Solving Life's Puzzles

I love doing puzzles. Crossword puzzles, jigsaw puzzles, sudoku puzzles . . . give me one to do and I will be most happy . . .

I do the Sudoku puzzle in the Comics page of the WashPost every morning before I get up to get ready for work. It drives me absolutely bats if I can’t finish it in the morning and have to wait until I get home at night. I especially like the “Samurai Sudoku” puzzles on Sunday, and usually work on that one every night before I go to sleep – sometimes only for 5 minutes, just before my eyes get heavy and I turn out the light to go to sleep . . .

I own about 8 or 9 thick crossword puzzle collections – full of Sunday-size puzzles that I work on in dribs and drabs, doing 1 or two puzzles in one sitting . . .

I have several jigsaw puzzles, but good ones are hard to find these days since the old “Game Keeper” stores closed. Most game stores nowadays are mostly for video games, and I am loathe to order them online . . . I kinda like to see the box before I buy, just to make sure I like the picture and the size . . .

During the most stressful times in my life, I do puzzles. No matter how sad or angry or frustrated I get, I always take the time to pull out some puzzles to try to calm myself down and snap me out of my funk.

For me, puzzles are all about logic – figuring out what goes where, and after that what fits in the next slot. It makes the logical part of my soul happy – answers are found according to order and reason with very little uncertainty thrown in. There IS a right answer to be found, and it CAN be found using certain logic patterns.

It is when I am doing puzzles that I tend to do a lot of thinking about other things that are going on in my life. I guess that in engaging that part of my brain, it helps me try to reason out other things hanging around in my head too . . . my mind goes into autopilot to solve the puzzle, while elsewhere it is focusing its attention on the other topics.

Yesterday and today, I have been doing a lot of puzzles. I am very unhappy about some things, and I am trying to figure out how to solve what’s been bugging me . . . and of course, I have to figure out exactly what IS bugging me . . . so out come the puzzles. Sometimes after doing the puzzles, I realize that I have been making a mountain out of a molehill – what I am upset about is really not a big deal, nothing to get so upset about. Sometimes, a course of action comes to me – “you know, you should do X first, then Y and then maybe it will lead to Z.” Sometimes, I realize that I need to do more research, or that I should just stop procrastinating and just DO SOMETHING. But no matter what, something useful always comes out of the puzzle session . . .

It seems to be taking longer today, though. But I guess I can chalk it up to being so distracted . . . not putting my focus on the puzzles, trying to do other things too . . . I need to figure something out though, and I need to figure it out soon, or else I am going to keep making everyone around me miserable as heck . . .

What do you do when you need to figure something out? Any specific rituals or people that you go to when you need advice?


BTW: Playwright Wendy Wasserstein, author of “The Heidi Chronicles” and “The Sisters Rosensweig,” died today of cancer at age 55. She leaves behind a six year old daughter . . . (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060130/ap_en_ot/obit_wasserstein).