See you real soon

To my friends, family, and the occasional web-surfer:

Thank you for reading my sporadic blog posts for all these many months. However infrequently I've written and mused and vented out into the interwebs, I've truly enjoyed sharing my first venture into the blogosphere with all of you.

I've moved to a slicker site: http://rachelslaff.com/. For more current updates, please visit me there.

As Kathleen Kelly says in my beloved You've Got Mail — Goodnight, dear void.

Here and now

I applied for my New York driver's license a few weeks ago, and today it arrived in all its holographic glory. I checked the tiny "anatomical gift" box on the back and carefully signed my name with an ultra-fine Sharpie. It's official: I'm a New Yorker now.

These streets are mine. The honking horns and golden lamplight just outside my window -- mine. Riverside Park -- my backyard. The greenmarket -- my grocery store. Those are my slushy sidewalks, my neon lights, my bike messengers. This is my city, at last, at last, at last.

As I gleefully examined my new license, memories of seeing Thoroughly Modern Millie flashed through my head: The Woolworth building, the MetLife Tower -- there's gold in them there hills, and I'm gonna get it or die trying! I was a teenager when Mom took me to see the show on Broadway. We had terrible seats, right next to a giant column, but we soaked in every second of Sutton Foster's spell-binding performance. I doubt that I've ever wanted a musical to come to life quite so badly.

I'm not 14 anymore, though. I'm a 20-something journalist, living in New York and studying with the greats. I'm surrounded by incredible friends and at last have found a Jewish community of my own. Oh, that I could go back in time and tell my teenage self to hang in there. Your city is waiting for you, I'd tell her. Your dreams are powerful and purposeful, and you're going to make them happen. Que sera, sera, I'd say.

I'm starting to understand why we have different dreams at various points in our lives. When I was 9, I proudly told everyone I met that I was going to be a pediatric cardiologist. It turns out that I am quite squeamish -- making medicine a poor career choice -- but I wonder if I'd have survived fifth grade with a teacher who said that science was "for boys" without my dream forcing me to believe otherwise. And would I have battled through high school without theater camp acting as my safe place? I'm no Sutton Foster. But would I have made it to NYU without my theater friends encouraging me to dream big, no matter how extraordinary my goals?

I'll be finished with grad school in a year. G-d willing, I'll be in my beautiful new apartment on the Upper West Side in a year, as well, with a new job lined up and excited to have me. I don't know where the next ten years will lead me, exactly. I'm sure that someday -- when I get married, when my first book is published, when my children are born -- I'll want to travel back in time to where I am today, to reassure my 22-year-old self. But I have enough hope to sustain me for now. I'm not done dreaming yet.

Finding what's real

I read a job posting on Friday morning, asking for a reporter "to oversee coverage of the changing world of technology" -- at a newspaper. What journalist with a sense of "the changing world of technology" would sign up for a job with no online possibilities in sight? Who would be interested in working for an employer with their head in the sand? What HR rep wrote that job description? Please tell me that someone has since sat them down and explained this grand ol' thing called the Internet.

Later, I went to synagogue with a friend. We arrived late (My fault. Well, in all fairness, we should blame our tardiness on the 1 train.) so we had to sit in the balcony, looking out across the large congregation of smiling faces seated amongst old Gothic pillars. I exhaled, and felt the week's worries start to drop from my shoulders as easily as my winter coat had a moment before...

And then the band began to play. I've been to my fair share of "Shabbat Unplugged" experiences, and I am all too familiar with Debbie Friedman; this was not my first time at the musical Shabbat rodeo. But, one musician began to play a clarinet (or maybe a recorder?), swaying rhythmically in their seat as the congregation began to sing psalms, and I couldn't help but think: "Is this 'The Prince of Egypt: Live'? Was the big blue genie in Aladdin a Member of the Tribe? Why on earth are we praising G-D with a snake-charmer?" Hearing a live band while singing a prayer for Sabbath peace seems a bit oxymoronic to me.

Worst of all, the rabbi focused his d'var torah on silence, urging everyone in the shul to find a way to set aside the noise of their week. "Put aside technology for a moment," he advised us, his voice booming ironically from the microphone. He said that his hope for all of us this week would be that we would truly find Sabbath peace in that moment of silence... It was a beautiful thought, until, seconds later, the band picked up where it left off.

I am so sick of all of this hypocrisy -- be it from journalists, Jews, or otherwise. I may not always know what I want, or how to do something best. I may not always make the right decisions. I am not always on time, and I don't always know the answer. I'm not the richest, or the skinniest, or the bravest. But I know what's important to me. I know what I value. I know who my loved ones are, and I know my hopes and dreams. I am who I am, and I don't pretend to be anyone else.

A bird does not sing because it has an answer.
It sings because it has a song.
-Joan Anglund