In 2007, my mother-in-law, a mutual puzzle lover and experienced cat roommate, knew with the recent adoption of our new overlord, my tidy puzzle-solving days were over.  That Christmas, she gave me a jigsaw mat to rectify the issue, along with a photomosaic puzzle of Bart Simpson writing on the blackboard.  For those unfamiliar with photomosaics, they’re made up of teeny weeny images grouped together by color theme.  The pattern doesn’t necessarily repeat and the characters are so miniscule you need to analyze each piece to determine which way is up.  Every correctly placed piece earns a bigger huzzah than a traditional puzzle.

After completing most of the frame, I rolled this project up inside the mat, placed it on a high shelf, and didn’t get back to it until sometime after New Year’s.  This New Year’s.  

Photo by Yosef Futsum on Unsplash

For reasons I could no longer remember, I kept putting it off, looking up at it with a wistful sigh of “someday”.  Writing, I assume, took up some of the time I would have spent doing wonderful things like puzzles or re-learning guitar.  Last year was the opposite: not enough writing, too much...reading?  TV?  Scratching my butt, more likely.  

Imagine a child dragging themselves to the piano every day, plonking out a vague melody with their index fingers purely to appease the adults within earshot, and you’ll have a reasonably accurate metaphor for my writing the first seven months of 2022.

The latter five were plagued by personal and family mishaps, work stress, yadda yadda. Valid excuses perhaps, but in August I realized that I’d been published every year since 2014, and it was probably too late to keep that streak going.  I dusted off a few pieces and submitted them in a mad dash to the finish line.  One story was accepted, but it won’t go to print until sometime this year.

At some point during the ’20s (I love saying that), I got it in my head that centipedes or spiders had crawled inside that jigsaw mat and died.  Or maybe they’re thriving in there, doing the Charleston during critter condo happy hour.  With my dear patient husband’s assistance, I finally unfurled the mat.  The inflatable tube holding everything in place had lost a little air, but everything remained surprisingly intact.  My eyes have aged along with the rest of me, so I didn’t get very far.  But the return to enjoyable pastime was a win in itself.  

With piles of unfinished stories and folders of notes; a pack of new guitar strings; a charcoal pencil and adorable three-inch canvases (I couldn’t resist), and rainbow of acrylic paints, it’s time to quit dragging my ass.  One creative outlet should never eclipse the others.  

Other than Bart at the blackboard, I’d forgotten what this puzzle looked like.  His message?

“I will finish what I start.” 

The little bastard.