Lately I have been feeling like a slave to my computer so I decided I needed something (that you do not have to plug into a wall) in order to fill my free time.  In my most recent trips to Target I had found myself circling the puzzle aisle like a hawk.  Something inside of me was telling me to start a puzzle but for some reason I fought the temptation for many months.  It’s only a puzzle but in my mind it’s a statement of who I am as a human.  I am a procrastinator.  I am a thinker.  I am an idea person.  I start millions of projects and never finish them which leaves me feeling like a complete failure in life.  I knew I would start this puzzle and it would sit on my table for months until one day when I finally got sick of staring at it, I would throw all the pieces back in the box and light it on fire.  It was a commitment that I wasn’t ready to make until just recently.  I knew I would be setting myself up for disaster but I didn’t care.  I had to try.

So, I did what any un-seasoned puzzle-do’er does, I looked for the hardest puzzle I could find with the most puzzle pieces.  I thought the harder the better, that way the reward of accomplishment would be even sweeter.  This was the puzzle I landed on:

I liked that this puzzle was colorful and had the whole underwater thing going on.  At 1500 pieces it was the most complicated of the puzzles available to me at Target AND it was on sale for $4.00 so I threw it in my cart and hauled ass to the cash register before I could talk myself out of it.

Once home, I cut open the box and laid out all of the pieces.  I had already thought out how I would be completing this puzzle.  My first step was to turn all of the pieces over so I could see them.  The second step would be to pull out all the border pieces and put that together first.

What the hell have I gotten myself into?  There were SO MANY PIECES.  In fact the table that I thought would be PERFECT to complete this puzzle on, ended up being too small.  So all my turned over pieces ended up being smooshed into a big pile that was worthless for me to sift through.

I overcame these obstacles and completed the border as well as some additional parts.  This was a couple of days into the puzzle ordeal.  I was starting to feel a bit overwhelmed at this point, but I tried to do my best and pull together similar colors and patterns.  For a puzzle that seemed to have so many different underwater things in it, there sure were a lot of fish that looked identical.

Eventually I felt like I was making some progress.  I ended up moving half of the puzzle pieces onto a separate cardboard box so I could sift through all of them with ease.  I focused on the parts of the puzzle that did not repeat.  There was only one blue starfish, one blue and white striped fish, one group of pink slimy worm things and not a whole lot of the pink sponge things.  I also tried to group together the remaining pieces that looked like they belonged together.  I had a blue pile, a light blue pile, a turtle pile, a pink pile, etc.  This was about a week in a half into the puzzle.

I’m not sure why, but I ended up leaving all of the blue water parts and the striped fish with those long spikes on their heads, until the very end.  There were NINE of those stupid striped spike fish (say that ten times fast).  It seemed IMPOSSIBLE for me to figure out where the hell all the pieces went because they all looked exactly the same.  After a good 3 hour long session, I finally finished.  However, if you look closely, there are two pieces missing.  I looked everywhere for them, but they are gone forever.  Maybe that is why the puzzle was on sale?  Doubtful.  Either way, two pieces missing or not, I finished the puzzle and I was really proud of it.  It took about 2 weeks and I wanted to give up on it a few times, but I forged ahead and whooped it’s jigsaw ass.

It may not seem like much of an accomplishment to you, but for a person who rarely finishes anything, this was a big deal.  I look at this puzzle and think that with a little perseverance, determination and patience, anything is possible.

This is the last puzzle I will be doing for a very long time.  After finishing it, it sat on the table for 2 days until I folded it up and put it back in it’s box to never be seen again.

Love,

Jamie – The Puzzle-Do’er