Kaleidoscope II

The Doc presents three final factors contributing to a restlessness and readiness to break up his current sense of position and place. Last time he focused on the biocultural need (or compulsion) for stimulation and the "time running out" syndrome. Now it's relationships and dreams, both lost and found.

Unfreezing the Kaleidoscope: Part II

"One must begin to separate; one must be separate to begin." And here we go again. The closing reasons and emotional seasons for breaking up one's life puzzle.

4. Relationships and Roots. The beginning of the end of my decade-and-a-half creative exile in New Orleans was first signaled when best friends - a married couple - moved to Florida. And then, a year later, an intense, yearlong romantic relationship dissolved. And "The Love Trade," my country codependency number, poured out. Here's the opening:

Staring out the window I wonder why/I can't write to you Have you stolen all my thunder?/Black clouds eclipse sky blue. Did we love each other or/Just hunger for human touch? You bone weary from living and/My loneliness too much.

The Love Trade, The Love Trade/Why must we both hurt so? The Love Trade, The Love Trade/You want us to move slow? The Love Trade, The Love Trade/Why must we both hurt so? The Love Trade, The Love Trade/I just can't let you go.

But I could…And I forged an opening in The Big Easy "Iron Swamp" and let go of an obsession for a seductive woman and a city-muse. But then the grief and transitional crisis follows. The life canvas is bereft of meaning and connection; there's a painfully empty space. The life canvas is blank and uncertain…The excitement of unanticipated possibilities and novel designs await.

And again comes the uprooting from a once nurturing soil. I'm gradually withdrawing from some old DC friendships; actually letting them lie fallow is more accurate. At the moment, ambitious desires are more compelling than needs for affiliation. There is some sadness as these friendships had their day in the sun. But friendships, like seasons and moods, have their cycles. To paraphrase John Steinbeck, "This is the Fall of my discontent."

Still, Camus' words of wisdom release some energy and hope: "Once we have accepted the fact of loss, we understand that the loved one obstructed a whole corner of the possible pure now as a sky washed by rain."

5. The Promised Land. "I don't know where I'm going…I just think I know how to get there." This has been a favorite, self-generated career path mantra for many years. And now, after my recent trip out west, having connected with some of LA's energy and creativity, I'm beginning to wonder. Maybe I do know where I want to go…How the hell will I get there?

Perhaps it becomes easier to complete the breakup of one's life puzzle when one perceives fresh and compelling pieces and frameworks on a reachable horizon. For example, it helps to have a friend and colleague in Los Angeles interested in marketing my speaking and workshop programs to her corporate clients. And running my Digital City-Washington, DC "Shrink Rap and Group Chat" while in LA really brought home the flexibility, portability, connectivity and omnipresence of cyberspace.

Still there's ambivalence. Is it irresponsible to throw away that which I have built up business-wise in DC? Can one really be bi-coastal? Can I have Stress Doc Enterprises East and West, at least for a transitional period? Of course, there's the fear akin to dating two women simultaneously, a trick I never mastered. I could not give either one my undivided attention and genuine best.

Still I'm ready. First there was my cry, "Go web young cyberite!" Now I'm ready for the original, with perhaps a slight modification: "Go west (not so) young man." Many things are possible with a youthful spirit and no dependents. Maybe it's still in my blood; only two generations removed from four grandparents who journeyed from Russia and Eastern Europe. So for uprooting and relocating just carry around your Triple AAA: Adventure, Ambition and Adrenaline. But let's give Kristofferson the last word here: "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose." Perhaps we need a fourth "A": "Abandon."

6. Anticipatory Grieving. Speaking of loss, clearly, writing this essay is advancing my grief process by highlighting the existential issues - the fears, ambivalences, disappointments and growing expectations and fantasies. It seems my frozen kaleidoscopic bits of family, friends, job, hobbies, landscapes, etc. are being replaced with a teleidoscope. Instead of a finite, though large, number of designs built into the cylinder, the patterns of the teleidoscope, akin to a telescope, emerge by focusing upon and refracting the environment. The more surrounding light and color, the more vivid and compelling the resulting image. And, at present, the illuminating and inspiring patterns are rising in the West.

So the East Coast, off an on, has fulfilled Camus' role of "the loved one." And for pursuing that new "corner of the possible," I will close with my own poetic reflection: Whether the loss is a key person, place or powerful illusion, each deserves the respect of a mourning. The pit in the stomach, the clenched fists and quivering jaw, the anguishes sobs prove catalytic in time. In mystical fashion, like Spring upon winter, the seeds of dissolution bear fruitful renewal.

And of course…Practice Safe Stress!

Mark Gorkin, "The Stress Doc," Licensed Clinical Social Worker, is a nationally recognized speaker, workshop leader and author on stress, reorganizational change, anger, team building, creativity and humor. He is also the internet's and the nation's leading "Psychohumorist." The Stress Doc is a columnist for the popular cyber-newsletter, Humor From The Edge -- HUMOR FROM THE EDGE HOME PAGE . Mark is also the "Online Psychohumorist" for the major AOL mental health resource network, Online Psych -- ONLINE PSYCH: THE STRESS DOC and Financial Services Journal Online. And he is an offline writer for two mental health/substance abuse publications -- Treatment Today and Paradigm Magazine. His motto: Have Stress? Will Travel: A Smart Mouth for Hire! Reach "The Doc" at (202) 232-8662, email: Stress Doc@aol.com, or check out his "Hot Site" website: http://www.stressdoc.com or click STRESS DOC HOMEPAGE. (The site was selected as a USA Today Online "Hot Site" and designated a four-star, top- rated site by Mental Health Net.)

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