Happy New Year!

It’s 2022, the first day of the year. And this has now been the second New Year’s Eve that we have spent in isolation because of the Covid19 pandemic. To think how innocent we were when this all started… But that is for another post (or few posts) altogether.

In this post, I would like to share with you what I’ve learned from doing my New Year’s Pandemic Puzzle. Let me explain.

We started 2021 full of optimism. The vaccines were just around the corner. We figured this shit out: we knew to wear masks, stand 6 feet apart, all that jazz. Travel started to open up. We were able to go out to restaurants – outdoor only at first, and then even inside (at 50% capacity, unmasked only when eating or drinking. But, yay, small victories.) We even had a relatively normal Thanksgiving and an almost full-on holiday season. And then everything came to a screeching halt with Omicron. People were testing positive, New Year’s plans were getting cancelled left and right, it felt like 2020 all over again. To quote my favorite earrings, F*ck this shit. And that’s how I ended up at home, with a one thousand-piece puzzle, trying to piece together Van Gogh’s Starry Night. This is what it taught me:

1. Don’t panic. It may look like a giant pile of trash but everything is, at first.
2. Embrace the chaos. It will make you feel better to see something more of a mess than you are at the moment.
3. Decide where to start. It can be by trying to organize the pieces somehow (by color, or shape for instance) or by focusing on one little piece and building out from there, or whatever inspires you. There are no wrong strategies. Just start somewhere and build out from there.
4. There are no missing pieces! Even if you looked three times through all the pieces and you couldn’t find the one that fits, it’s not missing unless you’ve run out of pieces and there are holes in the puzzle. You’re just not looking carefully enough.
5. Be patient. There are no shortcuts. And hindsight is 20/20. of course you could have done it faster, better, have had a more structured process. But in the end, the best way to do it, is YOUR way.
6. Change your perspective. Sometimes it helps if you take a step back and look at the puzzle from a different angle. You will notice things you haven’t before. Some areas will seem entirely different. Things will jump out at you.
7. Stay focused on the whole picture. This means that every once in a while, you have to take a step back and asses. Are you still on the right track? Did some pieces end up in the wrong place? Which leads to the next item:
8. If it doesn’t fit, don’t force it. Sometimes you will really want it to fit. Even if it’s a bit tight, or a bit loose, or it doesn’t exactly line up. You want that piece so badly that you’re willing to lie to yourself even if you’re not totally convinced it’s the right fit. Don’t be afraid to question it, set it aside, take a look at it again. If it’s not the perfect fit, it may be worse to let it linger. You will waste more time not getting to your goal. Which reminds me:
9. Some things take longer than you thought they would. You thought it would take an hour? Ha! That turns into a day and then a week. But if you would have known that, you probably wouldn’t have started, right? So ignorance is sometimes bliss. And don’t blame yourself. We’ve all made this mistake. But…
10. Things will fall into place eventually. If you keep going, things will get easier. Every piece will go where it belongs. Trust the process, even if it seems chaotic, even if there is no process. Keep going. It’s the only thing to do.

How was your New Year’s Eve?