That's right. What a lot of people don't realise is that Marcus wasn't giving you advice to stand down. He was exhorting himself to be a good man, to stop craving more, not to let himself get drawn into excess. He didn't write a book. He performed a regular mental exercise where he reminded himself of the values he wanted to uphold and how he would want to react when such circumstances that he just got through were to reoccur. What you are reading is his personal journal. A notebook. The benefit of Stoicism isn't in reading his notebook, but in doing the same exercise that he put himself through.

If you want to learn from a teacher, read Discources from Epictetus. If you want to hear it from an eccentric uncle, read Seneca. If you want to see a master in the middle of his training, read Marcus Aurelius.