A Day in the Life

“Woke up. Fell out of Bed. Dragged a comb across my head.” Many who were not yet born fifty years ago when Mr. Lennon and Mr. McCartney penned these words will recognize them as the lyrics to the hugely popular song, A Day in the Life, which is the final track on the Beatles’s Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Although the song goes on to tell the woeful tale of a man who “blew his mind out in a car,” most days in our lives are much less extraordinary.

As a writer, I spend entirely too much time in front of a computer screen hammering away at a keyboard. Not only am I writing an exciting new novel, but I am writing query letters seeking agents to represent me, in addition to this blog, which I currently endeavor to add to each week.

Other writing includes boring reports to the Board of Directors of my synagogue, where I serve as chair of the religious practices committee. Sometimes, I even write out an agenda for our committee meetings.

This week I have the high honor of presenting the D’var Torah at our Shabbat or Sabbath service. In order to write a draft of what some refer to as a sermon, I must do the necessary research. The first step is to read the parashah, or portion, of the Torah–the Jewish bible. Next, a thorough examination of various points of view from numerous rabbis, scholars and lay people contributes to a thought provoking presentation. Finally, I get to put my own interpretation to the original text. Beyond writing this missive, I practice it in front of the mirror, so I don’t embarrass myself too badly when I deliver it to the congregation.

Most of life is punctuated by the mundane. Like everyone else, I wash, I dress, I eat, I exercise at the gym, I battle traffic, I sleep, I answer emails and I watch Netflix. All right, Hulu, Amazon Prime and some old-fashioned broadcast stuff, too.

The story of my own middle includes the fact that I had been waiting for weeks for the rain, which we usually seldom see in Southern California, to stop. When it finally did, I hurried to catch up on yardwork. While I plucked dead sepals from the blooms of my birds of paradise bush, a beautiful hummingbird serenaded me with the beating of his wings. Sometimes life doesn’t wait for our dreams to come true to reward us.

Oh, it’s time for me to get lunch.