First of all, G’mar chatima tova to anyone out there observing Yom Kippur (it’s not really a celebratory holiday, since it is the day of atonement; one observes it).

Mind you, someone really observing Yom Kippur isn’t going to be reading this today, nor will they be working in any way other than rabbinical duties (if they have them) and so on.  There’s no carrying of any burdens, certainly no driving, no starting any flames (or anything analogous thereto), and so on.  There should certainly not be any going to work or writing blog posts (or writing anything else).

But then again, I am not observant, not really, and I am not a believer (in anything really), so I don’t feel any deep shame about the whole thing.  It’s more a bit of sadness.  I am alone.  I wish I had a community or a family or somebody with whom to observe such holidays and traditions and even proscriptions.  I honestly don’t think I would mind which ones, at least up to a point, though I don’t think I would commit to any flagrantly destructive nonsense.

Though, as I say that, it occurs to me that I do plenty of things that are flagrantly destructive toward myself.  I just do so on small scales and in small amounts at a time; I don’t really want to get Baker Acted (again).

I do tend to fast on Yom Kippur, and I am fasting today‒no food or water except that required to take medication and such.  I actually did a pre-fast most of the day yesterday, though I allowed myself to drink water and I ate some food in the evening.  I like fasting, both conceptually and experientially.  It definitely sharpens my mind in particular ways, and it evens out my emotions a little bit (not always in a good state though).

I honestly wish I had the strength of character to fast more often or just longer.  To be honest, I would like the strength to fast indefinitely.  After a certain point, if you go without eating long enough, you never have to eat again.  That sounds like a real load off.

Anyway, I am fasting.  And I do try to use this event, this sort of chapter marker day, to possibly stop doing certain things I do deliberately to harm myself (without doing the sorts of things that make one subject to possible involuntary hospitalization, i.e., Baker Acting, though I do those sorts of things from time to time as well, and have done so recently).

The idea behind such things, from my own admittedly atypical perspective, is that I might as well do things that shorten my life, since frankly I am not feeling much of anything good about living, and have not felt so in a long time.  So, if I can chop at least some of it off at the end, that would be a net benefit:  decreased negative is a relative positive.

I am also more than open to the irony of possibly one day finding a true desire to live or something for which to live, only to find myself dying of some disease I invoked through my deliberate, earlier self-destructive habits.  It would be funny in a way, a practical joke that I knowingly and willingly played on myself.  Bazinga, as Sheldon Cooper might say.

But I will see if I can break at least one such habit today.  It’s not always easy; when I put aside certain self-destructive things, I often find that I begin to feel more depressed.  The prospect of living longer makes me feel depressed, because there are only very few things in my life that make it worth bothering with, and my most honest assessment is that it is unlikely to improve, ever.  Like a mortal who keeps a Great Ring, I will not grow or obtain new life, I will merely continue, until at last every breath is a weariness.

“At last”, he says.  It’s already happening and has been happening for a long time.  And there is no Valinor to which I can go to recover (as if they would have me, anyway).

So, yeah, anyway, that’s what’s going on with me today.  I doubt that I’ll keep fasting after sundown, but if I do, I will let you know.  It would be nice not to be fat when I die, at last.  Still, I don’t actually expect things to work out in the ways that I want them to work out.  That’s not the nature of reality.

Anyway, I don’t really do too much anticipation about the future, nor do I ruminate all that much about the past, despite what readers might think.  Though I try to prepare for various contingencies just as a practical matter, I don’t tend to have long-term expectations or anticipations.  The world is too chaotic for such things, and the universe makes no promises other than that it will follow its laws everywhere and always, whatever those might ultimately be.

So, yeah.  I won’t say “Happy Yom Kippur” because that doesn’t make much more sense than Happy Memorial Day does.  Have a good one, though, whether you observe it or not.  A “good” day is never an inappropriate thing to have, more or less by definition.