Mental Block

Call it exhaustion, call it performance anxiety, call it fear of rejection...call it whatever you like, but the fact is that I have completely frozen on my Beit Din essay.

I was saving this till after the end of the semester, sort of a 'saving the best for last' thought because I knew that I wouldn't be searching things in books or online, footnoting or fact-checking with this essay. It would come from the heart and I already knew the answers, so how hard could it be?

Turns out, pretty darn hard. I know how I came to this point, but to sit down and put in black and white that "oh, I just kinda all of a sudden decided that Christianity was wrong and Judaism was, like, AWESOME," isn't exactly what I think the Beit Din wants to hear. It's not really how things happened, either, but it's the Cliffs Notes version. To be honest, I'm not entirely sure how I got to this point. Was it really the Introduction to World Religions class? After all, my professor reassured us at the beginning that he had never, in all his years of teaching religious studies, had anyone convert from their religion to another due to what they learned in class. That doesn't mean it wasn't the reason, obviously. There's always a first time (and may I just add a disclaimer, I'm actually looking forward to getting back in touch with him and letting him know that I'm his first. What can I say, it just makes me chortle with glee). Was it because my mother once upon a time was interested in Messianic Judaism/Christianity and we had intertwined Jewish and Christian motifs in our home? (By the way, I still want to find that dreidel!)

Is it because I like to be different? Is it a rebellion against everything in my life that's the norm? I'd like to hope not, since normalcy and comfort are something I'm really craving right now during this deployment.

I am so stuck. I want to be able to explain myself, but I'm not sure I fully understand in the first place.

I suppose the only thing to do is to take the bull by the horns and begin to write. I have no excuses to put it off any longer, and what's the worst that could happen? I could break a nail or have a breakthrough! I guess this means full speed ahead.