I really enjoy jigsaw puzzles. I plod along for a while, trying to make sense of how all these tiny and seemingly random pieces will fit together. I spend lots of prep time making small piles of like colors and patterns, studying the final photo to identify the largest and easiest-looking areas to tackle first.
I surf through periods of frustrated mismatching peppered by little bursts of joy when I get on a roll. As I go on, more and more of these small successes become especially pivotal – say when I complete the border, or find the piece that joins two large sections I’ve been working on separately, bringing the final picture into sharper focus. Eventually – and this is my favorite part – I reach this sweet spot once a critical mass of pieces have been placed, and suddenly the whole thing feels like it’s taken on its own momentum. My hands are reaching blindly for pieces I don’t even remember seeing, snapping them into place one after another, propelled by a sense of inner knowing. Having stared at all these pieces for long enough and fit enough of them together, I’ve come to viscerally understand how the full picture is assembled. My instincts take over, as if my mind has separated from my body and now hovers above, pulling the strings that control my motions, dripping bubbles of knowledge into my consciousness, whispers of familiar colors, patterns, and shapes. The laborious consideration I had given to each piece and placement up until now is replaced by that wonderful feeling of being swept into a flow that feels natural, easy, and strangely almost beyond my control. This relief is so immensely enjoyable in part because I earned it. All the minor missteps I made helped train my brain to persevere until it reached this beautiful, hard-fought and deservedly won culmination.
This is kind of what 2019 was like for me – the part of the puzzle when I’d put in enough work that something outside of me appeared to take over and lay out the path before me step by step. The tiny voice within me that I’d always known was there rose to a shout, refusing to remain in the background any longer. After years (Decades? A lifetime?) of what had felt like sporadic and aimless wandering, I had finally earned my place in the zone.
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