A weekly schedule that changes is a hard adjustment! Retail is one way to test your patience :/ My first job was working in a hardware store. Actually I learned a lot.I learned I can fix my own toilet and I also learned why take that job from someone else?

I don't get the feeling you dislike this job...putting the embarrassment of the major job adjustment/change aside that is another normal feeling. Am I wrong?

Good work on discovering more about the "event". Hmm...do you feel closer to feeling...found? Secure?

I feel figuring out what you don't want to do is as important as knowing exactly what you want to do. Well, that's how I figured out what I wanted to do.

Hey, thanks for filling in the gap. I feel better :-)

you couldn't just get a job at "the gap"?

Very good, resolute!

Good to see you back!

I'm not cool enough to get a job at the Gap. :-P

Seriously: no tattoos, no piercings, and no hair.

I'm not really closer to "found", well okay, I'm a step further along the road, but it has helped me in some way just to be able to get an insight into that kid's young head.

A lot of disconnected things make more sense if, in addition to fearing that he had done something terribly wrong by getting lost, he also had to deal with the doubt that maybe he hadn't, and that his parents were trying to lose him. If only the first were a possibility, I might have been reassured sooner, but since the two options are contradictory in many ways, no real reassurance was possible.

One of the things it shed light on was my tendency to run away from the marriage in ways that could be described as "getting lost". After a fight, I more than once just set off walking; "away" rather than towards anything.

If the marriage was my way of never getting lost again (making my own family and putting myself "in charge" of it), getting lost deliberately might have functioned either as a wake-up call that the solution wasn't working or worse, as a form of torture, reliving how bad being lost had been in order to force myself back into the marriage. Behavior that didn't make any kind of sense, before.

I'm not cool enough to get a job at the Gap. :-P

Seriously: no tattoos, no piercings, and no hair.

good one.

I always find it amazing how our behaviors are so often symbolic and often have deeper meaning than meets the eye. And we get to unravel the deeper meaning of the complexities of our own minds.

I've worked 20+ years in retail (if you count a previous job). It does have its moments. I think, for me, working in retail has really improved my ability to interact with people and it has given me confidence. I hope your new job goes well!

Always wishing you well, Mark.