I’m changing the way I do puzzles
A pile of puzzle pieces on a charcoal grey background.
Sometimes my nostalgia keeps me trapped.
When I was a child, my dad agreed to buy me an ancient world map puzzle. It had a black, white, and orange border with a repeating pattern — parallel lines interspersed with groups of three dots. I remember this because I completed the puzzle over and over and over again. The pattern was a grounding visual cue. It helped me piece together the frame that would eventually anchor the entire image.
I loved that puzzle and I’m not sure what happened to it after I moved away from home. But I clung to the nostalgia, reminiscing about the joy of the lines and dots that came together, just so. When I had enough disposable income, I bought myself three puzzles — 3000 pieces, 5000 pieces, 9000 pieces — all of ancient world maps.
Then a year passed by, five years, twenty. The massive puzzles remained in their shrink wrapped boxes, surviving at least three moves and many declutters. I kept telling myself I would eventually do them because, well, I love puzzles.
But years went by without me doing a puzzle, any puzzle. Part of me wondered why I’d say I loved an activity but not spend any time on it. I realized my puzzles had coalesced into a 17000-piece mental blockage. I had become too fixated on these puzzles. And I was frustrated at myself for having them for so long and not completing them.
So on March 20, 2021, I started my 3000-piece puzzle. I completed it two weeks later. It was fun. It scratched my puzzle itch. I patted myself on the back for finishing one of my giant puzzles.
Then on January 2, 2024, I started my 5000-piece puzzle. I completed it over a month later. It was painful. It was overwhelming and I wanted to give up. But with hindsight, I’m glad I completed it because it taught me a big lesson — I had somehow convinced myself that I needed to complete a huge ancient world map puzzle to return to a place of comfort and awe. And I realized I had zero desire to do the 9000-piece puzzle.
These puzzles had been on my bucket list for two decades. I was so singularly focused on them that, at the beginning of this year, they were the only things I could think of that I wanted to do. After taking the 9000-piece puzzle off my bucket list, a terrifying thought occurred to me. Maybe I don’t like puzzles anymore. I shoved the thought down and moved on with my days.
Five months later, I entered a puzzle competition.
This was a just-for-fun competition held by a local board games cafe. Hubby found the event and I was intrigued — even though I hadn’t touched a puzzle in the past five months. To warm up, we solved a 100-piece puzzle. Then the competition, which was a race to be the fastest pair to solve a 300-piece puzzle. We finished 7th out of 20 teams.
It was a quick afternoon event, but the experience reignited my interest in puzzles. It helped me realize that I don’t have to do ancient world map puzzles to access my joy and delight. I don’t have to continually solve bigger and more challenging puzzles. I don’t have to confine puzzles to the realm of bucket list items.
Since the competition last month, I’ve purchased and swapped for a bunch of smaller puzzles. I’ve been puzzling almost every day. If I only have 10 minutes, I’ll do the 100-piece puzzle from the competition that we got to bring home. If I have a longer stretch of time, I’ll do one of my new 500-piece puzzles.
I’m no longer doing puzzles with more than 1000 pieces or puzzles that require me to clear off floor space. Instead, I’m choosing puzzles I can complete in a couple of hours or a couple of days at a relaxed pace. Puzzles that can fit on a tabletop. Puzzles that aren’t ancient world maps.
Earlier this year, I changed the way I was reading books and this helped me rediscover my love for reading. This month, I changed the way I’m doing puzzles. And it worked again. I rediscovered my love for puzzles.
This month’s reflective questions
What are some of the activities you say you love or wish you could do more of? What’s stopping you from spending more time doing the activities you love? Does nostalgia keep you trapped, and if so, how?
Putting the pieces together,
