New #12: Complete a 1,000 Piece Puzzle

This wasn't supposed to be a new worth noting. Actually, it just started as an idea for a cheap Saturday night at home. A $1.50 puzzle from the grocery, a bottle of vino, a few hours of jigging and sawing and done - right? No, not at all.

The first night I spent hours and hours hunched over the tiny pieces, only to finish just one corner of sky before calling it quits. Over the next month, the puzzle became a love/hate obsession for me (does that make me a huge nerd?), that put my patients, eyesight and puzzling ability to the test. It was only this week that the fruits of my labor paid off - in a pieced-together picture of Italian coast.


Rather than giving a play-by-play of the whole thing, I'll instead share some life lessons learned through my 1,000 piece puzzle:

1. Always pay attention to detail, although a focus on the big picture is what helps the most.

2. Trial and error will get you everywhere. Nothing comes together if you don't try.

3. The sky and ocean are vast, and often appear to be one in the same.

4. Sometimes things just aren't meant to fit the way you think they should, no matter how hard you pound them together and convince yourself they do.

5. In the end, no matter how impossible it may seem, everything eventually connects and works out the way it should. And it's always rewarding to look back and remember the steps, trials and aggravations that got you there.