Gum on My Shoe

I’ve written previously about my blogging workflow . In this post I’m sharing ten websites I use pretty much all the time. They’re bookmarked on all my devices, so wherever I’m working I can reach them in no more than a couple of clicks. A few offer paid options but you can use all of them for free. 1. Capitalise Titles and Headings I’m a stickler for consistency. Capitalize My Title makes it easy to apply a consistent style to blog post titles, headings, and sub-headings. Simply paste or type your title or heading and it will automatically capitalise and convert it. You can select Title Case (according to different style guides such as AP, APA, Chicago, MLA, BB, AMA), sentence case, UPPERCASE, lowercase, and more. 2. Italics or Quotes? Can’t remember whether to use italics, quotation marks, or neither for the titles of books, movies, songs, poems, newspapers, and other media? Capitalize My Title has a quick reference table covering the key style guides. 3. Optimise You...

“Did I mention I’m annoyed?” I was on my regular evening call with Fran. It was a Friday. “Yes, Fran. I noticed.” After thirteen years of friendship, I don’t miss much. She was, indeed, annoyed. By this friend and that. By this thing someone had done or said, that thing someone had not done or not said. By people in general. By life. There was quite a list. Like any of us, Fran gets frustrated from time to time, but it was rare for her to be quite so annoyed at quite so many things all at once. I invited her to take advantage of how she was feeling by throwing anything and everything that was annoying her into the pot. This and that. Him and her. Everything and everyone. Noting that my name was conspicuously absent from the list, I told her I was feeling left out. “Aren’t you annoyed at me?” It turned out she was, so we got that out into the open too. I didn’t try to fix things or dismiss how she was feeling. I didn’t offer my point of view, rationalise why maybe that person ha...

I’ve always had a thing for benches, so much so that they feature in three of my four all-time happy places . Benches to rest on. Benches to think, write, and dream. Benches to sit and talk with friends. Benches with a view. Benches with memories. This evocative photo by Huy Phan inspired me to explore the role benches have played, and continue to play, in my life. To Sit With Friends There are two wooden benches in the middle of the village of Great Musgrave in Cumbria. I’ve shared many calls there with Fran on my evening walks from the holiday cottage I used to visit almost every year. A little further on, down a narrow avenue of horsechestnut trees, another of my favourite benches sits in a field outside St Theobald’s Church beside the River Eden. Another happy place bench is in the beer garden of The Wateredge Inn, in Ambleside. From my table, less than twenty feet from the waves lapping against the pebbles of the shore, I have a perfect view south along the lake. I...

You don’t have to write everything down. You can trust your consciousness that what needs to come back into your mind will come back. — Fran Houston This post was inspired by two recent conversations. The first happened a week or so ago at work when the discussion turned to music festivals. Someone mentioned Woodstock. I said I was a little young to have attended (I was eight years old and on the wrong side of the Atlantic) but I’d attended Glastonbury twice, in 1983 and 1984. One of my colleagues asked what bands I’d seen. I couldn’t remember. I told him I’d have to look in my diary! The second conversation was with Fran. A few months ago she began keeping a journal, in the form of weekly letters to her mom. Discussing her most recent letter, she commented that it isn’t necessary to write everything down. I asked what she meant. “You can trust your consciousness,” she said, “that what needs to come back into your mind will come back.” That struck me as an interesting insig...

Check out our top posts for the past month. Posts are listed by the number of page views they attracted during the month, most popular first. It’s Not Enough / Never Enough Shhhhhhh! A Friend’s Guide to Secrets The Box on the Shelf: A Strategy for Handling Difficult Issues and Situations How to Use a Spreadsheet for Wellness and Self-Care I’m on My Way: Thoughts Inspired by Ed Sheeran’s “Castle on the Hill” How Do You Put Up With Me? An Open Letter to My Bipolar Best Friend Thank You Anyway: The Gift of Ingratitude Navigating Mental Health Miles Apart: An Interview with the Co-Founder of Gum on My Shoe All the Things I Need to Hear You Say: An Exercise in Letting Go Our most visited pages were: Contact Us About Us News and Appearances Our books Resources Testimonials   Photo of Kirkharle Courtyard, Northumberland, by Martin Baker.  

... at the beginning where I was doing it every day like clockwork, it entirely carried me out of that low spot, and I believe that it saved my life. — Ellis Ducharme Fran and I recently shared our experiences visiting the Portland Museum of Art and the Laing Art Gallery here in Newcastle upon Tyne. Continuing the Art of Friendship theme, we’re delighted to showcase photographer and videographer Ellis Ducharme, whose exhibition Six Feet Above showed through June at the Peaks Island library in Maine. The website described Six Feet Above as “a collection of thirty-six photos from a personal project to fight depression and raise awareness of mental health. Ocean themes and many cityscapes focus on finding beauty in places most deem undesirable and ugly.” Fran lived on Peaks Island for many years. Although I’ve never visited in person, I feel a great affection for the island as Fran’s shared so much of it with me. She still visits regularly and attended several of this year’...