Musings on the Fact that There is No Article This Week

This is not my weekly Torah article. It's an article about why there is no weekly Torah article, and my thoughts and feelings about that stark fact. I can't even say if this article is worth reading.

Mar 24, 2023

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Artwork: DALL-E’s response to the prompt “abstract painting of a male task-master forcing a male writer to write (variation 2)”

Musings on the Fact that There is No Article This Week

I began writing publicly in April 2007 with the launch of my blog, Kankan Chadash. For those last two-and-a-half (out of seven) years in yeshiva, I wrote on a fairly regular basis. I began teaching in 2009, at which point Kankan Chadash became Kankan Ne’lam (which would eventually be rebranded and relaunched as Kol ha’Seridim in 2014), and the bulk of my writing moved to the summer months. The school year was simply too busy for me to write on a consistent basis, and if I wrote anything, it was usually before or during a break. But as soon as the summer was underway, I’d switch from teacher mode to writer mode. Inspired by the then-popular YouTuber Grace Helbig on her channel Daily Grace, I decided that I’d publish a full-length article every weekday of the summer. And I did!

Fast-forward to COVID-19. Shalhevet closed, and I transitioned from being a high school teacher to a rebbi in yeshiva. I didn’t get much writing done during that stressful summer of 2020. The first year of my post high school role (2020-2021) was the busiest year of my life, and the year after that (2021-2022) was devoted to prioritizing my own mental health. During the summer of 2021, I scaled back my routine from producing a full-length article every weekday to writing a single-page article every weekday. This ended up being a brilliant decision, insofar as it allowed me to maintain a consistent writing schedule while practicing some much-needed self-care. It also helped me mature as a writer by forcing me to become more concise and to be more selective in what I chose to write about. I continued with the daily single-page article in the summer of 2022.

This year after Rosh ha’Shanah (5783) I made the decision to embark on a new experiment: writing during the school year. I figured that if I made a concerted effort, I’d be able to keep up a schedule of writing a single one-page article each week, ready in time to print out for Shabbos. Although I haven’t always met that deadline, I am pleased to say that I’ve maintained my writing schedule: out of the 21 weeks in 5783, I’ve written 22 articles, which puts me just ahead of my weekly goal.

But today, for the first time, I find myself on Erev Shabbos Parashas Vayikra with no article.

To be fair to myself, something had to give. My whirlwind trip from NYC to Honolulu and back within 48 hours for Popo’s funeral in the first half of last week (Sunday-Tuesday) was physically and emotionally taxing. I am proud of myself for keeping up my teaching, tutoring, podcasting, and writing schedule for the second half of the week (Wednesday-Friday), but I needed to take the entirety of this past weekend to recover. That, in turn, set me behind in my preparation for this week’s shiurim, which led to an extremely last-minute-cobbling-together of my Thursday night and Friday morning women’s shiurim. Thank God, both shiurim were well-received – but I really don’t like to leave my teaching up to chance like that, and I recognize that one or both shiurim might have crashed and burned.

My original plan for this week was to cast a large net when preparing sources on chametz, developing the major idea (symbolism in chametz) into a full shiur for my Friday morning women’s shiur and writing up the minor idea (the prohibition to offer chametz on the mizbeach) as my Friday article for Vayikra. Midweek I realized that I hadn’t made progress in the minor idea, so I decided to set that aside to focus on my Friday shiur. I remembered that I had started writing an article last year at around this time on why we don’t say tachanun during the month of Nisan. I found the draft, which was a little longer than a page, and I figured I could rework it into a full article in time for Shabbos. I remembered that I also gave shiur on that topic last year, which meant that I likely had a full article-worthy idea ready to go, if I could just refresh my memory. After giving my Friday morning women’s shiur, I listened to the tachanun shiur while making and eating lunch … only to discover that we didn’t come up with a full idea in the shiur, which meant that I couldn’t simply edit my draft in time to write an article.

I thought to myself, “Surely you can churn out something in a matter of hours! You could write up one of the ideas you taught this week: the idea from Morning Mishlei about how not to face adversity, the idea from Monday Night Mishlei about investing in kavod, an idea from tefilah shiur about what kind of tefilah is listened to by Hashem, one of the Pesach-related ideas from Rambam Bekius, or one of the many other ideas that’s come up in Q&A, discussion, or tutoring – you name it! C’mon! You can do it! Just write something up!”

But the reality is: I don’t have the energy to start writing something at 2pm on Friday afternoon. And even if I could muster up the energy, I don’t want to. I’m done. I’m ready for Shabbos.

Which brings me here: to this article. Why am I writing this article?

There are two reasons. The first has to do with habit cultivation. I set out to write an article every week, and even if I can’t find it in me to write a Torah article this week, I can still write an article. Why would I do such a thing if this clearly wasn’t my real goal? Because I am a firm believer in the rule set down by James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, who wrote: “Don’t break the chain. Try to keep your habit streak alive.” Even if you have to shrink your habit down to its most minimal form (e.g. exercising for 1 minute instead of 30), you’ll still keep the streak going, which will increase your chances of maintaining the habit. Sure, if you do break the chain, Clear has another rule: “Never miss twice. If you miss one day, try to get back on track as quickly as possible.” But Friday afternoon is long, and I knew I could write something.

The second reason has to do with my own psyche. Particularly, my perfectionism. Inevitably, this feels like a failure. It feels like a failure even though (a) I took this commitment on myself, and it’s not like I’m being paid to do this as part of my job or anything; (b) in the grand scheme of things, there are no major consequences to my not writing a Torah article this week: there are literally hundreds of other articles I’ve written out there for people to read, and if someone specifically wanted an article on Vayikra, they have the whole Internet at their fingertips; (c) it’s not like this is a sign that I’m going to slack off and stop writing or stop giving shiur or stop learning; (d) as I mentioned above, I have a valid excuse, given the crazy week I had last week, and the very real need to recover!

And yet, my perfectionist parts are still shaking their heads at me, writing not-good-things about me in their notepads. In red ink. Scowling.

As I write this, I realize: maybe it’s not the best thing to appease those perfectionist parts by writing this article. Maybe it’s better to deliberately not write an article to show them that the world won’t end from a missed week. Or maybe this realization is being prompted by those same perfectionist parts, who want me to fail perfectly.

Either way, I wrote this non-Torah article. I got these thoughts and feelings out onto the page, and I think there was some value in that for me. Is there value in sharing these self-recriminating thoughts and feelings with anyone else? You tell me.

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