Joe's Jottings

  • To sleep, perchance to…

    …have weird people trying to eat you? I’m pretty sure that the Shakespeare quote involved the word ‘dream’ but my latest nocturnal meanderings by my subconscious were not of the peaceful type! I’m a great logger and journaler of dreams.  I can remember many dreams that I had when I was a child and a

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  • “If I think back, I get depressed. If I think ahead, I get afraid.”

    I came across this quote on the ‘Humans of New York’ page.  If you’ve not encountered it I’d recommend it.  The picture and short quote – and that’s all it was – can be found here. It sometimes feels a bit voyeuristic; you can’t help but wonder what goes through someone’s mind when they make

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  • Ooooh…..squirrel!

    My biggest personal productivity shortcoming – and trust me, I have a few – is probably my ability to get easily distracted.  It used be procrastination, but I gradually managed to get that at least a little under control.  But focus is definitely an issue. I guess part of it is that I have something

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  • Dandelion Breaks and how to avoid them

    I have always been a great fan of Berke Breathed’s cartoon strip ‘Bloom County’. For those of you whose life is as yet incomplete, lacking reporting from the strange world of Bloom County, I refer you to https://www.facebook.com/berkeleybreathed/ where the current ongoing daily adventures of the characters can be found. Originally Bloom County stopped being published

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  • To Peace….

    …and before everyone leaps up, glasses and coffee mugs in hands, and shouts ‘To Peace’ back to me, I’m not offering a toast here! I’m thinking that it’s about time we made ‘peace’ a verb. Henri Nouwens had this to say : “Did I offer peace today? Did I bring a smile to someone’s face?

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  • You’ve not walked in my shoes but we use the same shoe-shop

    There’s an old story that goes something like “Never judge a man until you’ve walked a mile in his shoes; you’ll have his shoes and you’re a mile away from him!” OK, that’s not the real version – the original stops at the semi-colon and is a call to empathy with others. Don’t judge until

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  • Due Diligence….

    My reading habits – OK, I tend to read everything that’s put in front of me, from books to the backs of toothpaste tubes – lead me in to all sorts of places.  As part of my daily spiritual development I often read essays / blog posts from a number of Christian websites, and today

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  • FOMO and FOHMO

    As always, late to the picnic, but I recently encountered the acronymn FOMO. It’s not a new type of washing powder, but short for Fear Of Missing Out.  It’s defined in Wikipedia as : Fear of missing out or FoMO is “a pervasive apprehension that others might be having rewarding experiences from which one is

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  • The girl with the parasol

    I’m a bit of a film buff – probably not as much as I once was but I love old films, and unsurprisingly Citizen Kane is up there in my list of favourites. There’s a scene in there which I’ve always loved – it’s between the reporter researching the life of Charles Foster Kane and

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  • Hope springs eternal…

    One of my favourite films is ‘The Shawshank Redemption’. There are a number of reasons for this – one is that I’m a big fan of the novella it’s based on – ‘Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption’ by Stephen King. The story was originally published in a book of 4 stories called ‘Different Seasons’.

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