know if this was just my group of friends that did this. It sounds kind of absurd now. Most of the times the letters mentioned how bored we were in whatever class we were in and possibly something about one of our crushes that we never actually spoke to. Sometimes they were actually arguements we were having (we were so dramatic); the page filled with rants about what the other one did wrong recently or how hurt we were. A lot of the times the letters were folded in some cool way, which I don’t think I can replicate now 30 years later.

We also wrote plane letters for whoever was going on a trip. The front of the carefully folded letter always said something like “DO NOT READ UNTIL THE PLANE HAS TAKEN OFF!” I remember the excitement of opening up the 5 or so letters, usually as soon as I sat down on the airplane. I don’t know how much we possibly had to say to eachother.

Any normal person might have just thrown them all out when it was time to pack up their teenage room, especially if they hadn’t look at them in over 10 years, but not me. I think I read all or most of them deciding which would be worth keeping. I don’t actually remember doing this, but when I moved into my new house last year I finally got that box out of storage and I definitely still have two small containers full of these letters and notes. I know it’s not all of them and knowing myself I must have made sure to keep the best or most meaningful.

It’s weird because I don’t even know what I’ll ever do with these, but it feels like part of my history. I don’t know if I ever would want anyone else to actually read them or who would care, but having them with me feels nice and nostalgic. It’s another memory besides pictures and actually reminds me of what it was like to be 14. We always look back at our past with enough distance that we’ve embellished it, but these relics of my past bring me right back to how things actually were. I now have the perspective to see that a friend was right about something or to still feel validated in being pissed at her that one day.

I’m definitely a sucker for nostalgia. I think it’s why one of my favorite movie or book genres has always been the coming of age stories.

When I was in 8th grade I started writing in a journal. I actually recently found a diary with a lock on it from when I was much younger, but I think I wrote in it once. Anyway, I kept a journal from the age of 12 or 13 until about 25. Sometimes months would go by without me writing in it, but otherwise I was pretty consistent.

With that first journal in 8th grade, for some reason I decided to let a couple of my friends read it. I don’t know what possessed me to think that was a good idea, but I guess it’s similar to writing this blog. I wanted them to get a glimpse into what I was thinking and was better at expressing myself through writing. Although reading that joural back, there weren’t many deep feelings; it was mostly boys that I thought were cute. Shortly after I started letting them read those thoughts, I realized that I was sensoring myself. If I was pissed at one of them, I wouldn’t write about it. If I was feeling a certain way that I didn’t want to share, then it didn’t make it into that day’s entry. At that point, the journal wasn’t serving it’s true purpose. So I stopped sharing it. I don’t remember if they ever asked why. Quite possibly they were never really that interested, but I kept forcing it on them.

When I was about 14 or 15, I started writing what was supposed to be the beginning of a novel, but really was about me. It was written by someone I only still slightly recognize as myself; someone extremely insecure, hard on herself, and very naive. It wasn’t too difficult to read it and know that it was me. It was high exposure, but that didn’t stop me from actually passing it around a bus of 40 friends I was in Israel with that summer. It’s almost as if I could hide behind the writing and not feel as exposed. The nakedness and rawness doesn’t bother me. I didn’t care about or even think about how they would judge me. It was the complete opposite of how I usually behaved or felt. There was a boldness to it that didn’t exist in any other aspect of my life.

Now at 34, I am a very different person. Of course, I still have my insecurities, but I am much more secure in myself than I was 20 years ago. I do express my feelings and open up to people once I get to know them. It takes me time to warm up to people, but I can be very candid and open. I was thinking about this blog and how it’s just an evolution to having shared that journal or “novel” so many years ago. It’s been great to get messages from friends that have been following saying that they can relate and how they’ve enjoyed reading my posts.

While I haven’t necessarily sensored myself, I have debated whether to share certain experiences or opinions or internal debates. It is a complete exposure. Like at 15, I am not that nervous about being judged by my blog, but opening the door to certain topics can be real intimate and I’m not sure how intimate I want to get with all of you. I know that if I want this blog to continue to develop and to really speak to where I am in my life, that I will need to start delving more into topics that might not be as comfortable. This post is perhaps the first step into opening that door.

Sorry for being so disconnected, but I literally was. My internet stopped working on Wednesday out in the NC lake house and didn’t seem to want to work again. Now I’m back home with my alarm set for 6 am to head off to the office tomorrow.

When I was younger I hated missing school. Not because I was that much of a nerd (just a little bit), but because I was didn’t want to miss out. I didn’t want to feel lost when I got back: having missed a test that I then had to make up somehow or an important lecture whatever self induced drama had happened with my friends. I know it sounds crazy, but I really didn’t like the feeling of coming back and hearing about things that happened while I wasn’t there. It wasn’t until senior year that I realized I wasn’t missing much. As long as I didn’t have a test that day, I didn’t care much.

With work, I started similarly. It was always hard for me to take vacations because of how much prep work you have to do before you go and then the avalanche of emails that awaits you. If I felt a little sick, I thought about what big meeting I might be missing or what was on my to do list. As time went on, every once in awhile I’d take a “work from home” day saying I wasn’t feeling that great. Those days meant checking email regularly and maybe having a couple of conference calls, but spending the majority of the day vegging out at home.

This sabbatical has been a really drastic break not just in regards of my work ethic, but from that fear of missing out. Contrary to what people thought would happen, I truly disconnected. Emails were not coming into my phone. I did check them a couple of times, but there was nothing besides HR type emails since everyone knew I was out. Even my father and brothers cut out the work talk around me. Only this last week have they started to mention a little bit of what’s been going on around the office, so I’m going into the office tomorrow having missed a lot. I don’t know what our inventory levels are. I have no idea what’s going on with customers. And I definitely don’t know what kind of drama has been going on between departments in my absence.

It feels somewhat unsettling, but at the same time it definitely is better than coming back from a 1 week vacation. I have no choice but to ease in because I need to be filled in on what’s been happening by my employees and my boss. It should be interesting.

It will also be a long week. Tuesday afternoon I head out to the California office for the remainder of the week. I finally get to see the finished office building that I worked on for the last 3 years and we have our first board meeting there. It should should be interesting.

You also might be wondering what decision I’ve made. And the truth is I’m still waffling between two things, so I’m hoping that the first couple of days back at the office help sway me one way or the other…

It’s officially my last week of sabbatical and I’m spending it at my family’s beautiful North Carolina home. To give you an idea of how breathtaking it is, the picture at the top of the blog is the view from the house. That photo was taking with my phone while sitting on the top porch. If you want to come to a place where you can disconnect, this is it.

My niece and nephew are with us and that adds just a whole new feeling to our time in the house and what we can expect in the years to come with an expanding family. I know it’s still some years away, but I look forward to all the cousins, my future kids included, running around all day swinging into the lake on a rope swing, kayaking, making smores, and just being kids. It’s a whole different energy that I can’t wait to be around.

The twins have already brought some of that as we see everything through their eyes for the first time. We weren’t sure how they were going to adapt to a new environment, especially my niece who cries every time she sees my dad. Interestingly enough, she hasn’t cried at all with him here in NC. They both seem to be loving it here. This place suits them. They love the outdoors and seeing the water.

For us, their non-parents, or at least for me it’s been great to walk out of the room in the morning and get greeted by them. I know that I can only imagine the love that a parent feels for their child. I also always knew I would love my nieces and nephews a lot, but it really is an incredible love. I can’t think of a better way to spend my last week before going back to work.

A few posts ago, I mentioned that higher consumers of pop culture are more likely to be scared of life, or so a professor once told me. This concept, I’ve realized can apply to other facets of pop culture and life, like romantic comedies. I’m not a scary movie or thriller type of gal mainly because I don’t get a rush of adrenaline from being terrified. The same way hanging upside down on a roller coaster doesn’t exhilarate me, neither does the fear of someone in a mask popping up to kill people turn me on. But give me a good romantic comedy, blockbuster or indie, and I’m there – middle row center.

The thing is that being an avid watcher of these movies for over twenty years can easily warp your mind into believing that you and Harry will become best friends and fall in love years after meeting and initially hating each other. Or that after about 10 years of the wrong timing you realize that he is The ONE and you crash his sister’s wedding thinking he’s the one getting married (watch A Lot Like Love a very underrated movie).

I’m hardly the first to observe women’s fascination with these movies and believing that these scenarios can happen in real life. Mindy Kaling does this much more eloquently and with a lot more humor on The Mindy Project. Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t believe in fairy tales and I don’t want a prince charming; perfect is overrated and doesn’t exist anyway. And, contrary to the belief of some of my family members, I don’t think that Mr. Right is just going to knock on my door while I’m sitting on the couch.

But I do believe that I can bump into him one day while browsing the bookstore (the one that no longer exists within a 20 mile radius of my house). He’ll say something clever about one of the books that I’m holding. We’ll banter back and forth being quick witted and much more chit chatty than I’ve ever been. We’ll continue our conversation over coffee at a non-Starbucks establishment and our dialogue will just flow from the moment we meet. As we get to know each other, he’ll take me to cool hole-in-the-wall restaurants. We’ll have long phone conversations well into the night. Of course, there will be hiccups and disagreements along the way, but we’ll get past them and sail into the sunset.

OK, so I don’t really think that it will happen exactly that way, but a girl can dream, right? 🙂

Honestly, I know it’s not going to happen that way. So, hopefully I don’t get a bunch of comments that I need to get my head out of the clouds or no one will be good enough. I’m not really looking for someone to meet those unrealistic standards. Maybe I was at some point in my 20’s, but I’m not anymore.

What I am looking for is to find someone that I do have a connection with; someone I can talk to or sit in comfortable silence with for hours. I know there will arguments and disagreements. I know we’re not going to like all the same things nor do I want to be with someone who is a replica of me. The dream based on the movies are heightened expectations, but I do believe that there should be some expectations. Quite frankly, and this might be an unpopular opinion, people tell you to aim high and go after your dreams in every aspect of your life except for when you’re looking for a life partner. I don’t know why that is. Like with everything else in your life, you can visualize where you want to be. But the key is in also keeping yourself open to all possibilities along the way. The openness will bring things and people into your life that you never even dreamt of, but the original dream is what propels you forward to get to those possibilities. So, for me, it’s not about going after an unrealistic Nora Ephron screenplay, but about visualizing the life I want to have which includes a husband to share my life with. I know that he’s out there, so the dream of him is what propels me forward to meet him in a bookstore or airplane or blind date. I’m open to where the possibilities take me.

There’s this amazing show on Bravo which really looked like a recipe for disaster. I don’t know who was the actual genius that gave it the green light.

When I first saw the commercials for The People’s Couch, I thought it looked ridiculous. It seemed like a whole new low for TV; let’s do a reality show of people sitting on their couches watching TV! But one day with nothing else on after a probably equally ridiculous episode of The Real Housewives” of some city, I watched an episode and it was hilarious. I actually laugh out loud several times during an episode.

The premise is real people sitting at home watching TV with family or friends and commenting on the shows. It’s like the peanut gallery of each person’s house. There are clips shows of about 6-8 TV shows from the previous week and we are getting to hear how different people react. They range from reality to prime time dramas. They are at home having a glass of wine or some snacks, like everyone else yelling back at the TV when you think something bad is going on and criticizing some pseudo celebrities fashion choice. There is one family, an African American husband, wife and teenage son, that appear to always be eating something delicious. Last night they had both cake and popsicles.

The genius is in everyone’s genuine reactions to the shows they are watching and how they interact with each other. Besides the aforementioned family, there’s three older woman who last night spent like at least 1 minute trying to figure out how to take a selfie. There is a husband and wife with their 2 teenage sons who watch the show from their bed. Last night also produced a hilarious moment when the dad kept trying to figure out how to ask his phone how old Kris Jenner was as they watched the Kardashians. Other “watchers” include girlfriends, a father with his daughters, and three gay men.

Most of the shows that they are watching are ones I’ve never watched myself and there is definitely some pretty crazy TV out there. I’ve never watched Honey Boo Boo or Devious Maids so watching the clips are fascinating glimpses into them. It’s at times even funnier when they are watching something I already watched and they have a similar reaction to mine at first viewing.

This isn’t a show that I would binge watch or watch if it were on every night, but there’s something to the weekly guilty pleasure of laughing along with others who seem to watch and enjoy as much TV as I do. I urge you all to just give it a chance because it’s perfect mindless TV without feeling icky like I do when I watch the Kardashians.

Two weeks from yesterday I’ll be back at work. I haven’t made any life changing decisions, but my 2 months are up. I have some half decisions made up in my mind that I’m not necessarily ready to share mainly because they are not fully fleshed out yet. I am still vacillating between some ideas…

The thing is, who says that my decision has to be life changing? As long as it is moving in a new direction than that is the first step. Right? I took the time off in order to take a breather and see if that was enough to make me happy again in my job. I didn’t want to dread driving to work in the morning.

I am ready to get back to some sort of routine and stimulation, but I am not sure that I want to be working at the stress level I was at before which left me with little energy to do much else outside of work. I have enjoyed more time for yoga, for friends and family and for writing. I want to find a way to balance those things. At the end of the day success should’t be whether you’re the CEO or not. It should be whether you’re happy with the work and the life outside of work. That’s where I want to get to; it’s the path that I hope I’ve started on and will continue on come July 7th when I’m back at the office.