I got a jigsaw puzzle for Christmas. The image–bright, playful, and optimistic–features a robust collection of the premier desktop accessories of my youth: colorful and ineffectual novelty erasers. Ever clever, the makers of this puzzle named it My Favorite Mistake, a nod to the tool we use to wipe out our whoopsies–at least the ones we make on paper. I decided to take a proper break in the week between Christmas and New Year’s, which meant no reading for research or self-improvement, no writing, and very few emails. The day after Christmas has always felt melancholy and aimless, and this year was no exception. I was relieved to be gifted a puzzle that could serve as a low-stakes project and help me chew up some clock.
Nearly every time I sit down to do a puzzle, I get fully immersed. It’s immediate. Freakish almost. I forget about the world. I don’t want to leave it. I want just five more minutes and then five more. The first sitting with My Favorite Mistake, where I completed the edges, the frame of the puzzle, ended in concern that I’d laid the groundwork for frozen shoulder1 by holding my arm in an unnatural, or at least uncommon, position for over an hour. It was humbling to realize that I can’t puzzle hard off the couch anymore (could I ever?). And so, I decided that I needed a couple of rules to protect my body from my ambition.
Imposing a time limit was the obvious place to start. I would puzzle for the amount of time it took me to consume one beverage–tea, fizzy water, coffee, or wine–which felt both reasonable and slightly malleable; it gave me a modicum of control. And so I continued puzzling in 20-40 minute increments, doing arm stretches in the evenings, and trying not to sleep on my side. Each time I emptied my cup or glass, I would unfold my legs and sadly depart the coffee table, forcing myself to find some other, more productive way to occupy my time. The pain of walking away from the puzzle was softened only by the promise of returning to it.
One morning when I sat down to puzzle, I picked up the poster that was packaged with it, a full-scale replica of the puzzle’s image, folded neatly into quarters to fit inside the box. The large print was unmanageable when opened up–there wasn’t anywhere to put it within view without obstructing the puzzle itself. When I folded it back up and set it down on the upper right-hand quadrant of the puzzle, I had an idea. What if I restricted myself to working on the quadrant in the folded image but allowed myself to puzzle until I had completed that quadrant?
A different kind of person might find this approach rigid or controlling, and I get that. But what I discovered is that this kind of boundaried focus made puzzling even more enjoyable for me. In fact, this is the very thing my brain, my being, loves about doing puzzles. Doing one and only one thing at a time is antithetical to how I function most of the time, and I’m beginning to wonder if that is why I find periods of intense focus so pleasurable. My brain becomes calm and steady; there’s no tensing or tweaking. And though I do get excited, I don’t have that scattered feeling like my brain is trying to hold onto a bunch of loose marbles.
About a week later, with My Favorite Mistake long dismantled, the pieces, and the poster safely tucked back inside its box, my plans to take a short out-of-town trip got canceled. Suddenly I had two blank days ahead of me. I immediately made a plan to meet a friend mid-afternoon at the rec center and swim laps together, and then I flailed and flopped around my house for the rest of the morning. After finishing our laps, my friend and I dripped dry on a poolside bench. I asked her what she had done that morning, and her shoulders curled inward as she let out an enormous sigh. She rattled off a list of activities, each one punctuated with an emphatic squint of her eye that conveyed dissatisfaction. Then she asked about me, what I had made of my unexpected free time.
“I’m not a fan of how I spent my time this morning; felt like the time slipped right through my fingers,” I said, making a wide, wavy sprinkling gesture with my arms and hands.
“YES!” she exclaimed, “that’s exactly it. Why is it like that?”
I knew that, for me, this experience was familiar; it’s what happens when there’s no structure, and all of my ideas, plans, and desires rush in, scattering my attention. When I realized I had a free day at home, my mind was flooded with thoughts of all the things I could do–write, clean, call someone, walk, watercolor, trim the cat’s claws, visit my favorite consignment store, cook that recipe I’ve been thinking about, soak in the tub, leaf through the seed catalogs stacked on the coffee table, read one of the six books I’ve started. This kind of sudden, expansive liberation impacts my mind the way a violent shake disturbs a sitting, settled snow globe. My attention wants and tries to go in every direction at once to track each snowflake, newly visible as a result of the disturbance.
So I told my friend about my experience with My Favorite Mistake and the poster and the focus; how I used to think that I loved puzzles because I got lost in them, but now I wondered if puzzling allowed me to gather pieces of myself that so often felt scattered. What if, I wondered, focus offered respite from the persistent thrum of life’s unfinishable tasks, a means of experiencing the pleasure to be had in giving myself over to just one thing? Her eyes softened in recognition.
Most of life, of course, is not like a jigsaw puzzle. The next morning my friend texted to say that, after slipping down a few stairs in her house while listening to a meditation, she was reflecting on our discussion about focus. Though I do not aspire to feel calm and collected every minute of my life, I do appreciate what jigsaw puzzles have shown me about how I can access those feelings. After all, the fundamental lesson My Favorite Mistake and all other jigsaw puzzles offer is this: there is great pleasure to be found both in the process of scattering something to bits and putting it back together.
Sharing is Caring
A new little idea I’m trying out where I’ll share a handful of fun things that are so interesting or pleasing to me that I want everyone I know to know about them.
Le Puzz is the magic mind behind My Favorite Mistake. If you have a favorite puzzle (or something else in your life that functions like jigsaw puzzles do in mine), I’d love to hear about it.
I’ve been listening to Beirut’s latest album on repeat while I work. It sounds like winter to me, which has been perfect this past week as Portland claws its way back–through snow and ice– to above-freezing temps.
I also loved this brief conversation between Zach Condon (the solo musician behind Beirut) and NPR’s Ari Shapiro about the making of this album.
I just used a pound of my favorite beans (yep, I’m not over beans yet–not even close) to make this fantastic dish. Imagine someone sent the classic Heinz baked beans to Spain for a year abroad…this is how they might taste when they come back. Some delicious bread or other sopping-up accompaniment is definitely in order with this dish.
What’s frozen shoulder, you ask?