Do You Know What Day it is Today? (I Usually Don't!)
Holidays are just different after having kids.
Fun holidays can easily shift to become about their fun, serious holidays (we've got quite of few of those!) become about doing what you have to do and getting through the day, parenting as usual -- moms never seem to get a day off!
The Jewish Calendar -- following it, knowing its details and living by it, is integral to Judaism.
Keeping our own calendar was the first Mitzvah (commandment) we received after leaving Egypt and becoming our own nation. But it's not an area that I've ever fully prioritized and it has almost completely fallen to the wayside for me since having children.
I never know the weekly Parsha (Torah portion) off the top of my head and holidays always seem to sneak up on me -- I rarely anticipate them until they're happening next week, at which point I scramble to do the bare minimum of what I have to do. This often involves asking my husband, "Remind me what's the big thing with this one?” “Wait, are we allowed to do this on that day?"
Anything deeper or a more meaningful understanding? Forget about it. I'm busy raising young kids, okay??
But I'm a gal with her head up in the clouds. I like knowing the deeper meaning, delving into the spiritual side of things. I'm just not usually organized enough to actually know what day it is today, much less what's happening next week. Hence the sneaking up on me and no time to do anything but the basics.
With the return of my babysitter, I'm delving back into social media content creation.
It should come as no surprise that organization has never been my forte here either. I always want to participate in awareness days and weeks that are always popping up on my feed, but, oh, hey, they always seem to just sneak up on me.
I realized that the key to staying ahead of the calendar is to… plan ahead. Who would have thought?
So I got organized. I created a Google calendar with all the important days, weeks and months through the year that I want to create content for -- things like Chocolate Day, World Breastfeeding Week, C-section Awareness Month. Of course I had to include every Jewish holiday as well.
I’ve always posted for our holidays, but, much like my own personal preparations, these posts were always thrown together at the last minute.
Shoot, gotta take a quick photo and think of something nice to say.
I’m excited to be planning my posts for the year with greater intention now. I’m excited to take the time to do a little research into each Jewish holiday, to share some meaningful insight. I hope that it will bring more intention into my experience of the year, as well.
These posts are for other frazzled Jewish moms, just like me, busy tending to the mundane tasks of raising a family and keeping it all together. Sometimes social media posts like these are the only thing keeping me grounded and tethered to the calendar, to the world outside my living room.
These posts are for my non-Jewish followers, to help you gain some insight into my life, my culture and my history.
And these posts are for me, they’re the only way I’m actually going to take the time to plan ahead, take a moment and delve deeper.