A 1000 piece puzzle. One of my 84 year old father's favorite activities. When I was growing up he would start one and sit there for hours on end carefully sorting the edge pieces, slowly finding parts of pictures as he smoked his pipe. The smell of whiskey Borkum Riff in the air. Hours and hours across days at a time he would patiently put them together. Us kids would stop by and help from time to time until the last piece was in. I remember that sense of satisfaction that went with the puzzle completion. It would sit on the card table a few days as we would admire it walking by. Then, one day he would simply dismantle it, put it back in the box and on the shelf. This one act I really struggled with. I mean really.....all that work to just dismantle it. Later I would learn that there was a product called puzzle glue. However for my dad, that was not needed. He would simply need another few days to work it again months later or he would simply get a new one. He never had the need for puzzle glue or framing.
I often think about puzzles when I look at my schedule. I have work at two different ER's, four children still at home at very different places in their lives. The college kid learning to fly, the junior high boy fighting through those years, the little guys learning to read in a language that is not their first. My schedule is like a jigsaw puzzle. Fitting the pieces together sometimes minute by minute. Coordinating activities, work, rides.... every week is an endless 1000 piece puzzle it is my job to put together.
That brings me to last week. I had picked up two days at my moonlighting gig. That brought my hours to 72 in 8 days. Six on, one off, one on. It just so happened that Hell Week was the same 8 days. Plus the kids' Halloween, half days due to parent teacher conferences and all other kinds of crazy. Yet. It was Hell Week at OTF. There is this thing that happens when you make your journey public. You have very little room to give up. How to uphold that image of motivation and clean living when I really want my favorite sweats and a glass of wine and to sleep for about a week.
So, I sat at my table, following my dad's lead. I had the calendar in front of me trying to make all the pieces fit. I put my workouts behind kids and work but ahead of sleep and TV. I fit it all in even if it meant one 5:00 am workout where my 20 year old had come home to sleep and watch his siblings so I could go. Wow. That was a rough morning as I had gotten home from work at 11:30. I got it done though. In the end I earned a spooky looking black tshirt with a cool looking skull on it for my efforts. There was something particularly ironic about that shirt and the challenges I beat to earn it. There were the obligatory pictures and high fives at the gym. I had done it.
In that moment I wondered if this is how my dad felt looking at the completed puzzle. That moment of satisfaction in a hard fought success. Then it happened. The realization that I had to turn the page on the calendar. A new week. A new puzzle. The completed puzzle would be dismantled and put back in the box and I would have to start again figuring it all out. This puzzle was different though. This one held a race looming ever closer and the notion that if I can work 72 hours in 8 days and still not miss a workout I certainly had no excuse this week, where I only work 28 hours in 6 days. I would try to hang my hat on taking a break for my two overnight shifts later this week but even that seems a bit flimsy after what I just did. So here I am. Workouts scheduled. Kids' schedule complete and race looming. That being said I think I finally understand the value of dismantling that puzzle and putting it back in the box like my dad used to. It is not about destroying what you worked hard to achieve, it is about reevaluating and working it out again.... only better. I guess maybe my dad had it right all along. So this week I will keep the puzzle glue on the shelf and keep working as there are only 11 days 'till race day.
No comments:
Post a Comment