Life and Death
23.12 Mortality and Immortality
I found exploring cemeteries profoundly thought-provoking. Marlene found it mildly morbid. I understand her point of view, even though I doubt she understood mine.
2023-06-29
Travels with Myself
A Journal of Discovery and Transition
Doug Jordan, Author
Life and Death
23.11: Turning Into My Dad
Ageing happens every day of course but we don’t tend to notice, until one day. Somewhere around age 70 I began to notice changes in Dad’s skin, brown spots on his hands, and face. And jowls. Clear signs of ageing. And it bothered me.
His skin also became increasingly wrinkled. He’d take off his perma-pressed shirt and remark his skin needed ironing. Miraculously his hair never went gray!
2023-06-15
Books by Doug Jordan
21-20. The M&S Project, Part 2
An effective sales and marketing plan, whether for books or boats, requires two main elements: having in place a distribution channel, or channels, and bringing
2021-10-29
Mental Health
21-16. Dreams 3
Do you recall Roy Orbison’s tier two hit song, In Dreams? (Probably not, but it’s a beautiful song.) It starts as a fantasy, of a lucid hopeful future; but true to form, it ends badly. I think that’s the main point of dreaming, to reconcile our internal conflicts. (Roy must have had a depressing life – almost all his hits are sad songs full of doubt.)
2021-08-29
Mental Health
21-14. Dreams
I dream. A lot. I’m not sure I dream any more than anybody else but I seem to remember my dreams more than the average person.
2021-07-31
21-8. Pandemic Ennui
Ennui is not quite the same as boredom… Ennui is more than that, a general feeling of lassitude and listlessness that dulls the mind and torpefies the spirit, and persists. It is this feeling of ongoing sameness that enervates; even people exhausted by their heightened workload and demands of the pandemic and its consequences are suffering mental fatigue. It’s a hamster wheel with no joy.
2021-04-30
Mental Health
20-12. Hopefulness
I’m sure you will all agree I’ve beaten this dead horse long enough. Wasn’t the whole of the last week’s post, and its supplement, The End of Days, dreary enough? I’m sure many of you are saying, we get it, November is dreary. Enough already.
2020-11-30
TWM – 41. Accident of Recovery?
Whether I knew it or not, whether I was conscious of my decisions and actions or not, something was changing in my life.
2019-11-23
TWM – 40. Anger And Grief
It may seem odd to think of anger as a sign of returning to mental health, and it wasn’t obvious to me at the time either, but instead of the nihilism of anger that I had been experiencing I was seeing something different. The anger was no longer directed at blaming and revenge, it was more generalized. I’m sure I offended some of my friends during this period, and for that I must apologize. I just hope they can see that this was part of my healing process.
2019-11-16
TWM – 38. Mental Health
My journey through the Fog, and then into the Abyss, gave me much experience with what mental health is. Beyond academic knowing, I now had
2019-11-06
TWM – 35. The Question of Suicide
After that dream, and all through that awful summer of Emily yo-yo-ing me I had considered hanging myself more than a few times from various staircases, but now, while visiting Marlene, I thought the branch of the tree reaching over her headstone would do nicely. I wondered where I had put my rope.
2019-10-21
TWM – 29. Into The Abyss
I knew I was having an emotional episode, even though I had never experienced anything like this before. This is what is commonly called a ‘nervous breakdown’; though professional people don’t use the term anymore, it nevertheless feels apt if you are experiencing one.
2019-10-04
