Back to School New Year Resolutions as Rosh Hashana Approaches

The start of a new school year, signals for everyone, a new beginning. In the Jewish calendar, the holiday. Rosh Hashana, the New Year in 2023, falls on September 15th through the 17 th. Rosh Hashana is an important time to review old habits and make new commitments to do better for yourself and for others. Taslich, the ritual of emptying your pockets of crumbs and casting them in the water, symbolically signifies your commitment to let go of old habits and mistakes and start over again with a fresh slate.

We all procrastinate, which is why it has taken my husband eight months to put up the Bat House he gave me for Christmas. (Yes, we celebrate any and all holidays.) But last night, he put it up at the end of our yard and it looks great. It is a fine wooden bat house and as you can see in the photo below, it requires installation well off the ground and exposure to sunlight.

Bats. We seldom think about these important creatures until the Halloween decorations go up, but they need safe places to live. Bats keep the insect population in check and help as pollinators. Instead of a bird house, consider a bat house. Bats get a bad rap, as carriers of rabies, but according to public health information published by the State of Maine, less than one in two hundred bats randomly sampled carry the rabies virus. However, many people view bats solely as carriers of filth and disease. It must be all those stories written about bats entangling themselves in a woman’s hair, biting her on the neck and transforming her into a vampire. For a positive children’s story about a bat, check out The Secret Life of the Little Brown Bat.

Or, write you own story about bats to submit to one of the many theme call-outs for stories, essays, and poetry related to Halloween and Autumn.

Publisher’s theme requests are an interesting discussion. Some writers love them, because they provide a hint as to what a magazine or publishing house is currently looking for and some writers hate being told what to write about.

Publishers ask writers to “send their best work.” Creating excellent work can take months, even years. Often a call out for say stories about waterfalls, if they don’t already have a draft of something that involves a waterfall in process, may not give a writer enough time to craft an excellent piece. But perhaps you do have a piece related to the theme idea. Or maybe the theme idea inspires you.

A few weeks ago I saw that a poetry magazine was looking for work that somehow related to the word red. I love writing about my emotional response to color, so I challenged myself to write poems that contained “red.” I don’t know whether any of these poems “made the grade” as far as what this particular magazine is looking for, but I enjoyed the process.

Every time I press the submit button, I tell myself, I’m buying another lottery ticket. I don’t know who is going to actually read my work and whether they’ll be in a receptive mood when they read and I don’t know how many other pieces are in the queue, but I know they won’t get published if I don’t send them out.

This month is a good time to get organized. It doesn’t matter what you want to focus on as a human being, an artist, or as a friend- make a list of your priorities. You can write it on your computer or on a physical piece of paper, but set some goals and make yourself accountable. Check things off and congratulate yourself when they get accomplished. It’s never too late to get things right.

Thank you for reading and if you haven’t signed up to follow me, you can do so on WordPress or on Medium. You can read more of my work at Nadjamaril.com

Originally published at http://nadjamaril.com on August 30, 2023.