Jordan Drayer

Last night at a Selichot service, the rabbi asked us to close our eyes and imagine what we want in the new year, who we want to be, what...

Start of a new month, almost a new year Jewishly, so time for some reflection. Do I do too many things? Probably. My time is taken up by...

Maybe I've written about this before, but it's on my mind today, so we're talking about religion. I was not raised with religion; I value...

Comparing Odysseus' journey with dreams and goal-setting in modern life.

Yesterday at temple, a family came for what was essentially a baby-naming, except that the child was six years old. The reasons had to do...

Books I've been reading recently: The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron The Power of the Actor by Ivan Chubbuck Drive: The Surprising Truth...

Continuing the count of the Omer, which again is the 49 days between the second night of Passover and Shavuot, we are ending the week of...

So yes, I fell off the Omer wagon; I was going to do a blog post for that week's middah, but the last four weekends have all been very...

Chesed is 99% of the time translated as "loving-kindness." To me, this means acting towards another person with respect of their time, not making fun of them like for how they look, speak, or act, listening when they speak without interrupting too much, abiding by their boundaries (like if they don't want to hug, don't hug them), and just generally being nice.

Passover is coming soon, with its themes of slavery, freedom, and redemption. I find it to be a fun holiday, since I've been lucky to...

Here I am continuing my existential, philosophical musings, this time riffing off of a comment I read recently on Reddit, the idea of...

A few months ago, my friends took me to The Last Bookstore in downtown Los Angeles. In many ways, it's meant more for the Instagram...

Listing out complaints in the hopes of commiserating with other freelancers

My friends and I ended a Dungeons and Dragons campaign recently that lasted a year and eight months. I've heard of games that have been...

2025 is off to a dynamic start in Los Angeles with two huge wildfires and several smaller ones. I've never lived so closed to one before....

What's the point to creating your own things, if no one else is going to read it, watch it, look at it, listen to it, etc.? Is the...

In my mind, I have an unnatural predilection for "needing to be productive." I'm probably not alone in this, so this is my observation to...

In my traditional fashion, I beat the incredible game of Baldur's Gate 3 last night (or very early this morning). I have a habit of...

This weekend I'm in the middle of attending Get Your Game On, Los Angeles 2024, put on by Rachel Naylor's The Voiceover Network. Friday...

I got a new tattoo! This is my third one, the biggest now and most prominent, so why not have record somewhere of why it's special to me?...