The stress of jigsaw puzzles
What's supposed to be fun and relaxing has been stressing me out
CONTENTS
the tanjennt: jigsaw puzzles
self-promo: source request, last week's paid newsletter
links: to explore, coffee notables
inspiration & updates
this cursed puzzle
I am working on the most challenging jigsaw puzzle of my life.
I don’t say that lightly. What I should’ve done is put it back in the box when I couldn’t confidently finish the edges. I’ve never done a puzzle where the edges weren’t easily enough assembled. Normally, I like to do puzzles without referencing the photo to make it more challenging. I gave up on that pretty early on in this one and having it on hand only marginally helped.
It took me two weekends to put together the top-right corner of white pieces. I know when you’re looking at it from far away, it seems okay enough—blanket lines creasing in contrast, the fur in different shades of brown—NO. It’s not okay enough. It’s awful. The puzzle was not printed in hi-res, those creases are blurs. I left the white parts for last and learned that I have to do them in the daytime with natural sunlight coming in because I have to sort them from warm white to cool white. Multiple pieces will fit into the same slot. I had to redo the entire left side of edge pieces—a first for me!
This puzzle has not been enjoyable at all, and it’s supposed to be a fun hobby for me!
Usually, when I do puzzles, I put on some fun playlist, ignore my phone, and get absorbed into sorting, searching, fitting, and feeling a little accomplished with each perfect fit. It becomes meditative for me and those little hits of serotonin give a nice boost of confidence and momentum. Towards the end of the puzzle, you gain even more momentum, increasing the speed at which pieces fit together and ending with a happy last piece. I am near the end and I fear there will be no grand momentum.
Do you know what the best strategy has been so far for this cursed puzzle? I took every piece with the two corresponding edge requirements and put them in the same slot, over and over and over again.
“The pleasure I take in jigsaw puzzles is derived, in part, from the thrill of competition. I enjoy the breaking down of a task into bite-size pieces and seeing how, finally, to conquer the thing. I like matching wits with a puzzle, discovering its secrets, and then besting it,” writes Susannah Pratt in an essay about putting together a jigsaw puzzle (if this looks familiar, it’s because I shared the article in an earlier tanjennts send). Maybe this is why I like jigsaw puzzles.
My favorite part of puzzling is what I wrote earlier: that immersive state I reside in. The hobby makes me slow down, way down, to look at the tiny differences in shade, color, print, perhaps even delight in the pattern itself. It’s tactile and not on a screen, which is how I like my hobbies. I do my puzzles on the ground, hunched over in a way I know I will pay for in two decades, if not the next night of sleep. It’s a sacrifice for pleasure—one I am usually happy to pay—except for this dog puzzle. I am finishing this out of spite. Spiting whom? I don’t know, the puzzle gods?
Besides forcing me to slow down, puzzles also make me check the wider view. When you get too close for too long, you lose sight of that bigger pattern, something I know I’m prone to do. Perhaps in a few weeks, I’ll be able to write that I’ve finally conquered the puzzle and learned my lesson to cut my losses early.
Self-promo
❓Request: Source requests: dedicated fountain pen enthusiasts!
📜 Published: waiting on some!
🔏 Last week, paid subscribers received a letter about me setting time limits on tasks, including doing the copy & design changes for this newsletter. I did it once and forgot to do it for the other tasks (whoops, still trying to make this habit stick!).
Jenn Chen
From my camera
I took photos at a corporate event inside an aviation museum. They hung planes from the ceilings and stuck models into many of the pilot seats (some were even hanging off planes) and my camera was SO confused. Plus, walking around in the dark and catching a fake person in the corner of your eye was a little unsettling.
Down the rabbit hole: My search history this week
- The world record of non-stop pushups is "10,507 by Minoru Yoshida of Japan, which was achieved in October 1980." This is no longer an option for Guinness, since it allowed for no rest time. Now it's the most pushups in 24 hours, which is "2,919 by Jarrad Young of Australia, performed at Matrix Boxing Gym, Queensland, on 19 June 2020."
- Jays are not only blue! Some are gray or yellow.
Long reads:
Jonquilyn Hill
Gated but available in reader mode. "The idea that whatever your life is, it could be better is really appealing. You could be richer, you could be hotter, you could be smarter, you could be more popular, you could be faster. It’s just an idea that’s very appealing to us as human beings: that we could just be more awesome than we are right now or have more awesome stuff than we have right now."
"Even if you’re willing to swallow your beliefs for a paycheck, it might backfire. Design is a job that rewards empathy and immersion; it asks you to make your client’s goals your own. That’s hard to do if you despise everything they stand for. As Griffin Creech puts it, “I think it’s rare that someone does good work about something they loathe spending time on.”"
George Charles Darley
"Oppenheimer used a combination of financial incentives, strategic pressure, and diplomacy to persuade diamond suppliers in other countries to sell exclusively through the London-based and De Beers-owned “Central Selling Organization” (CSO), which in the 1930s became the unified sales channel for virtually all the world’s pre-cut diamonds. This enabled De Beers to stockpile diamonds, strictly control the release of stones to the global market, and effectively control prices – thereby creating an illusion of diamond scarcity worldwide."
Julie Beck
Gated but available in reader mode. "“It’s not, You specifically are sociopathic, but there are elements of sociopathic behavior that, for lack of a better term, appeal to the brain.” Tilton compared the pleasure of lying during a game to the vicarious thrill you can get from watching fictional characters do unethical things, except you get to playact that role yourself."
💡 Random rec: Bose earbuds
Two years ago, I went on a search for noise-cancelling wireless headphones/earbuds. My old wired Bose ones were still working but aging out in the tech connection, and I wanted to try wireless. I tried and returned several other brands but their noise-cancelling features were terrible (as in, my old Bose headphones were performing better than new ones designed 6+ years later). I bought the QuietComfort Earbuds II (Amazon affiliate link), which are no longer available on Bose's site. It has filtered out screaming babies on the plane and the Blue Angels doing practice runs over my apt. The new model is Ultra and I imagine the noise cancelling is even better.
Coffee notables:
- "cold brew" has been added to Merriam-Webster's 12th edition hard-copy dictionary.
Petrichor, by the way, is a pleasant odor after a rainfall following a warm, dry period. Teraflop is a unit of measure for calculating the speed of a computer.
- I guess protein + coffee is such a new, great thing that they have decided to name it "proffee"
- Roasters Specialty Coffee House in Dubai set a Guinness World Record for the most expensive cup of coffee—US$699—it's a gesha, of course.
Honestly, this entire account's videos are fun to watch. She creates sounds that get synced to the video of TV shows and movies!
🍩 What I ate/drank/snacked on: these chips! They were surprisingly tasty—I never know how purple sweet potato chips will be like.
