The Recap

After almost 365 days, 42 posts, and a plethora of words, my blogging experiment comes to its final deadline. I, almost one year ago, decided to embark on a journey to blog every Sunday night, one post each week, about different topics that I found pertinent and meaningful.
This adventure was first designed to be an opportunity for me to experience a new form of media communications. My father suggested it to me as a way for me to share some of my ideas and allow my creativity to form an actual learning experience for myself and for others.
Now, after spending countless hours thinking up, writing, and posting these stories, I would have to say the experience was a success. I learned a great deal about how to communicate my thoughts and emotions, and attempting to say my words in a way that will convey my message while refraining from insult or injury to others.
This wasn't always easy. There were times when my posts caused people to get upset, and this was an excellent learning opportunity for myself as well. I had to learn quickly after my first real post that not everyone is going to agree with everything you have to say, but that it is important to say things so as to start conversations, rather than arguments.
I have wanted to be a Rabbi during much of the time that I have been posting these blogs. The opportunity to have this page as a form of pulpit, to practice writing as if it were for a sermon, was an excellent insight into the struggle that not only Rabbis but educators of all kinds undertake in an attempt to inspire others. I allowed the blog to educate me in the same way I hoped to educate others. In fact, I used the experience of blogging as a topic for two different college essays, which I hope will have some positive influence on my acceptance.
My favorite story pertaining to a blog posting was when I received a private message after the publication of one of my ideas. I don't remember what the exact post was about, but a member of my community who had been dealing with a particularly bad situation, who I had not spoken to for quite a while, wrote to me in a private facebook message. This person shared that he/she believed that my post had helped this person to see things from a different perspective, and that they had had a positive shift in thought process after having read one of my posts. Now this was coming from someone who I had believed wished to have nothing more to do with me, or with anyone who I was close with. The fact that they were willing to read my blog at all, let alone be moved by it, was emotional for me on a very meaningful level.
Another story of my blogging came during one of my classes at school. A fellow student of mine, who almost never interacts positively with anyone else, was talking with some friends. He was frequently disruptive, and he and I generally didn't get along well. At one point in his conversation, he brought up some topic (again I forget which, but it isn't important). Then, in passing, he commented on something that I had said in my posting the night before, and brought up the fact that he liked what I was saying and agreed with it. This was very meaningful to me because this meant that people I had no idea were even reading my blog were actually doing so, and learning from it as well.
Throughout this journey, many people have helped me in my posting. From my parents and grandparents who read every post and asked supportive questions, to my best friend who always kept me on schedule and even reposted to his own facebook page, I couldn't have come up with the end result I did without their help.
Even though I had no idea where it would take me, the year long experiment was enough of a success for me to continue. I will continue to post blogs through the coming year, although the format and style of posting will change come January 1. I am excited to learn from my past blogging and continue to grow and develop as a writer, speaker, and human being.
I hope that the Zoot Perspective has somehow impacted you positively. If you have ever enjoyed this blog, please feel free to comment on it either on this page or on facebook. I also encourage you to send me a private message if you would like to share a more personal connection with the postings I have shared.

B'Shalom V'Ahavah (With peace and love)
AZ

Uneeded Force Competitions

I now work at a sports bar, which I love. I love the human interactions that it comes with, and getting the opportunity to work with people of a wide variety of backgrounds and personalities is fascinating, and a fantastic life-experience. I honestly think that this experience will do better for me in understanding of the working world than any I have had thus far in my life.
At work on Saturday night, we had a UFC fight night. We payed for the ability to play the fight on our televisions, and geared up for a crazy night. Crazy we got. We had every table packed multiple times across the night. What began as a regular Saturday night crowd quickly turned into one giant group, no one leaving their seat, all staying for what seemed like the duration of the evening. This was, again, a great experience for me, as I got to work under a whole new set of conditions that I had never experienced before.
Then the fight began. I had never watched a UFC fight. I had only heard or read the end result on ESPN.com the day after. Wow. What an eye opener. The fact that thousands of people were paying to watch two grown men beat the living snot out of one another was not a little disturbing.
I found the entire fight to be somewhat sickening. The way that the two fighters were going at it was a whole new form of cruelty. It looked as though there were no rules to the match, and I'm sure there were few, if any at all. The pure brutality of the fighting was appalling in the society in which the media is now creating, because it seems so often as though we are being cushioned and sheltered from some of the nasty things in the world.
I also believe that the fight was very contradictory to the moral standards that we are striving for as a society. I would like to believe that we are striving to better ourselves with the actions we pursue, and this form of entertainment does not jive well with it. We need to ensure that our actions and our words are coinciding, and, when we take such pleasure in seeing this kind of violence, we are not doing as good a job as we intend.