Gum on My Shoe

Just being willing to go into yourself is brave. Actually making the steps is a hero’s journey. — Fran Houston This post was inspired by a t-shirt I received as a Christmas gift. It’s a white “Redbox” design shirt by American outdoor products company The North Face . I recognised the brand but I’ve never owned anything by TNF before. Neither can I recall owning a white shirt of any kind since the days wearing a collar and tie was de rigueur for anyone working in the civil service. These days, I wear t-shirts pretty much every day of the year no matter the weather and regardless of sartorial convention. I have a burgeoning collection. Until a couple of years ago, most were mental health related in one way or another. As I’ve written previously, wearing t-shirts is not enough , but it can be great conversation starter and I’m proud to support the work of mental health organisations and initiatives including Time to Change, Mind, Bipolar UK, and Stigma Fighters. In 2023 I made ...

Curiosity is a good vibe in the face of the uncertain. — Martin Baker This blog post was inspired by a recent conversation with a friend who was feeling uncertain about a meeting she needed to arrange. After listening for a while, I suggested she approached it with a sense of curiosity. “Imagine you’re visiting a volcano,” I said. “You don’t know what will happen when you get there but you’re curious to find out.” It wasn’t a perfect analogy, but my friend got the meaning. (The conversation reminded me of another natural wonder analogy which Fran and I still use: that of visiting a waterfall and standing back so as not to be drenched or overwhelmed.) When Is Curiosity Useful? Curiosity might not be the most obvious response to a difficult or stressful situation, but Fran and I have found it helpful in a number of scenarios. Moving or anticipating the move from one phase of illness to another. For example from mania to depression, or from relative stability into depres...

Teamwork makes the dream work. — John Maxwell You can design and create, and build the most wonderful place in the world. But it takes people to make the dream a reality. — Walt Disney This was inspired by a recent social media post congratulating a dear friend of mine for being commended Veterinary Nurse of the Year at her place of work. I couldn’t be happier for her. Louise and I have been friends since 2019 and she’s one of the most fun, caring, and genuine people I’ve ever met. It was a delight to see how many of her friends and colleagues feel the way I do about her. As I commented on the post, “I have tears in my eyes reading this, Louise! Congratulations! So so happy you exist!” She’ll be a touch embarrassed to read this further tribute to her existence, but I’m confident she’ll forgive me. (Love you, Lou!) It reminded me of a success of my own. A few months ago the team I’m part of was recognised with an award for working so well together. The following is excerpted fro...

On January 1, 2025 I took up my favourite fountain pen and began my diary entry, as I have done every day since January 1, 1975. That’s fifty years of daily diary writing, with no more than two or three entries missed out of 18,263. This is my tribute to the achievement. I’m grateful to Fran for suggesting it as something worthy of recognition. How did you start? My first diary was a Christmas gift from my parents. I think I’d been given one in previous years but the idea of writing in it every day hadn’t caught on with me. For some reason, 1975 was different. I wrote an entry on January 1 and kept going. Day after day. Month after month. Through that year. And the next. And the next. Fifty years later, here I am. What do you write about? That’s not easy to answer, because it’s changed a lot over time. In the early years I mostly wrote about which lessons I’d had at school that day, which teachers I fancied, and what I’d watched on TV. There wasn’t much else going on in m...

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. Shhhhhhh! A Friend's Guide to Secrets The Box on the Shelf: A Strategy for Handling Difficult Issues and Situations The Empathy Factor: Exploring Sympathy, Empathy, and Compassion It's Not Enough / Never Enough One Must Imagine Sisyphus Happy: Encounters With the Absurd Man Thank You Anyway: The Gift of Ingratitude It's Time to Talk. But What If You Don't Want To? I Hope We All Make It The Hidden Cost of Unreliability I'm Weak and What's Wrong With That? Our most visited pages were: Contact Us Resources About Us Our books Testimonials News and Appearances   Photo by Martin Baker.  

Since 2020, I’ve marked the closing of each year by sharing one photo and one blog post for each of the preceeding twelve months. 2020: My Unpredicted Year 2021: My Year in Photos and Blog Posts 2022: My Year in Photos and Blog Posts 2023: My Year in Photos and Blog Posts Continuing the tradition, here’s my personal look back at 2024 in photos and blog posts. I hope you’ll enjoy looking through it as much as I did putting it together. January This photo was taken late afternoon on my way home from a day in the office. The gentle light from the setting sun and sparse treeline evoke thoughts of endings rather than beginnings. It’s a theme that runs through the majority of my deliberations this year. The blog post I’ve selected is The Last of the Irish Rover: A Tribute to Shane MacGowan , who died in November 2023. As I wrote, “His death has given me a great deal to think about in a number of areas, including political history, national identity, resilience, mental...