Contentment makes poor men rich. Discontent makes rich men poor.

Supposedly, Benjamin Franklin said that. I was unable, in my brief research, to confirm that these are actually the words of Benjamin Franklin. But it’s a good thought nonetheless.

I’ve written about this idea before, from a slightly different perspective, that our happiness is not primarily determined by our circumstances. Rather, to paraphrase the Apostle Paul: I can live in any circumstance, in any situation, whatever God calls me to.

Paul also addressed it from this side of the equation, in one of the most frequently misquoted lines from the New Testament: That money is the root of all evil… Except, of course, Paul never said that.

I stepped on the bathroom scale this morning, and it read 182 and change, for the fourth time in the last four days. If you recall, for most of last week my weight was hovering around 184, and I couldn’t figure out why. I still don’t know why; the best I can come up with is that I caught a cold on the 17th, and while I was sick, I was unable to lose weight (but there’s no good proof of that).

In my writing projects, I commonly hit stagnation blockages of a similar sort. You’d think I’d be used to them by now.

However, after not making any progress for almost a week (more precisely, 6 days), to see my weight drop to 182.8, then to 182.6, then to 182.4…

I experienced a bout of acute joy.

Right about now, you may be feeling that urge, which hits sometime during the first couple of months of every year, the urge to forget the New Year’s resolutions to which you had so daringly committed only weeks ago. After all, you’ve already eaten that cake, skipped that workout session, smoked that cigarette… whatever. You tried, you failed.

But if the resolution was a good idea to start with—good enough for you to resolve to do it in the first place—then it’s probably still a good idea now. And giving up on resolutions, it seems to me, may be the sign of an addiction.

What do I mean by that? I’m glad you asked.

Or Maybe I Need to Learn to Talk Like John Moschitta

… or Paris Geller.

My mind goes back to one episode of Gilmore Girls (“It Should Have Been Lorelai”, season 2, episode 14—and no, I didn’t know that off the top of my head) when Paris was trying to coach Rory for a debate, and trying to get her to up her wpm. (And Gilmore Girls, if you remember, was all about increasing the wpm.)

I finally sat down and turned my sketchy notes into a first draft of my bat-mitzvah speech: 1014 words. At 125 words per minute (a reasonably average speaking speed), that’s over 8 minutes of talking, which is 3 minutes too long.

So I need to cut about 40% of those words. Or else maybe I just need to learn to talk faster.

(However, I’m thinking I’ll clean up and post the full version of the speech in these pages, in a couple of weeks after the bat mitzvah is done.)

Do You Remember the "Internet"

A happy thought on which to end the week.

As you may know, we’ve been working Dave Ramsey’s system to stop paying debt interest to big banks and improve our standard of living. Well, this past week, I finally got paid for some contract work I did last year (yup—more on that in a bit), and this check will finally put us over the top. We’re not out of debt yet, as we still need to pay off Sallie Mae, but this will eradicate that last credit card payment, for the cards we cut up in June. Behold the power of extra work!

And just as significantly, we now are no longer worth less than $0.

Monday is Rosh Hashanah, so no blogging then. (I don’t expect to be online.) However, I wanted to mention a brief but important thought before the holiday begins.

Rosh Hashanah, one of the major Jewish holidays, kicks off the 10 Days of Repentance (also called the Days of Awe). During this time, from Rosh Hashanah through Yom Kippur, one focuses on how he has been selfish and self-seeking, how he has hurt others, how he has manipulated and coerced in order to benefit at others’ expense. And he acts to seek forgiveness and to right these wrongs. We search our souls during this time, and on Yom Kippur lay them bare before God, because as Rabbi Hama ben Hanina taught, “Great is repentance, for it brings healing to the world.”

During this time of soul-introspection, I want to ask: What are you selling?

When I wrote this piece, I was not sure I was ready to talk about it. I had not even told the story to my Beloved yet. But, I thought, maybe writing about it would make it easier. That was over 5 months ago. Since then, I’ve told my Beloved part of the story, but this is the first time I’ve gone through it in any detail. I’m still not sure I’m ready to talk about it.

About a year before I met my Beloved, I totaled an almost-new Geo Prizm. I was much younger then, a young twenty-something carefree, still living with my parents. (That’s a different story, which I’ve queued to run this Friday.)

For the next twenty years, I never got into an accident.

My Facebook friends gave me a number of possible answers, but nothing really hit home, this past Saturday morning in synagogue when we read a selection from First Samuel chapter 1. Suddenly, my heart lit up, as if God had spoken to me through this account. As a Christian, this was a a message I could particularly identify with.

The overcast sky had provided him a brief respite from the drizzling rain, and so he decided to stroll through a nearby park during his lunch hour. He wasn’t much hungry, because his mind was full of thoughts, about Clydene, about love, about progress, about failure, about meaning.

When he had sat on the bench, he felt its moist coating leech through his pant legs. Normally the feeling would make him jump up in disgust, but today, he just didn’t care one way or the other. He didn’t suffer the chill breeze that gusted in his face. Neither did he enjoy the moist, fresh aroma of a late summer day cleansed by the rain. His mind was too full of other thoughts.