The List

I’ve been rearranging hundreds of books all week and have been too tired to write anything original, so please enjoy this piece that was written around Yom Kippur.

My annual Yom Kippur list of sins:

Cussing too damn much
Deliberately ignoring emails
Internally rolling my eyes while people talk
Being impatient with my mom
Being impatient with four rowdy dogs
Hating humans when I’m stuck in a crowd
Silently praying that my Lyft driver won’t talk to me
Writing too little
Intentionally coming in early and/or staying late for work so I can have some time for myself
Having an unnatural fear of driving
Panicking inside when my mom forgets something and praying she doesn’t have dementia
Forcing myself to imagine a time when my mom is no longer here so that when it does happen, it’s a little less emotionally devastating
Not going to services and saying it’s because I hate sitting through them when it’s really that it forces me to reflect on my currently jumbled life
Not practicing self-care
Caring too much about people who don’t even notice
Playing the part of the model minority
My ability to seamlessly code-switch
Opening up to people and abruptly folding into myself