Jewish musings, Wed., Aug. 16

[gazelle18]

What’s on your mind — how to make kugel? This week’s Torah reading? Life goals? Prayer? We are all engaged in weight loss/weight maintenance journeys and we are all Jewish or at least interested in Judaism. We like to eat, we like to discuss. It is our goal here to provide each other support on our journeys, to share experiences, to call on our rich cultural heritage and texts, and to help each other grow spiritually.

Some of us take weekly turns starting the thread:

Frieda
Holly
Lee
Louise
Lynne
Peachy

And for those of you that stop by to read this thread without posting — you are welcome to, but you are also welcome to chime in. Don’t be shy!

[gazelle18]

Be back later with today’s posting!

[lee058]

Good morning everybody. Hope you are all well and SAFE!

Re today's topic: I'll be back to comment. In the meantime, I hope everyone has had a good night's sleep.

Have a peaceful day, Lee

[louise]

I'll take the moment on yesterday's subject to say that I'm happy with my job and would do the same again. It is not something I had aspired to, I just came to it and it is satisfying and plays into my skills on several levels.

I hesitate to say how I feel today because you will jump me about taking on to much for the HHD, but that's where I am and I am overwhelmed. Right now my problem is with my rabbi. We always have an outline of the service that the leaders follow and that we use to hand out readings, etc. We had seriously abridged the service during the pandemic and things got put back kind of randomly. I told him several weeks ago that the outlines need special attention this year for these reasons. What he gave me, which took several weeks (I get that he's crazy busy), just had updates for Shabbat. I pointed out the problems but can only go so far. Very frustrated and it's making my other responsibilites harder. Gr-r-r.

What's that you say, nothing to eat over? Not working that way.

[hollygail]

Louise: I found these two on another message board:

A bad day never becomes a good day by adding calories. ~ ebellej

If you dropped an egg on the floor, would you shrug and throw the whole carton down too? Of course not. Same thing. Start today. ~ kippy2006

[gazelle18]

Good morning,
I was frankly not sure what to post for a topic today. Sometimes nothing seems “post-worthy.” But I just read Louise’s post, and I will thank her now for supplying an excellent topic.

Nope, not gonna jump on Louise for taking on too many HHD responsibilities. Instead, I’m focused on one word in Louise’s post : overwhelmed.

The verb “to whelm” mean to engulf, to surround, to submerge. Sounds pretty dramatic. So what does it mean to “ overwhelm”? How does a person get more than engulfed?

When was the last time you felt overwhelmed? Did you come up with any strategies to “un-whelm”?

[lee058]

Back again.

Re today's topic: I felt a bit overwhelmed just yesterday, in dealing with medical people/bureaucracies to get my DH his meds. I coped with it by telling DS and DH that everything was fine and I was taking care of the situation. That helped me feel calmer and more capable, and I did get everything taken care of. So it worked!!

Have a peaceful rest of the day, Lee

[hollygail]

It's rare for me to feel overwhelmed. I have a fairly level head. I copy with situations, although sometimes better than at other times, but I do cope well. When I think of a good example of being overwhelmed, I'll post again.

[louise]

Yes, it does sound like enough just to be "whelmed"! It is possible though to be engulfed, submerged, etc. as in really in to something and that still be a good thing. It's a matter of degree I suppose. In my mind I'm picturing myself walking back to just "whelmed".

[peachymom1]

I felt completely overwhelmed when I came back from a six-week leave of absence from work - three times in the last two years, no less. I knew it would be impossible to catch up with everything all at once, so I sorted my email by sender and prioritized everything before getting started. Same thing with my calendar and my messages in Teams, and my list of regular tasks. Everything got done in order of importance. I did have to keep reminding myself that nobody expected me to be at 100% right away, but naturally there were a few emergencies, and I had to drop everything to fix them, then go back to the methodical approach.

I tend to do best if I find ways to make things possible. Sometimes that means breaking up a daunting task into a few smaller ones and then tackling those one at a time. Sometimes it means asking someone to help me. And sometimes it means saying no, I just can't get that done in time, so you'll have to do it yourself or find someone else to do it.

It's 107 degrees here, and I had a doctor's appointment this afternoon. It is HOT. I'm off to pour myself a glass of iced tea!