Today’s Daily Stoic writing prompt: What’s the most painful part of Stoicism for you?

This question does not concern parts of Stoicism that you disagree with most; instead, it’s about what you find most challenging in the philosophy.

For me, I think the discipline of committing to write every day has been the challenge. It’s very definitely a Stoic practice to do what I’ve been doing for 10 1/2 months now, and I’ve managed to stick to it–although some days I definitely go deeper than others. I think I’m starting to at least build a habit of taking some time to think and reflect. What I’m likely not going to do is continue to share these thoughts daily.


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A friend shared a story yesterday about a new flag/logo for Chernobyl (or Chornobyl, to used the preferred Ukrainian spelling). The logo is based on the octogon-shaped cover for the RBMK reactors, and is designed to slowly change through the reactor’s planned complete deconstruction in 2063, gradually breaking down over the years into a kind of starburst shape before finally disappearing completely. It’s a bit of an ode to the idea of the half-life of radioactive elements (but, of course, one that has a much shorter duration than many of those half-lives. It also represents a movement from darkness into light.

I’d completely buy a t-shirt with this year’s version, particularly if the proceeds went to ongoing efforts to remediate the site.

The additional scroll is now also complete. Tomorrow, I’ll take photos of everything. I’ve also started gathering up jewelry and such for the event on Saturday. I’ve realized that although I’ve done a bit of travel the past few weeks, Herissony Cat hasn’t come with me. I’ll be rectifying that.

Another pleasant trip down to the Shaw Festival today. Kreutzer Sonata was closely modeled around the Janacek string quartet, with adapted excerpts from the novella framing the movements. (There was also one portion of the actual Kreutzer Sonata, adapted for string quartet). A significant change was made to the narrative to completely remove the gender in the story–which, I think, made it a much more universal narrative and excised the misogyny from the story. (I’m glad I read it first–it gave me more in-depth knowledge of what was happening.)

Also, there were apple fritters, just amazing hot out of the fryer.

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