The Current Stresses in My Life (In Order According to Stress Factor)
1) Conversion to Orthodox Judaism - Stress in this form takes multiple manifestations, from the stress of going cold turkey with Christianity, to the only being able to participate in Jewish life so much since I'm not yet a Jew (this is my own psychological issue, and not really a reflection of my place in Jewish life, and is ultimately probably just another manifestation of my general lack of social self-esteem, and my irrational fear that everybody secretly hates me/thinks I'm annoying/wishes I would just disappear).
2) Family Issues - The top of this list is the rather recent outing of my mother, who is currently dating a woman called Nedra (a fairly nice woman from the couple of conversations I have managed to have with her). Anybody who knows me well enough to be reading this knows that I don't have any problem with my mother being gay, but it is still a weird/stressful situation (especially since my siblings aren't handling it very well; Nicki has essentially disowned my mother.)
3) Relationship Issues - While I'm not currently in a relationship debating about whether or not to enter into a relationship, and working up the courage to actual ask someone out is a source of stress (this issue is inherently tied to issue #1).
4) No Free Time - My favorite source of stress comes from holding 1.5 part time jobs, taking five and a half classes (for a total of 22 credit hours), engaging in daily prayer for a hour every morning, as well as participating in various clubs, and Jewish learning activities (unrelated to my scholarly classes), and taking every Friday night to Saturday night off for Shabbat.
And now for some interesting facts about this weeks Torah section. This week Orthodox Jews around the world will read the story of the Binding of Isaac on Saturday morning. My interesting though is how the symbolic cutting of Isaac compares with the covenant ceremonies read about last week namely (the cutting of the sacrifices with are then walked through, and the circumcision of Abraham and his household)...whats with all the cutting?