All is a contradiction, a place where opposites meet; avoiding confrontation in a war where words compete.
Reading many philosophical texts, which contradict each other and often themselves. This doesn’t render them useless but keeps us in balance and open-minded to all ideas.
Shared with GloPoWriMo 2026 Day 17: Write a poem in which you respond to a favourite poem by another poet. While this is not a response to a specific poem, it is a response to the poetry of the philosophers.
Today’s Daily Stoic poem:
Opinions Are Like…
Think about the world around you And the opinions you pile on top Dogma, expectation or ignorance Weed them out until they stop
Inspired by this post at Existential Comics that features an AI Socrates! I recommend giving it a try and posting your results in the comments. (Actually, on review, Socrates is such an asshole that he just keeps repeating himself. He refused to write a poem with me.)
Today’s Daily Stoic poem:
If You Want To Be Unsteady
Seek the cave only for shelter Peace must be found amongst your stresses Running from problems is no answer Make your choices and judgments your successes
The hunter doesn’t chase illusions Philosophy is a privilege The fundamental? The eternal? Love, death, despair, awe and dread Nietzsche is served his dinner
Not too bad today, at least in the morning. I got up at a reasonable time, partly in preparation for going back to school tomorrow at the normal time.
I spent a few hours at Utopia reading and writing and could get myself into the flow for that which felt good.
By afternoon, though I ran out of energy and napped and have been lazy and run down since. I hope that feeling doesn’t carry over to tomorrow.
Health:
Physical: 6 Mental: 7
Today I’m grateful for:
Noey being back from overseas and bringing me a couple of small gifts and making my coffee today. It was good to see her again and it sounded like she had a great time on her travels.
The best thing about today was:
Hmm – today felt like a day of two halves, the first with energy and positivity and whilst I still felt positive later, my lack of energy was disappointing. So nothing in particular stands out to me today.
Something I learned today?
I made my first poetry Instagram post today and will start learning more about it and give it a go to try and get some more eyes on my writing somehow. With no friends or followers added yet, though I have had zero views in 8 hours!
I also updated my MacBook and iPhone, which now means that I can mirror the iPhone and write directly from my keyboard into this app. This makes writing a lot easier and I would only have been able to do it before by paying for the premium option.
Review your acts, Good and bad.
By following students on Instagram, I found out that today is Rista’s birthday and so I sent her birthday wishes. She’s a nice, lively kid and I like her a lot.
Pretty good. Did some exercise again and thankful for it as I can feel my lazy muscles trying hard to pull my body together.
Today I’m grateful for:
Getting out of the house for a day as Amy suddenly came up with the idea to drive to Toeng, so after coffee, we set off, ate huge prawns in Toeng, cake in a rice field cafe somewhere, dropped by to see Wan in Chiang Khong, up to Chiang Saen for some snack shopping in the walking street, and finally a Maekhong riverside fish dinner before getting home 9 hours after leaving.
It was good to be out, but I’m looking forward to tomorrow and staying in!
The best thing about today was:
Having a quick video call with Hayden before our lunch was served. He’d just come off a 20-hour shift with one of his difficult clients but seemed pretty chipper.
What was out of your control today and how did you handle it?
Amy is pre-menstrual so whilst she was pretty good today she also got a bit wild every now and then.
Something I learned today?
Crispus Attucks was an American whaler, sailor, and stevedore of African and Native American descent, who is traditionally regarded as the first person killed in the Boston Massacre, and as a result, the first American killed in the American Revolution.
I took this picture because…. cake! The photo was better than the cake.
Pretty positive. Woke up with a start when my alarm went off. I was in the middle of a dream where I jumped into some icy water and got sucked into a cave and started drowning. But then I was watching myself counting whilst holding my breath to see if I had enough air to find my way out.
When I arrived at my first class the kids were early and busy doing work so I asked them why and they said they hadn’t done the work in the six-day break and had to finish before their next class. I asked them what it was about and it was something to do with a futuristic world. So I let them carry on and I prepared a related quiz for them for the second half of the class which they are competitively doing now. Easy work for me so far.
Today I’m grateful for:
Hearing that Hayden has landed himself a full-time job in Brisbane. I’m not sure how this will affect being able to see him whilst I’m there but I hope this might be a good starting point for him to find a routine that he can work out to his advantage.
The best thing about today was:
Enjoying being back at school even on my busiest day of classes. I had everything in order and things ran pretty smoothly.
I also advanced myself a little bit with my guitar practising, finally being able to stumble through some difficult tunes well enough to pass that section. I’ve been stuck at the same level for two years or more mainly because there’s a fingerpicking section that I’m not particularly interested in completing but I’ll give it a go again.
What was out of your control today and how did you handle it?
Nothing untoward out of my control today. Things that were out of my control were treated as such.
Something I learned today?
I had a little look at my old lessons on Google Slides today and can see that they should be relatively easy to convert to Quizizz for use next semester. Apart from being unable to control the students forgetting logins and passwords, I feel more confident using the system now and finding a good tool for tracking and ensuring work is done and revised again easily.
What do I need to let go of?
There is a certain person that I would like to get out of my thoughts. I need to let go of any resentment and bitterness that has been left. In fact, I don’t have those feelings much but somehow this person’s actions in the past come back to haunt me as validation that my attitude towards them is correct but what I would prefer is to just not care. I don’t have anything to prove so why do I keep comparing?
I took this picture because here is the top princess of the house, keeping a careful watch on his human staff.
Not like Beckett, not absurd It’s just as English as the word The saddest laugh I ever heard
Rolling laughs don’t come from rolling hills No pearly whites penetrate the mills More bitter than the bitterest pills
And only laughing when it hurts The summer wine no longer works Born amongst the miserable jerks
There was a time when some British comedy TV became too dour even for me. Last of the Summer Wine and Only When I Laugh are referenced and remain memorable for their misery! I was self-aware enough to realise that watching these shows made me unhappy. I just wanted to laugh at something funny, not at something sideways.
Today I’m feeling:
Tired and useless. The grey of the sky is getting me down. It’s not like the grey of a cloudy sky. That sky moves and promises. This sky is dead. I woke up tired and have napped twice since. Everything feels pointless. No inspiration. No movement.
Today I’m grateful for:
My memories of Murray and myself philosophizing with our teenage imaginations at the bottom of the school field. We looked up at the sky and stars and had no idea how inconsequential we are.
The best thing about today was:
Finishing reading Death’s End. What an awesome book with big crazy ideas. Onto some lighter reading next with Michael Parkinson’s biography.
What was out of your control today and how did you handle it?
My positivity has fallen down today mainly due to tiredness I believe. My PMT or low point of my circadian rhythm. Perhaps I napped my way out of it.
Something I learned today?
I read today that China has offered to mediate between Palestine and Israel in a search for peace in the Middle East. It’s difficult to imagine that it might work but if both sides can see the benefits of increased prosperity perhaps there’s a chance?
What place holds special meaning to me?
There are too many to mention. Today I feel like I am not living my life. My memory feels like a story I watched on TV rather than events that actually happened to me. The places in my memory are still there yet the actual places are not. They exist but are not the same. Sometimes it’s better for a memory to be repaved over with concrete.
I took this picture because as I was riding home from Utopia the mountains were more visible than in recent days and it can be seen how dry the jungle has become out there. The cows and bulls offered a perfect foreground.
1994ever 