Jim Blue

01/14/2026

“The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.” Carl Rogers

A very common thing I see in therapy is people struggling to accept themselves fully, just as they are. Some disown or disavow parts of themselves. A few of them HATE parts of themselves. It's a Jungian cliché that people turn away from and repress and hide from their "shadow" side. But the "cure" - or if not the cure, a major starting point towards healing - is to look at yourself from top to bottom, warts, scars, flaws, habits, secret hatreds and prejudices - all of it - and accept that right now, here in the present moment, this is who I am. This is not to say you accept it as your final destiny or that you give up working on it, but it is a really important starting point. Scott Peck (The Road Less Traveled) says that a key feature of mental health is acceptance of reality at all costs, and that's what I'm talking about here. Once you accept that reality and quit disowning and hating, the work of self-love and self-respect can kick in, and that is when positive change can start to happen more freely.

01/14/2026

I think any therapist who isn't almost constantly experiencing personal growth as a direct result of their work with clients is missing out on a very big part of the therapy process. Rarely, if ever, is the therapeutic benefit a one way street.

01/04/2026

I read Man's Search For Meaning during graduate school (and twice since) and it had a large impact on my thinking and life philosophy. I highly recommend it, especially if you're caught in a cycle of thinking "why me" or "life is so hard", or "what is the meaning of all this".

What if we told you that this man watched his father die in his arms.
That his mother was murdered in a gas chamber at Auschwitz.
That his wife was killed just a few months after their wedding. She was pregnant. He lost both mother and child at the same time.
That his brother was also killed in Auschwitz.
And that the manuscript he had been working on for years, his life’s intellectual work, was destroyed.

His name was Viktor Frankl.

Frankl was a Jewish psychiatrist who survived four N**i concentration camps: Theresienstadt, Auschwitz, Kaufering III, and Türkheim. He lived through hunger, brutality, humiliation, and the daily certainty that death could come at any moment.

When he walked out of the camps, he had every reason to collapse into bitterness. Every reason to hate the world. Every reason to believe that life was cruel and meaningless.

Yet he did not.

Instead, Viktor Frankl returned to medicine, to writing, and to thinking deeply about one question:
What keeps a human being alive when everything has been taken away?

From that question came one of the most important books of the twentieth century, Man’s Search for Meaning. It was written not as a theory from a comfortable office, but as a testimony carved out of extreme suffering. Frankl observed that those who survived were often not the strongest or the smartest, but those who found a reason to keep going. A memory. A responsibility. A future task. A meaning.

Frankl did not deny pain. He did not pretend suffering was noble. But he insisted that even in the worst conditions imaginable, human beings still retain one final freedom: the freedom to choose their response.

That belief became the foundation of logotherapy, his contribution to psychology, and a lifeline for millions of readers across the world.

Viktor Frankl’s life is not a story about avoiding suffering. It is a story about refusing to let suffering have the final word.

As he himself wrote:

“Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.”

12/31/2025

I don't actually know who this guy is, but I kinda like what he's throwin' down here, heh heh. 😮🤔😀

Thoughts on 2025.

Listen, fellas—and the smart ladies who snuck in—I’m fifty-plus, crow’s feet carved like fault lines across my face, each line a map of the bu****it I refused to swallow.

2025 cracked open like a cheap cassette —guts flying, tape across the floor—and twenty-five thousand new rebels poured in, mouths open, finally tasting grease instead of guilt. Gatekeepers lunged out the woodwork: “That’s nostalgia! That’s poison!” No, sweetheart—that’s the antidote. One guitar riff, one bass drum thump, one Trans Am door slam—boom, spell broken.

Back in the day, liberal meant “live and let live”, “let your neighbor grow his hair long and blast Zeppelin.” It didn’t mean let the state grow his hair for him while he rents it from the algorithm. We wanted ranch homes, a Camaro in the garage, fridge doors slamming on real cheeseburgers, not “meatless” mush stamped “safe and effective.” We wanted roller skates that took us nowhere the feds could GPS, tape decks that played songs without whispering “consume.” We ate Hostess, chugged High-C, laughed at curfews. Now? Now they score your steak, lease your wheels, and program your joy. Who the hell protests owning stuff, owning air, owning joy? Only the ones who like you leased.

I do my workouts in the basement man cave, sweat on my guitar neck, with fingers rough and black. I play the riff that slams your ribs like a locker room door. No politics. No gatekeeper. Just the old blacktop and the smell of rubber and asphalt baking under a July sun.

And boom—your chest remembers. The world used to be ours. Not “leased under tier-three compliance.” Not “owned in the cloud.” Ours. Yours. Ours to crash, to burn, to crank loud till the windows shake.

We’re done renting reality. We’re the leftovers, the ones who remember the real script before they rewrote history with Hollywood hoaxes. Back on the pavement, singing the forbidden choruses, free like the Lord intended—sparks escaping the prison planet one bent note at a time. The curtain has been torn down. The ugly truth revealed. The Wizard is a fraud. But the dawn is ours. Crank it louder. They hate the noise ‘cause it wakes the sleepers.

Rock on, rebels—we’re winning the war that they don’t want you to know exists.

Victory is in the volume.

Johnny Jetson
2025

12/26/2025

Ol' Dr. Mark just turned 66, so he's just a couple months younger than I am, and he's in MUCH better shape/health right now. I am completely on board with what he says here and will be recalibrating and steering my ship in the direction he lays out. 🙂

12/18/2025

Feeling a little down around the holidays? I highly recommend finding at least one thing that you loved as a kid, and adding it to your to do list. It’s self-care! 😃

12/09/2025

I only ordered these cups for my coffee station because they were microwave safe and health-approved, but it turns out they’re great therapy helpers as well. 🙂

11/22/2025

“Of all the liars in the world, sometimes the worst are our own fears.”

Rudyard Kipling

11/20/2025

This is a good example of people thinking this or that artist was an "overnight sensation" and how lucky they are. They don't see the - in many cases - YEARS of toiling in obscurity, somehow maintaining self-belief, working, working, working, improving, evolving, etc., that goes on behind the scenes. This was the early version, then came one little hit song, then came "stardom part one", then came a breakup, then came a reunion and some more hits, and THEN came the movie soundtrack that launched them into Mega-stardom and world-wide fame. It's rarely a smooth road to any kind of real or lasting success - it takes dedication and commitment. As a LONG-time fan of the Bee Gees, I for one am glad they stuck it out through those early days. 🙂

08/22/2025

One of the best quotes I've seen (original author unknown by me) regarding the workout vs. nutrition debate! 😀

The gym builds muscle - the kitchen decides whether anyone sees it.

08/18/2025

Yep. Important to keep in mind. A common theme when working with therapy clients is that sooner or later there will be a discussion about being present to the moment and living in the here and now (i.e., not lamenting/excessively regretting the past nor fearing/worrying about the future).

“I wish there was a way to know you're in the good old days before you've actually left them.” - Andy Bernard

08/08/2025

"My uncle…taught me something very important. He said that when things are going really well we should be sure to notice it. He was talking about very simple occasions, not great victories. Maybe drinking lemonade under a shade tree, or smelling the aroma of a bakery, or fishing, or listening to music coming from a concert hall while standing in the dark outside, or, dare I say, after a kiss. He told me that it was important at such times to say out loud, 'If this isn’t nice, what is?'"

Kurt Vonnegut