You’d Puzzle Too

During the coronavirus pandemic, I did something that I always loved doing but never had time for: jigsaw puzzles.

Ironically, I had no more time than usual for puzzles, because even though I began working from home in March 2020 — therefore sparing myself a two-hour daily commute to my office — my work and personal life began to blur. I found myself working into the dinner hour, and then returning to my home office after dinner to work into the night, and even into the morning hours. I gasped when I saw my timesheets recording more than 70 hours per week on the job. One week, I clocked in at 78 hours.

Because my employer is a health technology company involved in COVID-19 research, my workload increased due to the pandemic. When I did have free time, I wanted to do something relaxing. Puzzles became my thing.

Puzzles became my reward for a productive day. I came to accept that I would never be able to cross off all the items on my to-do list, so I would simply have to choose a time to stop. When I did that, it was puzzle time.

Putting together a puzzle gave me a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment. While the never-ending tasks of my full-time occupation left me with a constant feeling of unfinished business, I took great satisfaction in completing a puzzle, sometimes in a single night, sometimes over a week or longer.

Snapping in the last piece of the puzzle, and running my hands over the assembled puzzle, feeling the slight ruts of the pieces in place and the wholeness they created, made me feel a sense of accomplishment.

OK, it sounds like I got a little addicted. Sometimes it felt like that. Where I was thinking about the puzzle, or sneaking away to put in a few pieces during a break between Zoom calls. While I’m not a complete obsessed puzzler, I am an aficionado, and I appreciate the therapeutic value of my newfound hobby.

I’d love to hear stories of how other people discovered the joys of puzzling and how it has helped them through the pandemic, or other life events.