A lot has happened since I last wrote here; this has been an eventful year. I left my old job on the other side of the peninsula and returned to the place where it all started, twenty-one years ago, when the unhelpful situation in Taiwan forced me to leave for South Korea... and I’ve been here ever since. Now, however, it may be that late in life, another change of career is about to unfold... so, on this rainy Sunday afternoon, let me finish taking my blood pressure meds and tell you...

  Several well-known memes doing the rounds regularly urge us to turn off our TVs. We might mistakenly think that this is because much modern TV pabulum is utter pointless garbage or even outright manipulation, for which reason we should articulate a reasonable philosophical argument as to why it is so desirable. Sadly, events (and, let’s be honest, lack of discipline on my part) this week have conspired to keep me away from my Stoic journal, to which I returned tonight. Why?...

It's been a while since I last wrote anything here, and as we approach the end of this (admittedly incomplete) first year of Stoic journalling, perhaps it is not premature to look back and consider an important omission in my method... or is it an advantage? As a teenager in both the Lower and Upper Sixth Form (in England), which is now over forty years ago (and might elsewhere be referred to as ‘high school’, I suppose), I used to write tons of emotional, misinformed screed...

What follows is a not-entirely-serious observation which is intended to revisit and perhaps expand slightly on a previous commentary. However, as I approached the end of writing it, I realised that there was an element of “alchemy” in the analogy I was using: from lead to gold, and how we can get there.   Many of the points discussed here have been discussed previously; however, they are repeated here because of the context.   “Silence is a lesson learned from...

[Mirrored from https://www.minds.com/teacher_andy/blog/stoic-journal-a-week-without-complaining-1532019906063634437] At this point, we arrive at Week XXXI (i.e. Week 31) in Ryan Holiday’s “Stoic Journal”, which (oddly enough) corresponds this time around to a Sunday. Here, we are challenged to have a full week without complaining, but what this really means is to avoid blaming anyone but ourselves for our own errors and bad decisions. He quotes from some of the major Stoic...

  In something of a departure for Oneself, I want to mention an activity I have been trying, on and off (as sometimes I feel too busy or otherwise disinclined) since about the beginning of May this year, which is maintaining a daily Stoic-style journal using the books of Ryan Holiday [3] as an example. There might be many reasons for this, but (and this may come as a surprise to some readers) I have a long involvement in ‘philosophy’ in a wider sense. I had actually...

Although this was somewhat unexpected, something strayed across my screen this afternoon (on Tuesday) which reminded me of a former situation where the same logic applied. Apparently, the highly amusing Mr. Musk has decided, allegedly as an anti-bot move, to restrict the ability of members to vote to only those who have the blue check mark - in other words, his paying customers. Is this a good move? My own response would be "yes", based upon the historical model of the early United States,...

My reader might not be surprised to find that I spend a lot of time watching stuff online (I will return to this later on), when I am free and not doing tasks like lesson and materials prepping on a Monday (or other weekday) morning, much of which is of a masculine nature - at the moment, for example, on a Sunday night, I am listening to a recent live stream from Undead Chronic, but I listen remarkably often to Redonkulas, Taylor the Fiend, Raging Golden Eagle, Razörfist, Better...

I'm no psychologist and this is just all my theory based on observation and that is insecure people tend to be narcissistic and of course, you have got to be insecure when you're a narcissist. I guess it's forgivable that we have our insecured phase growing up but I feel like if you don't outgrow it at some point, it will cost your life and your sanity. I'm a huge advocate of meditation, as it has helped me overcome and let go of my insecurities. I can't fully say that I am no longer insecure...