It's All About The Journey

This year I put myself up to the challenge of starting a 2000 piece puzzle. Why? I have no idea.

I was in Walmart one day and came across the puzzles section. As a kid, I always enjoyed doing puzzles, but I had never thought to get one on my own and solve it.

This has been one of the most relaxing and uncomfortable things I have ever done. The uncomfortable part is avoidable, thank goodness. Next time I won't decide to do a 2000 piece puzzle on the floor.

Embarking on this journey has taught me a lot though. For starters, I definitely could have finished this puzzle much sooner if I had dedicated more time to it on a consistent basis. Instead, I left it as an activity to do whenever I had free time or when I just felt like doing it.

Not putting a time restraint on completing this puzzle, however, did not cause any stress for me. I simply told myself that I wanted to finish this puzzle by the end of the year. Having that in mind definitely gave me the freedom to relax and just enjoy the journey. And you better believe I did.

I never thought doing a puzzle would not only be fun, but also just be a space for me to think and even release pent up emotions. I have come up with some creative ideas while puzzling and I have sang my heart out to emotional songs. Having this space to keep my hands occupied and allow my mind to be free while still providing it with a challenge, was something that I never knew I needed.

Now that I am nearly done with the puzzle, I am almost sad because the journey will be over. I found myself really enjoying the many nights I lay on my pillow on the floor of my bedroom just to work on this insanely difficult puzzle.

Completing this jigsaw puzzle has also taught me a few things. It has taught me patience, persistence, delayed gratification, and understanding that some pieces aren't meant to fit together.

I have grown to be patient with myself and the puzzle. There were parts of the puzzle that remained unfinished for months simply because I could not find the correct pieces. Instead of losing my patience, I learned to just focus on another section of the puzzle and come back to that section later. Usually that worked because then I would have a brand new perspective of the puzzle and it would help me find the pieces that I needed.

Obviously you can see how finishing this puzzle taught me to be more persistent. Although there wasn't a time restraint, there was something in me that made me keep coming back to finish solving that puzzle. I think it was simply my curiousity of what it would look like in the end and how I would feel.

I wrote another blog post about delayed gratification, but I certainly believe that commiting myself to completing a daunting task that takes time will increase my willingness to pursue delayed gratification.

This puzzle also taught me that some pieces don't go together. Sometimes I was fooled. I put some pieces together and believed they were correct, then weeks later I would come back to find that there was the slightest bit of disconnect between the two. Then I would realize that they were never a match for each other.

Understanding all of those lessons from this puzzle is great. However, there is one major thing that I took away from this endeavor and that is to just enjoy the process and understand that just because you have made it to the end, doesn't mean that everything is complete.

For this puzzle in particular, I lost a piece along the way. I knew that I lost the piece midway through the journey. I could only hope that it would come back up or just accept that this puzzle would forever be missing a piece. As I arrive close to the end of this journey, the missing puzzle piece still has not been found. The good thing is that I have already accepted that outcome.

That missing puzzle piece represents the reason why we are supposed to enjoy the journey instead of longing for the destination. Sometimes the destination can turn out to not be exactly how you thought. For this example, the final destination will be a jigsaw puzzle that was meant to be 2000 pieces but for my experience it will only be 1999. How annoying is that? Thankfully, though, my annoyance has turned into acceptance and I am just glad that I was able to have so much fun while putting those 1999 pieces together.

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Embarking on this newfound hobby of mine is one that I am so glad I did thoughout the year of 2023. I always knew that I was a patient individual, but this puzzle has shown me that I can still grow in that area of my life. I'm excited to finish the rest of it. I will most likely be done with it in the next few days. When I am finished I am going to glue it all together, put it on a cardboard and nait it to my wall. And that missing puzzle piece will be my little reminder that I can always see, telling me to enjoy the journey no matter what.

Until the next post.

Jefferson K. Coe