Today’s Daily Stoic writing prompt: Do I realize how tough and strong I am capable of being?

Going back to yesterday’s comments on flexibility: It’s not the unchanging and immutable that survive and then thrive. It’s not the hard and brittle. It’s those who can bend, who can find the way around the obstacle rather than throwing themselves up against it and shattering, or who know how to combine efforts to overcome the seemingly-invincible. Tough and strong do not mean unfeeling. In fact, allowing yourself to feel is what gives strength.

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Half day today was spent being really awful on the putting course and not horrible on the driving range. Rock Chapel is such a gorgeous course, and everything is in its early June lushness.

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Afterwards, after checking out one place for lawn ornaments and coming up empty, we ended up buying a resin pagoda at Home Depot, along with a few more edging stones, 12 solar garden lights, and six more bags of stone (which we ended up making a separate trip for because we discovered it would cost $50 for delivery). There also were assorted Viking and knight gnomes ordered, which should allow a little bit of levity in the yard design. Finished up the rock area in the backyard, and we’re more or less done now (at least until the gnomes arrive).

The necklace I have been eyeing for a couple of years now has arrived. It’s an Fz3 orbital (chemistry thing, for those not aware) but it’s also really, really tactile.

This evening was spent watching the new episode of The Bad Batch, followed by a three-part series on Berlin in 1945 from the perspective of multiple diaries on all sides of the conflict. It was absolutely fascinating to watch the city go from relatively normal at the beginning of the year, through absolute cataclysm, and then, in some sense, back towards some version of normal again by the end of the year–albeit in ruins, with the economy wrecked, and starting to deal with the initial legacy of of the Third Reich. Interesting bit: Recognizing Russian words in the snippets from various Russian soldiers and translators. Those are not words I knew two weeks ago.