I was recently working on a jigsaw puzzle, and came to realize a few things about myself. Just as a little background, I've always considered myself to have a bit of an addictive personality. I remember staying up for several days on end playing games like Diablo and Warcraft (among many others, but Blizzard as a game-design company seemed to really build games that I could get into). I would stay up all night, miss meals and skip classes if I was into a game. I was, in many ways, exhibiting behaviors that are the textbook definition of addiction - with one exception: once I had beaten the game, I would lose immediate interest and would almost never even think about it again. I would be totally immersed while I was competing, but once the competition was done, it was done. I didn't feel even the slightest need to revisit it. In fact, I'm glad that I realized this about myself before the invention of MMOs like World of Warcraft (if that sounds like Greek to you, don't worry...it's likely that an explanation of those terms would just bore you).
One of the reasons that I try not to play video games anymore is because they don't actually end. Online games don't have a final battle that you win and then the game ends. Nope...now games just keep adding levels or quests or items, and can go on forever. This is, of course, by design. After all, you might have paid $50 for Diablo II back in the late 90s/early 2000s, but now you pay a $15 monthly subscription fee for World of Warcraft. The business model necessitates that the game be addictive and open ended. I don't have the money or freedom to pay for the privilege to miss sleep and meals while killing orcs (not to mention, I'm an adult with a job and a family...tough to ignore those things for a game). Sometimes I slip, and get sucked into a game, and I end up losing way too much of my productive time. I was really addicted to a Facebook game called Marvel's Avengers Alliance, which (thankfully) Disney discontinued or I might still be playing it instead of doing more productive things (like writing blog posts).
What does this have to do with jigsaw puzzles, though. Well, my addictive personality hasn't gone away, and sometimes it needs an outlet. The most recent outlet was a jigsaw puzzle, but not just any old puzzle. I love puzzles, but this one, I think, was custom made to drive me batty. The puzzle itself was 1000 pieces, and the main picture was Darth Vader's head. The wrinkle that made the puzzle maddening was that it was the kind of
picture that is actually made up of a bunch of smaller pictures. If you
focus on Darth Vader, you lose all of the other images, but if you
focus down on the smaller images you lose Darth Vader.
The other thing to know is that this wasn't initially my idea. My
daughter, bless her 10-year old heart, decided to pull this puzzle out.
It was a brand new puzzle, and I saw her open the bag, so I knew that
all the pieces were there. She dutifully started on the border, and
promptly lost interest after about 10 pieces. I was, however, hooked
by that point. The border ended up not being too difficult, but once I started working on the internal parts, there ended up being no clear lines or color changes to help guide where individual pieces would be put. There were some clearly lighter blue sections to the puzzle, which were relatively easy to complete since those pieces overall had that color, but outside of that there wasn't much to go on. Luckily, the puzzle came with a foldable, oversized picture that I could use to guide where individual pieces would be. Picture me, holding an individual piece up and trying to match it to its location on a paper version of the puzzle. Each piece might take one or two minutes to find on the image (if I could find it at all). Now, picture me, in all my addictive glory, doing that over, and over, and OVER again for 800-900 pieces.
Although it was a new puzzle, and I knew all the pieces were there, I was building it in my living room, so there was the potential that pieces would be knocked onto the floor and lost that way, but I was pretty sure that they were all there. As I got closer to the finish, I found one piece that I couldn't find a place for. No big deal, I thought...after all, I had a bunch of these kinds of pieces that I couldn't find, so I would put it aside and move on. As I neared completion, I was a little worried about that piece, but I counted all of the open spaces and all of my remaining pieces and it matched up, so, again I soldiered on figuring that it would find it's place in time. Eventually, I had only that one piece left and one available spot, all I had to do was put that piece in, and I would be done with this monstrosity of time-suckage. Imagine my horror when the piece didn't fit. There was no mistake, all other pieces fit snuggly. The piece that I had in my hand was definitely from the puzzle, since I could see the smaller images on it. It simply did not fit in the space that I had available.
I sat and stewed with this for a while. I went through the puzzle piece by piece to make sure they fit properly. I looked around the coffee table to see if there was another piece (perhaps the designers had decided to do the IKEA thing and include a few extra pieces, just for fun). No luck. This made no sense. There was a piece that belonged. There was a space for a piece. They didn't match. I went to bed very confused.
The next morning I showed this to my wife. She laughed and said I had done something wrong but couldn't find evidence to back that up (which was infuriating in its own way). I showed it to my 15-year old son. He shrugged in all his ennui-induced glory and shuffled away. I showed it to my daughter. She looked as flabbergasted as I felt. Each of them took their opportunity to try and fit the piece in, all of them eventually realizing it didn't fit. Eventually, my wife "hammered" it into place and said she'd figured it out. The fact that the colors didn't even match up correctly or that it distorted the rest of the pieces around it didn't seem to bother her too much.
Earlier, I mentioned that doing this puzzle lead me to realize a couple things about myself. So, what are those things? First, I felt as if I was cheating somehow by finding each piece's location on the larger picture. I'm not sure why that felt like cheating, but I'll definitely have to get over it if I'm going to tackle the Luke Skywalker puzzle next. Second, I reflect back on the unfitting piece, and I would expect to be more frustrated than I am. This seems like the kind of thing that would throw me over the edge, but I'm not feeling that at all. Rather, I'm actually feeling pretty sedate about the whole thing. I've come to realize that there's a difference between unfinished business and unfinishable business. One of those things is beyond your control, and that's why I am rather accepting of that piece of the puzzle.
Mud-runs, working out and general healthy living all seem like unfinished business to me. I have set the goal to reach my 50th event this year (ideally that would be at WTM), and I think I would be disappointed in myself if I didn't do everything I can to reach that objective - barring injury, of course. Frustration comes from not finishing something we think we should. Acceptance comes with realizing when something isn't finishable. In educational settings, we have lots of unfinishable business that we get frustrated about as if it was simply unfinished. I'm pretty sure we would not only be a lot more successful if we did more to realize that distinction, but we might even end up with better outcomes.
One of the reasons that I try not to play video games anymore is because they don't actually end. Online games don't have a final battle that you win and then the game ends. Nope...now games just keep adding levels or quests or items, and can go on forever. This is, of course, by design. After all, you might have paid $50 for Diablo II back in the late 90s/early 2000s, but now you pay a $15 monthly subscription fee for World of Warcraft. The business model necessitates that the game be addictive and open ended. I don't have the money or freedom to pay for the privilege to miss sleep and meals while killing orcs (not to mention, I'm an adult with a job and a family...tough to ignore those things for a game). Sometimes I slip, and get sucked into a game, and I end up losing way too much of my productive time. I was really addicted to a Facebook game called Marvel's Avengers Alliance, which (thankfully) Disney discontinued or I might still be playing it instead of doing more productive things (like writing blog posts).
What does this have to do with jigsaw puzzles, though. Well, my addictive personality hasn't gone away, and sometimes it needs an outlet. The most recent outlet was a jigsaw puzzle, but not just any old puzzle. I love puzzles, but this one, I think, was custom made to drive me batty. The puzzle itself was 1000 pieces, and the main picture was Darth Vader's head. The wrinkle that made the puzzle maddening was that it was the kind of
picture that is actually made up of a bunch of smaller pictures. If you
focus on Darth Vader, you lose all of the other images, but if you
focus down on the smaller images you lose Darth Vader. 
The other thing to know is that this wasn't initially my idea. My
daughter, bless her 10-year old heart, decided to pull this puzzle out.
It was a brand new puzzle, and I saw her open the bag, so I knew that
all the pieces were there. She dutifully started on the border, and
promptly lost interest after about 10 pieces. I was, however, hooked
by that point. The border ended up not being too difficult, but once I started working on the internal parts, there ended up being no clear lines or color changes to help guide where individual pieces would be put. There were some clearly lighter blue sections to the puzzle, which were relatively easy to complete since those pieces overall had that color, but outside of that there wasn't much to go on. Luckily, the puzzle came with a foldable, oversized picture that I could use to guide where individual pieces would be. Picture me, holding an individual piece up and trying to match it to its location on a paper version of the puzzle. Each piece might take one or two minutes to find on the image (if I could find it at all). Now, picture me, in all my addictive glory, doing that over, and over, and OVER again for 800-900 pieces. 
Although it was a new puzzle, and I knew all the pieces were there, I was building it in my living room, so there was the potential that pieces would be knocked onto the floor and lost that way, but I was pretty sure that they were all there. As I got closer to the finish, I found one piece that I couldn't find a place for. No big deal, I thought...after all, I had a bunch of these kinds of pieces that I couldn't find, so I would put it aside and move on. As I neared completion, I was a little worried about that piece, but I counted all of the open spaces and all of my remaining pieces and it matched up, so, again I soldiered on figuring that it would find it's place in time. Eventually, I had only that one piece left and one available spot, all I had to do was put that piece in, and I would be done with this monstrosity of time-suckage. Imagine my horror when the piece didn't fit. There was no mistake, all other pieces fit snuggly. The piece that I had in my hand was definitely from the puzzle, since I could see the smaller images on it. It simply did not fit in the space that I had available.I sat and stewed with this for a while. I went through the puzzle piece by piece to make sure they fit properly. I looked around the coffee table to see if there was another piece (perhaps the designers had decided to do the IKEA thing and include a few extra pieces, just for fun). No luck. This made no sense. There was a piece that belonged. There was a space for a piece. They didn't match. I went to bed very confused.
The next morning I showed this to my wife. She laughed and said I had done something wrong but couldn't find evidence to back that up (which was infuriating in its own way). I showed it to my 15-year old son. He shrugged in all his ennui-induced glory and shuffled away. I showed it to my daughter. She looked as flabbergasted as I felt. Each of them took their opportunity to try and fit the piece in, all of them eventually realizing it didn't fit. Eventually, my wife "hammered" it into place and said she'd figured it out. The fact that the colors didn't even match up correctly or that it distorted the rest of the pieces around it didn't seem to bother her too much.
Earlier, I mentioned that doing this puzzle lead me to realize a couple things about myself. So, what are those things? First, I felt as if I was cheating somehow by finding each piece's location on the larger picture. I'm not sure why that felt like cheating, but I'll definitely have to get over it if I'm going to tackle the Luke Skywalker puzzle next. Second, I reflect back on the unfitting piece, and I would expect to be more frustrated than I am. This seems like the kind of thing that would throw me over the edge, but I'm not feeling that at all. Rather, I'm actually feeling pretty sedate about the whole thing. I've come to realize that there's a difference between unfinished business and unfinishable business. One of those things is beyond your control, and that's why I am rather accepting of that piece of the puzzle.
Mud-runs, working out and general healthy living all seem like unfinished business to me. I have set the goal to reach my 50th event this year (ideally that would be at WTM), and I think I would be disappointed in myself if I didn't do everything I can to reach that objective - barring injury, of course. Frustration comes from not finishing something we think we should. Acceptance comes with realizing when something isn't finishable. In educational settings, we have lots of unfinishable business that we get frustrated about as if it was simply unfinished. I'm pretty sure we would not only be a lot more successful if we did more to realize that distinction, but we might even end up with better outcomes.
