State of the Blog: Summer 2022

This week's Torah content has been sponsored by Naomi Mann in honor of Rabbi Moskowitz zt"l, whose shloshim is this week.

Click here for a printer-friendly version of this article, and click here for an audio version.

Artwork: Mishra's Factory (Summer), by Kaja and Phil Foglio

State of the Blog: Summer 2022

Last year at around this time I launched The One-Page Article: a Summer 2021 Experiment with four objectives in mind. Foremost among these objectives was my own mental health, which was at a low point due to the burnout I experienced from teaching 850+ shiurim during that stressful 2020-2021 school year of covid. The experiment was a success: I wrote 31 one-page articles over the course of that summer, and was proud of each one. This allowed me to keep up my usual daily summer writing without the added pressure I sometimes felt in past years to write a full-length article each day. Better yet, the self-imposed word limit helped me to grow as a writer, enabling me to write about ideas that I never would have written about in the past, as I detailed in Hunting for Treasure vs. Panning for Gold on the Beaches of Nome.
You may have noticed that I’ve continued in one-page mode this summer. It’s been great! I love finding the “right-sized ideas” to write about, I love the challenge of presenting these ideas as concisely as possible, and I love the feeling of accomplishment that caps off each weekday of the summer. I’m sure I’ll return to feature-length articles at some point, but for now, I’m really enjoying this.
I am scheduled to fly out to Hawaii to visit Popo (my 97-year-old grandma) tomorrow. I’ll be there from June 28th through July 7th. As such, I find myself confronted with the question: Should I stick to my article-a-day schedule while I’m in Hawaii or should I take a break? To many people, this might be a no-brainer: “Of course not! Take a break! Enjoy your time in Hawaii!” But to a recovering perfectionist, workaholic, self-appointed self-taskmaster, this is a tough decision. Whether it stems from rational or irrational considerations, I don’t want to interrupt the flow of Torah content. Also, I thoroughly enjoy the process of writing, even while on vacation. Writing Torah articles in Hawaii has been a part of my summer since 2007. At the same time, it would be wonderful to take a break from being on a content-production schedule – especially at the outset of my summer vacation, when I’m feeling the burnout from the year.
After giving this some thought, I’ve settled on something of a compromise: I will continue writing my articles while in Hawaii, but I will not post anything until my return. This will relieve me of the pressure to meet my self-imposed deadlines every day while simultaneously granting me the freedom to write, to be, and – more importantly to my psyche – to feel productive. There’s a non-zero chance that I’ll make an exception for this Friday, since parashas ha’shavua articles are “time-sensitive,” but other than that, I’ll do my best to hold back until the second week of July.
And while we’re taking care of “book-keeping” (as Rabbi Moskowitz would call it), I figure I should mention another summer project I plan to undertake. I would love to design a website which will serve as a hub for ALL my Torah content: YouTube videos, podcast episodes, articles, shiur announcements, Zoom info, links to Torah resources, etc. Had I known in September 2020 that I would be publicizing all my Torah content, I would have set something like this up then, but all my energy was devoted to the actual preparation of said content that I simply didn’t have time. I’d like to rectify that going into 2022-2023.
If anyone has any suggestions for which service or platform to use, let me know! As of now, before doing any research, I’m leaning towards using something tried-and-true, like WordPress. I plan to fund this site with donations from Patreon and sponsorships, so if you plan on making a donation in the near future and would like to contribute specifically to the website, I’d love to give you public thanks on the page.
See you back here on July 11th! In the meantime, feel free to read or reread the hundreds of past articles!___________________________________________________________________________________If you've gained from what you've learned here, please consider contributing to my Patreon at www.patreon.com/rabbischneeweiss. Alternatively, if you would like to make a direct contribution to the "Rabbi Schneeweiss Torah Content Fund," my Venmo is @Matt-Schneeweiss, and my Zelle and PayPal are mattschneeweiss at gmail.com. Even a small contribution goes a long way to covering the costs of my podcasts, and will provide me with the financial freedom to produce even more Torah content for you.
If you would like to sponsor a day's or a week's worth of content, or if you are interested in enlisting my services as a teacher or tutor, you can reach me at rabbischneeweiss at gmail.com. Thank you to my listeners for listening, thank you to my readers for reading, and thank you to my supporters for supporting my efforts to make Torah ideas available and accessible to everyone.
Be sure to check out my YouTube channel and my podcasts: "The Mishlei Podcast", "The Stoic Jew" Podcast, "Rambam Bekius" Podcast, "Machshavah Lab" Podcast, "The Tefilah Podcast"