Siege Diaries 9/13/2021

Today’s Daily Stoic writing prompt: How strong is my Inner Citadel?

What this is referring to is one’s inner strength, the protective castle that is one’s defense against adversity.

Mine, I think, is strong. In some ways, too strong. I really need more sally ports or secret tunnels so that friends can get in. Strength is useful in times of adversity, but a little vulnerability—to the right people—is also useful. It’s taken me a long time to learn this lesson, and I still am learning.

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Today has been an unusual day. Before heading to Montreal, I had a commitment to keep with teaching an hour-long webinar on impromptu speaking. I’ve done this seminar five or six times, and it seemed to run particularly well this time.

Then, seven hours of driving. We were disappointed that the Extreme Pita at the Port Hope On Route is no longer there. We also ran into a huge traffic jam east of Kingston that originally came up as a 40 minute delay. While we had no real deadline, nobody wants to sit in traffic for 40 minutes in a standard transmission car. Luckily, it ended up being only a 20 minute delay, and when we passed what was causing it, it turned out to be a transport truck that had somehow jackknifed off the road and into a ditch. Wow.

Rest of the trip was uneventful. We checked into the hotel, dropped our stuff, and headed into town—I had purchased us passes for the huge Ferris wheel in the Vieux Port area, with the idea of watching the sun set. While we missed the sunset proper (thanks to the delay) and got the joy of driving directly into the sun on our trip into town, we did hit early twilight, which was amazing. Before the ride, we had a wonderful goat cheese, pesto, sun dried tomato, and arugula pizza.