Puzzling

I love doing puzzles and sharing pictures of my progress on the puzzle I'm working on at any given account with all my 53+ (and counting, albeit slowly) Instagram followers.

During one of my puzzling sessions this week, I started thinking about what I find so attractive about this activity. And there are many reasons:

1. It's meditative.
2. It's relaxing.
3. You can wear whatever you want and don't have to comb your hair.
4. The excitement I get from the feeling of tidying up; from accomplishing something that takes patience and concentration.
5. It's a great way to do something whilst listening to Podcasts.
6. It's a good alternative to knitting, when the needles are almost on fire from having been producing yet another yoga sock.
7. It can be looked at as preparation for a life as a retiree.

I think all puzzlers out there (and according to Instagram, there are many) secretly wanted to become surgeons as I believe many of the same skills are in use in both fields: You need to be highly concentrated; you work best on a flat surface in a non-crowded room; good lighting is important for both types of operations; you need to have abundance of patience; you have to accept that something that looks like an easy part (moving a bullet from behind an eye socket or finishing a stack of cup cakes) could end up incredibly complicated and leave you drained after completion. But puzzling is the safer option and can't lead to anyone's death, if you get it wrong. And you don't need to study medicine to become a puzzler. Though some knowledge of shapes would be an advantage.

The first puzzle I did was during my first week at the psychiatric hospital. There was a table in the corner of the common room with a less than half-finished puzzle, so I figured I could help that along to completion. I discovered that sitting there, quietly putting a shattered Zürich together, momentarily took me away from all the dark thoughts and feeling of hopelessness that had lead me to this place.   When I moved to a different ward after just over a week, (I had been waiting for a private room to be freed up at the women's ward, where the staff were more specialised in women with post-natal depression), I went out and bought a brand new puzzle that I could sit and do in my room, when I wanted to be alone. Psychologically, one could say that as it's not always possible to bring order in the chaos of my mind, at least I can mend a broken piece of hard cardboard with a pretty picture on it. And later frame it and hang it on my wall.

At the moment, I have four 1000 pieces puzzles decorating the walls in my room, one is waiting to be hung up, one is waiting to be glued together, framed and then hung up and I'm working on a 'triptych' which is three individual puzzles that belong together. (Or as Google puts it: a set of three associated artistic, literary, or musical works intended to be appreciated together.)

You can see some of the puzzles under 'Craft Projects'.