210501 What I learned in my studies this morning

Oh most cruel fate! 

Breaks my daily reading streak. 

Ah! It is but life.

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Two things Stoic happened in my life yesterday and the day before.

1. My daily streak of using my Kindle app stopped at 180 days.

2. I advised a Reddit user to relax a bit and not take things too seriously. 

At the beginning of the year, I set a challenge for myself to see if I could do some reading every day for all of 2021. It didn't work out. 

I fell prey to pre-staging my morning posts. See, sometimes I take the screenshots of a day's Daily Stoic and daily meditation the night before so I can focus on contemplation rather than mechanics in the morning. 

I did that on the night of the 27th and, though I completed my Blogger post for the day, I never opened my Kindle app on the 28th. That broke the streak . . . and I didn't even realize it until 2 AM last night when I woke up and the thought flashed through my head that I forgot to do anything at all for April 30. No reading. No blog post. Nothing. 

Thinking that was what broke my streak, I looked at the Kindle app today and discovered that I'd actually lost it a day earlier. 

D'oh! 

It kept me awake a while last night, mildly mourning my missed maccomplishment. So I practiced my Stoicism by reminding myself that it was unimportant. It meant nothing but inner vainglory in the first place and has no effect on my life in any real sense. 

Sleep returned soon after. 

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For the second part, a person on Reddit rage quit a game I play because the developers had "made it so only pay to play" people could win.

Here's what I said to them (paraphrased):

If you play the game for fun, and not to "win" what is just an app, something that has no impact to real life other than how you react to it, you'll realize that so long as you can still play and have a bit of fun, their changes make no difference.

Play to relax and not to get "ahead" of other players in a make believe world. You'll be happier.

Acknowledge these games for what they are: a mindless, imaginary, unimportant distraction. Don't let the designer's psychological tricks and traps convince you that this meaningless illusion is somehow worth disturbing your mind. 

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From The Daily Stoic:

Appearances signal things in our social settings, but they are not Truth. I can wear an expensive designer suit and arrive in a Lamborghini, but that isn't real. They'd be rented.

But here's the important part: even if I could do that and those external trappings really were mine, that I had enough wealth to own such things, it would bear no relation to anything virtuous in life. 

I could be a moral imbecile and own such things. Just as I could be a saint and own 'not a farthing.'

Perhaps I should continue my studies....