Gum on My Shoe

Imagine looking down on your country or continent from a plane. You are aware of the general terrain: mountains, lowlands, lakes and rivers. Perhaps you recognise some locations – places you have visited or heard about – but there are no lines or labels down there on the ground to distinguish this country or state from the next. Now take out a map of the same area. The map is not the landscape, it is a model of the landscape, and it is full of labels. This area has a line drawn around it. The area inside is labelled so . If it is a political map, the line might define a country; this line a different country, this line a county, state or principality. Select a different map of the same region. Maybe this one displays regions in terms of economic affluence, manufacturing output, average rainfall, or languages spoken. The area that was labelled “England” will now carry other labels. The labels applied depend on their definitions, and which maps we choose. Maps and labels are incr...

because we wrote down one night everything in it ~ Adrian Henri In a follow up to sharing my blogging workflow I thought I’d give you a behind-the-scenes peek at my EDC (every day carry). These are the items I take with me when I’m out and about for my blogging and journaling. This has been on my to-do list for ages. I was finally inspired to write it by a conversation with my friend and fellow mental health blogger Aimee Wilson. Aimee: What’re you doing? Martin: Right now, sorting what to bring out with me tomorrow. I carry so much in that green bag of mine, but it’s all essential blogging and writing stuff! I keep meaning to do a blog post about all I carry. Aimee: That’s so funny because the new post I’m writing is about all the essentials for blogging! Martin: No way! Really? Aimee: This is why we’re best friends — we have so much in common! You can read Aimee’s Essential Items for Bloggers on her blog I’m NOT Disordered. We approach things differently (compare ...

This article began as a fourteen minute audio clip recorded on my way into work. The recording is a bit rambling in places but I’m starting there because that’s how I was feeling that day. Flat. I’ve edited for clarity and added some other relevant material. You can listen to the recording here on our YouTube channel . Good morning. I wanted to see if I could capture a little of how I’ve been feeling since some time yesterday. It’s what I tend to call “flat.” That’s verbal shorthand for a sense of feeling fairly low. Not actively low or depressed; it’s more like the absence of any specific emotion than the presence of a negative one, if that makes sense. Over the past year or so I’ve noticed it occurring every now and again. It doesn’t usually last more than a day or so and it doesn’t impact me severely if I don’t engage with it too much. If I do engage with it, or if something happens to exacerbate things, it has the potential to take me bit lower but when it first occurs it’s ...

Each month Fran and I share the ten most viewed articles here at Gum on My Shoe. As we enter a new year and a new decade I thought I’d do something different and choose my personal favourites from everything we published during 2019. One way or another these articles changed my perspective or thinking. Maybe they will change yours. 1. Six Things I’d Quite Like to Do in 2019 Published: 1 January 2019 I’ll start at the very beginning (a very good place to start!) with the list of things I felt I’d like to do through the year. You can see how I got on here . It might appear as though I didn’t do very well but that’s partly because things turned out other – and a lot better – than I anticipated. I’ve made these lists for the past three years (see how I did in 2017 and 2018 ) but I’m taking a break. I want to hold myself open to what comes along in 2020 rather than keeping an eye on my expectations at the start of the year. How about you? Are you a resolution or objectives sort ...

Check out our top posts for the past month. Posts are listed by number of page views they attracted during the month, most popular first. How I Unplugged the Christmas Machine and Created Stable Holidays Heartwarming Moments on the Jingle Bell Walk Our Top Posts of the Month (November 2019) How to Be Honest without Losing Your Friends Audio Recording on Android with the Parrot Voice Recorder Connection and Challenge: Because Not Every Phone Call Is a Great Phone Call and That's Okay Helping Someone Else How to Write the Best Acknowledgement Page for Your Book Practical Self-Care Tips to Help You Crush Life as an Introvert Four Things It's Hard for a Mental Health Ally to Hear (And Why It's Important to Listen) Our most visited pages were: Contact Us Resources About Us Our books News and Appearances Testimonials  

Audio version here (YouTube) I was just thinking about one of my friends a moment ago and what came to my mind was I'd never met anyone like her before. And then I thought about it for a moment and I'm like hang on, if you're really paying attention you could say that about every single person that you know, that you meet, in your life. If you're really paying attention you've never met anyone like that person before, because there is no one else in the world like that person. We are all stupendously and spectacularly unique. We each carry our load of issues, unresolved situations and patterns from the past, and unfulfilled magnificence. So yeah, the friend I was thinking about, I've never met anyone like her before. Or her . Or him. Or you .  

At the start of the year I posted a list of Six Things I'd Quite Like to Do in 2019 . I shared an update in August, but how did I get on overall? Let’s take a look! 1. Take Three Well-being Courses ACHIEVED I feel I've done pretty well with this one. I began two courses which I've yet to complete: Overcoming Self-Sabotage at DailyOM and OpenLearn's Understanding Autism . I updated my Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) training and took Pluralsight's excellent Introduction to Emotional Intelligence , also Future Learn's Understanding Suicide and Suicide Prevention Strategies in a Global Context . Best of all I completed the three day Personal Leadership Programme offered by The Living Leader . This was excellent and gave me plenty to think about. The single best aspect of the course was the Vision Statement we were each invited to write: a snapshot of the ideal life we might have if we believed anything were possible. That is something I will be keeping v...