…But money can buy morale.

I’m in New York. I found a two-way ticket for $499. Actually, the ticket found me, and just in time.

No shock that I’ve been feeling jaded and weary lately. I don’t know if it’s aliyah fatigue or general Israeli fatigue. It’s not easy living here, even if you do have food to eat and unpaid cable TV. If the drivers don’t kill you and the bombs don’t kill someone you love, you still experience pain every time you have to endure the news or the people on the news who tell you who you are but won’t let you correct them.

Which is why the ticket to New York was meant to prevent the dangerously-close burnout I was facing. I think most Israelis feel it at some point and I think this is a culture of traveling. I booked to come here for a week and I’m on day 4 and feeling very healthy.

As always, I’m experiencing bouts of culture shock here and there (weather is so cold, people are so cold). But, as my trips to New York usually do, I’m getting a cultural energy-boost. A web-cultural boost having to do with my current employment, that is. On the train to the city last night, this group of people in my age-bracket were standing around chatting about Web 2.0. Wow, I thought, people actually talk about this somewhere. I mean, it is essentially my job’s focus, but in Israel I’d be hard-pressed to find anyone chatting about it on the bus.

The last four days have been peppered with being invigorated by the people around me. I feel revived, respirited. I’m surrounded by the culture I work for, normally from a distance. And I’m remembering how seriously I should be taking it – and how not seriously I should be taking it.

This is definitely some of the best $499 I’ve spent in a while.


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