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Monday, December 30, 2013

Creative Risk-Taking: The Art of Designing Disorder

As the year comes to a close, it’s often a time of reckoning:  what is the gap between the ideal and the real?  Have I too often clung to “b.s.” (“be safe”) security over risk-taking uncertainty; am I willing to dig deep for genuine growth opportunity?  My first offering for the New Year, the revised first two-steps/two-pages of “Creative Risk-taking:  The Art of Designing Disorder” from the upcoming book, The Stress Doc’s ™ Resiliency Rap.  (If interested, email for the entire poetic essay.)
 
The second (soon forthcoming) communique outlines three classroom/Stress Doc workshop programs derived from The Stress Doc’s ™ Resiliency Rap.  These programs are:
 
1) “Stress, Loss and Change Resiliency”
2) “Creative Expression/Emotional Adaptation”
3) “Core Curriculum Standards Model
 
If you know any teachers, professors, or administrators in a high school or college/university setting that might be interested in knowing more about the Stress Doc resources (including a video on “Overcoming Procrastination,” please consider sharing the email.
 
As I like to say, “Take up the dare; to good adventures for the New Year.”  Peace!

Mark
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
Creative Risk-Taking
 
And the final “R” for “Burnout Recovery”
Learn to develop a “Risk-Taking” strategy.
Here are four steps for surviving and thriving
When you’re engaged in on the edge living
Forever smoldering is not forgiving.
Grasping liquid ideas at an uncharted border –
Creative Risk-Taking:  The Art of Designing Disorder:
 
Step 1.  Aware-ily Jump in Over Your Head
 
High anxiety comes with the territory
When landing with awkward uncertainty.
While there may be some initial dread
Take a few breaths…quiet that voice in your head
Focus on rapid learning, instead.
Try saying a prayer or trusting your gut
The opposite of risk – being stuck in a rut.
 
Characteristics of Productive Risk-Takers
 
While you may truly want to confess
Actually, it is time to assess:
How do expectations square with reality?
Ready to handle learning curve vulnerability?
Can you convert anxiety to laser beam energy?
As for skills and resources:  do you have all the horses
For jumping through hoops, for running obstacle courses?
Still admitting gaps without playing “Taps?”
(Hey, focused risk-taking is not shooting craps.)
Finally, can you maintain basic composure
In the face of your “Intimate FOE” –
That long dark shadow…Fear of Exposure?
 
Step 2.  Strive to Survive the High Dive
 
Now that you have bravely jumped in
Avoid making it “lose versus win.”
You are a learner, no way a loser…
Please consider this uncommon mantra:
Strive for the high and embrace failure.
“Rigid consistency,” as Emerson did find –
"Is the likely hobgoblin of a little mind.”

Remember, inside each humbling error
Often stirs a pregnant adventure.
With open eyes and a trusted mentor
One even defies the lonely crowd censure.
But, as matter of fact, the most meaningful crack:
No more running from that “all-knowing” mirror.
 
Either Learn to Fail or Fail to Learn
 
Rethink what it means to fail
Were you chasing the Holy Grail?
Failure no longer is a scarlet “F”
Forever leaving you seeming bereft
A tattoo of shame one can never erase…
Imagine failure as a transitional space
For recognizing what you could not see
For leaning on others so you might be
For giving old voices the third degree
For fighting convention and assumption
For discovering steely determination
To close the breach, seemingly out of reach
Between current position and true aspiration.
 
Placing Failure in Time Perspective
 
Of course, it’s not just a matter of rhyme
Embracing failure will take some time.
Consider these two slogans of war
For sorting the chaff, for probing the core:
1) Founding a beachhead, no matter where you stand
Is not the same as securing the island.
2) Many battles are fought and lost
Before a major victory is won.
So do not run…but do reckon the cost.
 
The Stress Doc’s TLC
 
As you swim and tread to who knows where
Please don’t forget to come up for air
Taking time out for mentor or peer
With whom you will play “Truth or Dare” –
One having the courage to fill your ear with
Tender Loving Criticism & Tough Loving Care!

[For the entire poetic essay, email stressdoc@aol.com]

Saturday, November 30, 2013

Holiday Offering: Giving Thanks for the Gift of Writing

Hope you had a joyful and graceful holiday.  My holiday offering is a small slice from my soon to be published e-book, The Stress Doc's ™ Resiliency Rap:  The Wit & Wisdom of “The Shrink Rapper” ™.  This section on the therapeutic value of “Writing” is one of the “Six ‘R’s of Burnout Recovery.”
 
Prose or poetry writing as well as keeping a journal can be a wonderful way to reduce stress, organize and clarify your thinking, strategize and analyze options, exercise an imagination while you exorcize “grief ghosts,”  be emotive-creative in expression, and share hard-earned or light-hearted wisdom with others.  And with practice, it becomes a skill with deeper, broader, and more resourceful style and substance.  (For example, can you find the Dr. Sesussian rhythm and rhyme?)  With all this in mind, here is one of the "Six 'R's of Burnout Recovery" – Writing.  At least I hope you find it thought-provoking, fun, and inspiring.  As was once proclaimed...Write on!

 
Mark Gorkin

 
P.S.  If you know of anyone in the "hard copy" book publishing world that might be interested in my manuscript, please drop me a note.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

4.  Writing

I write, therefore I am; trust me, this is no scam
Like now, when life seems a nonstop exam.
Or when burnt out, my brain on the lam.
In a life sucking hole; others try to cajole…
Don’t make me laugh: “Just set a goal.”
Without Moses’ staff, there’s no Promised Land path
Unless that staff is a pen with the power of Zen
To transform a past broken into timeless now and when
Time for mindful “then”…despite all the pain, up the mountain again.
 

Shoveling, Winging, and Resurrecting
 
For improving self-image, writing’s not a mirage…
Though trapped in a hovel your fingers are shovels
Unearthing a maze, a safe passage for rage.
Who knows where you’ll go on a blank screen or page!
Even though a black funnel at the end of the tunnel
A keyboard with wings may be a heroic role model:
Perhaps a soaring and daring iconic seagull
Or a soon to be Phoenix – the sign of ingenious
Skywriting with ashes; not just tweet flashes
Morphing void and null as the rebirth of a soul.
 
The Journaling Journey
 
On the dark border of panic, torch words therapeutic
Upon a moonlit screen – now mindful dramatics.
And we’re not talking highbrow academics.
Why not a journal of emotional kernels?
Dig for earthy raw pearls; pass on the cerebrals
Discover your history; debunk some of the mystery
Behind life’s doom and gloom, oh please leave some room
For sticking a pen in hot ego balloons.
(And if you can self-poke, you’re not totally broke.)
When concrete truth is too fixed; simple, create your own mix.
 
One Must Begin to Separate…One Must Be Separate to Begin
 
Now escaping from hell, not such a hard sell
The guts of recovery:  share your personal story.
Don’t wait for a sign – start an outline and timeline.
Alas, starting’s not easy; many get queasy
Perhaps even wary; to begin can be scary, especially
Trapped in familiar rough:  “It will never ever be good enough.”
The key – start small; don’t try for it all
Or finish your writing in only one sitting
Unless a rough draft...reduce some of the sweating.
Many believe in magical power – simply wait till the 11th hour.
All they need, a final push; just one more adrenaline rush.
 
From Sleeping and Dreaming to Mental Meandering
 
Sleeping on words is far from absurd
What better place to scheme on demand –
Hades or paradise with a flick of a wand
Your personal odyssey at once at hand…
Ready, get set…now off to dreamland!
And we’re better word pilots flying the skies
With organic radar – a fresh pair of eyes.
 
Yet, sometimes embarking, I’ll still have to say
“Just walk away…live to write another day.”
Being caught in slow-limbo doesn’t equal a dumbo.
Try to meander, do not simply mope
A mind that may wander has unlimited scope:
To journey from desert to fertile ground
One must be lost before being found.
 
Short and Sharp
 
Transform your pen into a sword
Cut through dense forest; find the right chord.
In today’s world:  The Lord of the Phone
One can no longer drone on and on.
One must be short yet not too sweet
With the summit of language:  The Art of the Tweet.
And one must surely abide that all-knowing guide:
The “Three Steps to Mastery” Power Point Slide!
Okay, waxing ironic – my own face-saving tonic.
Oh to be afire with hot-blooded desire
A solitary mind burning Byronic as others “en masse” lust electronic
And attention spans click at rates supersonic.
 
Tools and Tricks of the Trade:  The Essential
 
Enough of my tirade; back to the trade:
For sketching your draft, hard won tips of the craft:
Don’t distort the complex by making it simple
Make “the obvious” uncommonly visible.
Design forest and trees, and even the leaves:
We believe what we see and see what we believe.
While most creativity dabbles in eccentricity
Nothing drives curiosity like "elegant simplicity."
The greatest challenge of all science and art…
That mind-blowing KISS - Keep It Simple and Smart!

 
Provide needed context; cut out what’s not vital
Though do sculpt your text – make strengths and cares central.
Target positive strategy; yet don’t run from tragedy
Head and heart unity is practical therapy.
Sharing drudges and druthers with receptive others
May transform even strangers into sisters and brothers.
Research shows misery doesn’t just like company
It actually prefers the miserable variety.  ;-)
 
Tools and Tricks of the Trade:  The Magical
 
Go beyond staying sane – try kaleidoscope brain:
Before taking chances on elusive romances
Pursue a heart that sings and a mind that dances
To a multihued rhythm that vibrates as a prism…
The “Aha” integration:  R A I N B O W Revelation.
Who, what, when, and where should always appear
But musing how and why lights the narrative sky.
Still my desire before I expire:
To unify the wise man and wise guy!
 
A Courageous Composition:  A Meaningful Idea
Purposefully and Passionately W/rapped in Emotion
 
Can you compose a story – far from fields of glory?
Yet with a heartfelt ring, but…one that’s embarrassing.
A tale that gently laughs at your own failures and flaws
An unguarded account that might give others pause
But for you it’s become an innermost cause
Waiting, just waiting to seep through your pores
A true priceless gift; unmatched by Mr. Clause.
 
When you finally unwind the “be perfect” bind
No longer honor bound by the old “h”-word wound
Break through psycho-gravity’s secret surround
At last, on the hollowed home ground…
Shatter for good that barrier of sound:
Sharing dark imperfection heals deep humiliation
Naturally first in your own mind…
And even if some others still lag behind
Let healing essence flow to all human kind.
 
Closing Summary
 
When soulful writing is your romance
You’re out on the floor; you’ve chosen to dance
With ideas and emotions, in all combinations
Wild and wise – from the pits to the skies
Blending purpose and passion, yet despite best intentions
Make room for regression, nurture some deviance
As you tango and gambol on the path of variance
Just remember, you always have a writer’s chance…to:
 
  • Make sense of experience
  • Justify one’s existence
  • Plow through resistance
  • Express vehemence
  • Rework adolescence
  • Demonstrate coherence
  • Explore divergence
  • Model persistence
  • Cultivate a new fragrance
  • Share your quintessence and of utmost importance
  • Reaffirm common essence!

Mark Gorkin, the Stress Doc ™, www.stressdoc.com, acclaimed Keynote and Kickoff Speaker, Webinar Presenter, Retreat Leader and Motivational Humorist, is the author of Practice Safe Stress and The Four Faces of Anger. A former Stress & Violence Prevention consultant for the US Postal Service, the Stress Doc leads one-day "Stress Resiliency" workshops for "METRO" Managers and Supervisors of the Washington Metro Area Transit Authority (WMATA).  "The Doc" is also a Team Building and Organizational Development Consultant as well as a Critical Incident/Grief Intervention Expert for Business Health Services, a National Wellness/EAP/OD Company.  Mark leads highly interactive, innovative, and inspiring programs for corporations and government agencies, including the US Military, on stress and brain resiliency/burnout prevention through humor, change and conflict management, generational communication, and 3 "R" -- Responsible, Resilient & Risk-Taking -- leadership-partnership team building.

Email
stressdoc@aol.com for his popular free newsletter & info on speaking programs and phone coaching sessions.  And click https://vimeo.com/69053828 for the Stress Doc's wildly pioneering "Shrink Rap" video.

Stress Doc Mantra: "Think out of the box, perform outside the curve (the Bell Curve) and be out-rage-ous!"
------------------------

Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Creative Process and Product: Ten Evolutionary Characteristics—Part II

Part I focused on why and how the Resiliency Rap, “A Generational-Digital Diatribe” (aka “Dinos & Digits”) kept evolving in my mind- and screen-scape, delaying its formal (“kicking & screaming”) entry into the world, to the chagrin of some others.  And not just in my mind was it worth the wait.  (See a reader’s kind words below.)  In review and preparation for Part II, “Characteristics of an Evolving Creative Process and Product,” it became clear that the tools and techniques already outlined had application beyond poetic creation.  (Email stressdoc@aol.com if you missed Part I.)  The first five,
 
1.  Engaging the Forest and Trees
2.  Challenging and Clarifying, Unifying and Lightening the Message
3.  Eyeballing and Ear-calling
4.  Trusting My Creative Discontent
5.  “Going from Good to Great”
 
would enrich or expand all manner of problem-solving procedure, practice, and product development.  The Part I closing verse (predictably, slightly amended ;-) certainly captures this:
 
The search for perfection does not equate
With an intent to go from “good to great”
When you can’t get out of that starting gate.
But if being stuck in that mental muck
Should prove more pluck than mere dumb luck
Then one will stumble and crawl, dream and incubate
So neurons may pursue and whirl, scream and gyrate.
What’s next…Aha!...that creative state?
 
And the Part I essay about that desire and drive to explore as well as patiently-passionately persist and design closure and meaningful completion of the “Resiliency Rap,” inspired at least one reader, a creative entrepreneur in her own right.  AM wrote: Love This. Your midnight oil is burning bright. You kept on going and got it just right!
 
Merci mademoiselle.  And now, without further ado…Part II:  the final five hands on “how to”s (process) for maximizing creative evolution (product):
 
1.  Striving for Visual Metaphors.  To foster message sent equals message absorbed, not just received, especially when dealing with abstract ideas, as a writer and speaker I want to put as much flesh as possible on the conceptual skeleton.  Visual metaphors are a powerful language tool for making ideas visible, understandable, and memorable.  They are especially useful when trying to build a bridge between seemingly different ideas and viewpoints or needing to traverse different assumptions and belief systems.  And, naturally, designing an apt mind-bridging metaphor may take time.
 
Purposes of Metaphor
 
A good metaphor not only helps one walk in another’s shoes but, especially, to feel their bunions.  However, sometimes the purpose of metaphor is to reveal or heighten difference and diversity, that is, to acknowledge or reinforce barriers between divided camps in a “culture” war.  For example, when it comes to our “digital divide,” there are folks who acknowledge if not embrace being symbolic “dinosaurs” as a way of poking fun at themselves and/or preempting criticism.  Conversely, some Boomers and beyond wear the metaphor like a generation-dividing, Purple Heart.
 
A satirist uses metaphor, especially visual metaphor, to poke fun and expose issues or people by making them larger or a bit more “out-rage-ous” than life.  Some metaphors may go beyond the visual; they range from emotional and/or philosophical firecrackers to TNT explosives – definitely meant to startle and surprise if not awe and mesmerize; and sometimes to challenge a worldview and even to browbeat.
 
Defining Metaphor
 
Wikipedia cites Metaphors We Live, by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson.  The authors argue that “metaphors are pervasive not just in language, but also in thought and action.  A common definition of a metaphor is…a comparison that shows how two things that are not alike in most ways are similar in another important waya metaphor helps you understand and experience one kind of thing in terms of another.”
 
Here are two examples of metaphor followed by an simile-analogy:  a) the ship plowed the sea and b) the security team plowed through the crowd, and c) when you add the words “as” or “like” – e.g., the security team broke up the crowd like a plow through a field; you make explicit the implicit, analogous image of a plow breaking up and tossing soil aside while making furrows in a field.  Getting back to metaphor, the authors have conceived the notion of “conduit metaphor.”  That is, a speaker can put ideas or objects into words or containers, and then send them along a channel, or conduit, to a listener who takes that idea or object out of the container and makes meaning of it.  In other words, communication is something that ideas go into. The container is separate from the ideas.”
 
Provocative Metaphors
 
Of course a container and/or its contents can exaggerate and be quite provocative; as previously mentioned this may emphasize or exaggerate divisions within a culture.  As a Stress and Team Building Consultant, I recall how the work floor at a 6000 person US Postal Service Processing Center was called the “Postal Plantation,” while management was situated in their “Tower.”  The numbing effects of never-ending high-tech letter sorting work, while not back breaking like picking cotton, can make one pay a mind-body (carpal tunnel) toll.  And role-status tension is heightened if you feel spied on by a (literal, metaphoric, or technologic) over-seer in “The Tower.”
 
Generational-Digital Metaphors
 
As final examples, visual metaphors in “A Generational-Digital Diatribe” (see Rap below), purposefully if not playfully spotlight troubling contemporary issues:
 
a) Talk “thumb trash” and bully.  For this younger generation, being “all thumbs” is a compliment to their digital “texterity”; in my era “all thumbs” was an expression for clumsiness.  Today, alas, some are known for hurtful or abusive texting – talking thumb trash as a form of “con-textual”-emotional bullying.
 
b) The stanza on “viral attacks” (itself a classic fear-inducing cyber-metaphor), identity theft, and information leaks concludes with a contemporary, scene-setting (if not stealing) comparison:
 
Even big Uncle Sam cannot safely “hold em”
Playing NSA Poker with one Mr. Snowden!
 
A metaphoric, David vs. Goliath game of cards hides and reveals “data” and weapons as adversaries maintain a façade – from the inscrutable to one of bravado; bluffing and posturing along with making a quick exit (or being run out of town) are all intrinsic to the lore of both poker and spy craft.

2.  Sharing and Soliciting.  For me, a key part of the generative process is letting go of the draft, coming out of that creative cocoon, and allowing my ideas and images to fly in public space. Timing is vital; solicit input when the work is in a “semi-solid state”:  strong enough that you believe in its basic substance and style; fluid enough to move pieces around, to incorporate useful, even challenging, input, to explore novel forms and functions.  If the work is already set in stone, there’s likely to be a wall between message sent and the receiver.  It’s difficult planting a new tree in concrete.  (Or when living in N’Awlins, for good and bad, trends that were flourishing on the east and west coasts had difficulty making local traction when surrounded by an Iron Swamp!

Evolving a Generational-Digital Diatribe

Asking for and being open to feedback definitely enabled “A Generational-Digital Diatribe” to grow.  A friend shared how in the ‘60s she wrote a poem about daily calls home becoming a lifeline and symbiotic cord for an anxious roommate.  This story helped update the concept and spurred these two psychological and paradoxical lines:

With all things wireless, you're always on board
Alas, still tied to that e-umbilical cord?


I also showed my work to a late-20 something at the local coffeehouse.  He agreed with a number of issues often articulated by those on the other side of the digital divide.  This Millennial specifically mentioned recently expressing concern to and for a friend who is always online or on a gadget.  He also said one word – “privacy” – and, immediately sensing a glaring gap, I quickly worked out the opening of this stanza, completed by the above-cited “NSA Poker” metaphor:

It’s “Privacy vs. Piracy”:  we’re under viral attack.
And now identity theft from the neighborhood hack.
 
Finally, I received kindred comments from a newsletter reader who could well relate to this generational-digital divide.  (Talk about a cultural inversion, she was expectantly waiting for her daughter’s “hand me down” Android phone.)  In fact, she signed her email “Dino Gal-Pal.”  And a day later, this innocent prompt spurred major upgrades:  the techno-generational divide phrase “Dinos and Digits” and, as analyzed in Part I of this essay, a recurring hook:
 
Dinos and Digits, both give me the fidgets
Digits and Dinos, they sure can be whinos!
also
Dinos and Digits can be mental widgets
Digits and Dinos, like spoiled bambinos.
 
3.  Letting Go with the Rhyme Scheme.   As I’ve been writing the “Resiliency Raps” these last several months, it’s become clear that in addition to searching for images, a word that beckons for a kindred rhyme may send a mind off in widely divergent or improbable directions.  For example, when sketching my “Privacy vs. Piracy” stanza, I was conscious of literally being in the NSA shadows.  The National Security Administration is located in Columbia, MD, where I live.  I can’t precisely recall if an image of a card game came first or the “hold em” phrase.  But soon thereafter I connected the perfect rhyme with the phrase and had conjured NSA poker between Uncle Sam and Mr. Snowden!
 
With the following couplet, having my teacher in a state of shock, facilitated finding a word to capture my feelings about some of those letter combos that in my mind give acronyms a bad name:  “crock!”
 
Those short cut acronyms…geez, what a crock
My poor English teach…in anaphylactic shock!
 
And in the next to last stanza, wanting to help (with a touch of irony) one afflicted with a cyber-addiction, I invented a video game – “Past Life Regression” ® – with a less violent, “calmer shooter” position.  And after enough rounds of “ear-calling,” the homophone “Kama Sutra” (an ancient Indian text of love-making positions) grabbed me as a preferred (and a tad absurd) game playing position.  It certainly connects through rhyme the Internet’s and the gaming industry’s commercial embrace of sex and violence.
 
So to expand your creative problem-solving possibilities, try free associating to key words and concepts with rhyme – for-“word” to the absurd; turn playtime into the sublime!
 
4.  Resisting the Urge to “Just Be Finished.”  In a TNT-3 D – Time-Numbers-Technology — Driven-Distracted-Disrupted – World, one feels compelled to get into or react to the next big, hot (or cool), thing(s)…right now!   In the interactive and “multi-taneous moment,” (a Stress Doc invention), “when instant gratification seems a delay” and linear thinking and storylines are passé, we’re all jumping from one (or a dozen) sensations or experiences to the next.  (For example, consider your TV watching habits before remote control or your current driving-interactive media routine – smart phone, GPS, music, perhaps web/TV, hopefully not texting – routine.)  According to media theorist Douglas Rushkoff, much of our society is abandoning a cause-effect timeline and mindset; “planning for the future” skills are diminishing, for both individuals and corporations.  With this desire or ADHD-like need to be in multiple places and spaces at the same time, often absorbed in “crisis mode,” we are struggling with Rushkoff’s “Present Shock” (Present Shock:  When Everything Happens Now, 2013).  In such a climate, survival appears to depend on clicking to and rushing through (or putting aside) one task or event as another seductive or mind-numbing stimulus pops up on your mental and physical web-screen.
 
The Critical Question
 
The critical question:  How to elevate “Mindful Focus” over “Multi-taneous Choices/Chaos” and “Just Be Finished?”  When I think back to my “Big Easy” daze, taking a break from my doctoral studies to engage in three times/week psychoanalysis for a year with a Tulane Medical School psychiatry resident (for $10/session; the starving grad student rate), it truly seems a bygone era.  Lying on the couch, eyes closed, brain-body dreamily drifting, my awareness wandering and concentrating at both a conscious and subterranean level, suddenly seizing on fleeting or fiery emotional images and memories, converting these to cathartic expression, tears flowing, tales of family illness and angst, shame and grief.  From this echo-system evolved an “ivory couch” process for accessing and focusing the deepest and broadest recesses of mind.  (In fact, it was during this period that I first started dabbling in poetry, purposefully playing with and ultimately synthesizing rhythms and rhymes, imaginings and ideas.)
 
Bottom Line Recommendations
 
The bottom-line:  We need time for a meditative and integrative present, not only an interactive multi-media NOW.  I don’t mean a never-ending blissful state; as we’ve seen, ongoing creativity also requires tension (personal and/or interpersonal), if not some torment.  I’ve previously referred to Dr. Richard Rabkin’s concept of “thrustration” – when you’re torn between thrusting ahead with direct action and frustration as you cannot yet put together the pieces of your puzzle.  At an implicit level, this smoldering if not agitated state is percolating, comparing, and connecting ideas and images often necessary for that unexpected Aha!
 
Three specific recommendations:  a) sleep on the problem to find that missing piece or to regain fresh sensory antennae b) if exhausted or experiencing brain freeze, put the work aside for a period of time; walk away for an hour, a day, perhaps an extended stay (a period of hibernation), and c) allow that state of “thrustration” to discover new internal and external information through psychic eruption or by allowing the simmering tension to evolve into a quiet phase-covert process of organic gestation, that is, take an “incubation vacation” to hatch a new perspective.
 
5.  Recognizing “You Can Go Home Again.”  In the “screwball comedy” film, “His Girl Friday,” Rosalind Russell and Cary Grant are forever verbally sparring.  Recently divorced, they still work for the same newspaper.  However, Russell is planning to ride into the sunset with her new beau (and his mother!!).  Despite the still obvious chemistry, Grant’s attempts to have the two reconcile is repeatedly and always cleverly rebuffed.  Exasperated, Grant finally blurts out, “My dear, you have an old-fashion notion of divorce…You think it will last forever!
 
So too with a creative process and product.  Misguided by thoughts of final perfection or, perhaps, itching-impatient to move on to the next project, we may lose sight of the bigger picture:  closure is not necessarily forever!  As William Faulkner observed, the past is never finished…it’s not even past!  Not only are our hard-earned efforts a continuous source of motivation if not inspiration – whether self-satisfied pride or constructive discontent; hopefully, not frequent humiliation, though, if courageous, this too is potential creative fuel – but we can literally return and construct new and enriched variations on a theme.  During this interim, we have changed; and, of course, times have changed, even if the original work has remained untouched.  In looking back, we find a meaningful foundation, or a conceptual tree pattern, to build upon.  Once again we are ready to move forward, to alter the landscape…to introduce an expanded or streamlined mindscape, to modernize or redesign a vision while still maintaining a connection, still being nurtured by our tree-forest roots.
 
Closing Summary
 
So explore these five evolutionary characteristics:
 
1.  Striving for Visual Metaphors
2.  Sharing and Soliciting
3.  Letting Go with the Rhyme Scheme
4.  Resisting the Urge to “Just Be Finished”
5.  Recognizing “You Can Go Home Again”
 
Strengthen your creative process and product and also…Practice Safe Stress!
 
Mark Gorkin, MSW, LICSW, "The Stress Doc" ™, a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, is a national keynote and webinar speaker and "Motivational Humorist & Team Communication Catalyst" known for his interactive, inspiring and FUN programs for both government agencies and major corporations.  A training and Critical Incident/Grief Intervention Consultant for the National EAP/Wellness Company, Business Health Services in Baltimore, MD, the Doc has also led “Stress, Team Building and Humor” programs for various branches of the Armed Services.  Mark, a former Stress and Violence Prevention Consultant for the US Postal Service, is the author of Practice Safe Stress and of The Four Faces of Anger.  See his award-winning, USA Today Online "HotSite" -- www.stressdoc.com -- called a "workplace resource" by National Public Radio (NPR).  For more info on the Doc's programs or to receive his free e-newsletter, email stressdoc@aol.com.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
A Generational-Digital Diatribe:
Still, Don’t Be Afraid to Pet the Dinosaur  (aka “Dinos & Digits”)
 
Why does the digital world spin so fast?
Why can't I simply hold on to the past?
Facebook, tweeting, smart apps...oh what's next?
It’s no longer “Safe Stress” ™…now it’s “Practice Safe Text”!!

I am the turtle; the Gens are the hare
They’re always racing, but why…and to where?
Those short cut acronyms…geez, what a crock
My poor English teach…in anaphylactic shock!
 
And do you use email to settle a score
With that mortal colleague residing next door?
The “e” in email – your Face-to-Face “escape”
Go blast that e-rocket fueled by sour grapes.
 
Okay, three hundred messages that for you await
May have something to do with a volatile state.
Does always being wired make you real tired?
Or are you real tired of always being so wired?
 
Don’t blame the company; they’re just doing their best
In getting the troops to “Do More with Less.”
It’s not PTSD but PTDS –
Post-Technological Deluge Stress!
 
Dinos and Digits, both give me the fidgets
Digits and Dinos, they sure can be whinos!
 
Smoldering anger, the anonymous stranger
Why not live large on the edge of danger:
Talk “thumb trash” and bully; “be happy, don’t worry”…
Having an avatar means never being sorry.
 
Hey, it’s just a multi-tasking age
Where ADHD is all of the rage.
When instant gratification seems a delay…
BOREDOM!  ASAP:  Start texting away.
 
With all things wireless, you're always on board
Alas, still tied to that e-umbilical cord?
Oh, no…can't use your phone or get online...
Blood pressure PANIC  surges most every time.
 
It’s “Privacy vs. Piracy”:  we’re under viral attack.
And now identity theft from the neighborhood hack.
Even big Uncle Sam cannot safely “hold em”
Playing NSA Poker with one Mr. Snowden!
 
Why do these young guns keep talking so fast?
And spelling, of course, now a thing of the past.
Or when presenting – a web session or on a Skype phone
Please, an occasional pause…don’t just drone on an on.
 
Dinos and Digits can be mental widgets
Digits and Dinos, like spoiled bambinos.
 
Younger folks say “inclusion,” a trophy for all
Forming an identity that’s off the Facebook Wall.
When grizzled gens want winners not mere pretenders
One must divide Alphas from “those bleeding heart losers.”
 
Of course, many leaders don’t have a clue
For an e-conference, just what do you do?
Without live eyes and warm bodies keeping safe solid ground
“Little Napoleons” start throwing their own head-weight around.
 
And for those folks who both drive and talk
As if life is but one stroll in the park.
Or sleepwalk and text…and what do they expect?
Either I clear a path or I’m the pain in the neck.
 
Believe me; it wouldn’t take much of a dare
To shove that damn phone right up their…hot air!
Man, I’m sounding more and more like a grouch
Maybe what’s needed is another approach.
 
Dinos and Digits, there’s got to be limits
Digits and Dinos…the fate of White Rhinos?
 
A crusade:  Save the Analog Whales” ™…Is it asking too much?
But first, lure digital hare-brains from their wired world hutch.
Pull heads out of smart phones; break FOMO ** media habits.
(Though “Get a Life” Coaching is for “Dinos,” not just “Digits.”)

Of course, do not go cold turkey with a cyber-addiction…
Play “Past Life Regression” ®; the “calmer shooter” or Kama Sutra *** position.
Find a virtual guru, one who’s no techno slouch…now
Plug-and-play (if not hug-and-pay) on that 3-D “smart couch.

Well, let me reach closure, before I “break bad”
On those always bragging about their iPad.
Consider my words, they are pretty rad:
I truly don’t mean to sound unkind…
Keep your iPad; I prefer an I-Mind!

 
**  FOMO:  Fear of Missing Out

 
*** (sexual positions illustrated by the ancient Indian text; personal preference)

 
© Mark Gorkin  2013
Shrink Rap Productions