Today’s Daily Stoic writing prompt: Can I blow my own nose–instead of asking someone to do it for me?

What this particular prompt is suggesting is that focusing only on the ways you have been wronged is ultimately counterproductive. Note here that this is personal–it has nothing to do with larger-scale wrongs, or wrongs against groups of people. What this speaks to for me is that while I can ask for, and perhaps receive, apologies from people who have wronged me, what I do next is up to me. Others cannot heal my soul.

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Toastmasters officer training attended. Two more CWH book chapters edited (and tomorrow’s a Zoom call with the Sunday volunteer gang. Walked an hour and a half. Did quite a bit of embroidery, and have figured out how to deploy the gold blending filament in the current piece (photo once I get that bit done).

Such a beautiful day. In previous years, it would have been Pikeman’s Pleasure, and there would have been archery, and Thuligans, and I miss it.

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We had guests today. Only for a few moments in front of our house, outdoors, but still, it was lovely to once again see people in person. It’s gotten to the point where I’ve dulled myself so much to not hope for anything that just that tiny thing feels immense. I know that, looking at the days ticking by in the calendar, I am perhaps two months away from some sense of freedom, but one becomes inured to the chains. You keep yourself from planning ahead until, perhaps at some future point, it becomes possible again, but it feels so wrong. Something will surely happen again to forestall any hopes and dreams, and so your dreams become smaller and smaller.

I remember when, it seemed, the only things constraining me were money and time (and perhaps, somewhere beyond the horizon, the limit of my own existence on this earth). I knew, even in the midst of that, that it was an illusion, but it was a charming illusion, and it was a truth for awhile. That illusion cannot ever return, but what will replace it? Will my future world be smaller, or larger? Is that a good thing, or not so much?

You get up the hill by looking at your feet, pacing yourself, one step at a time. But what happens when the hill is almost climbed? Do you dare look up? Do you dare? Do you challenge fate? Is another hill hiding around the corner? Expect the worst, hope for the best?

Will there be a time when I put aside the creations of my own hands to experience those of others again? I ache for it. When–if–my craving is sated, will it bring exhilaration or exhaustion, or just relief? What will I hear and see, tinged as it must be by what has gone before?