“We have the power to hold no opinion about a thing and to not let it upset our state of mind—for things have no natural power to shape our judgments.”
—MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 6.52
I stumbled upon this quote the other day when reading The Daily Stoic, and I was surprised at how relevant this is today, especially for those of us who interact on social media, though this can be extended to anyone who owns a TV or reads the news from national newspapers.
It is that time of the year where we look back, analyse how our year was and figure out where we want to go. Except this my first time doing it.
Maybe I feel the need for an end of the year review because it's the end of a decade, or maybe because a lot (of mostly unfortunate events) happened to me this year. So here we go...
Images are useful tools to set the mood of a blog or website; they attract the attention of readers and let people know at a glance what is the topic of the article they are about to read.
In which a master and his pupils think about life.
The cold wind was blowing incessantly and with its strength, it had cleared all clouds from the sky: perfect blue now being painted with black spots where a flock of birds was moving South. The sun was setting, painting the skyline red and turning the snow-covered mountain tops pink. The shadows were growing longer and the only noises were the cicadas song and the wind blowing among the tree leaves.
Useful tools for blogging and maintaining a website
While I don't use a lot of images on this blog, I do make art that I sometimes like to share online, and think it is important to make sure that images are optimised properly, so they don't take up a huge amount of space.
Krita – the app I use to make art – has its own web optimisation settings, however it is TinyPNG that provides the best results.
I have been in a bit of a slump this week, so I am glad I picked a short story for my blog: even if I didn't feel like reading, this was short enough that I could do it, and in turn, I was able to push myself to write this blog entry.
Makers on watercolour paper
Photo by