I will take "The Easy Road" for $200 please!

October 04, 2017

I will take "The Easy Road" for $200 please!

“Do you want to start with some easier puzzles?”, queried the pop-up chat box of the blocking puzzle game which I was playing. Would I ever……

I must digress. I used to be pretty swift at this particular game, confidently swiping blocks this way and that to release the target block into the wide blue yon of cyber space. I had worked all the way up to puzzle 73 of the beginner set after all!

Fast forward two and a half years. Two and a half years of no puzzle playing. No practice, hadn’t even THOUGHT of the puzzle game. And yet here I was, on a long flight filled with fidgety babies, fully expecting to instantly recall the tips and tricks I had learned when I played it way back when. I swiped, I swooped, I swooned….I couldn’t remember how to play! But my pride fully expected me to succeed at puzzle 73. Thank goodness for the common sense of computers and the sympathetic people who wrote the code. They probably forecasted that people like me would be playing their game one day, and they gave me an out. And I gratefully took it. They took me alllllll the way back to puzzle one. You know, the one with like 3 or 4 pieces. Even a dummy could figure it out. And she did. And she let out a small little whoop when with a final flourish, the target piece vanished into the wild, free at last. After my seat mates stopped looking at me with new reserve, I tackled puzzle 2, and 3 and 4, and before I knew it, I had started to remember how to play the game with a bit of flair.

We can be so hard on ourselves can’t we? I reflected back on all that had changed in my life during that 2.5 years. Serious life changes that sent the online stress test counter I took recently zooming into the red zone with a recommendation of “People experiencing this level of stress in their lives sometimes find it helpful to TALK TO SOMEONE.” Yet I didn’t want to lose any ground. I wanted to succeed at anything and everything I put my mind to, the first time. I didn’t want to step back and revise.

Revision is a theme in my life lately. Oh yes. So, gentle reader, answer me a question. As you read back through this post, and my previous posts, take a gander at my writing style. From my first post forward I have never made it a secret that I was not always going to be grammatically correct. I wasn’t always going to speak in a scholarly manner. You could read my blog and not be burdened with droll rhetoric that would put you to sleep….hopefully. So have you noticed I stayed true to that style? Yeah, funny thing, the professors grading my papers in grad school noticed the exact same thing. Apparently, APPARENTLY, there is no room in APA sixth edition style of writing (which psychologists created and will defend and trumpet until the day they die, golly it felt so good to write a parenthetical, run-on sentence just now), for light-hearted, conversational prose. Whatever!! So, I have had to revise my style. I had part of my final Capstone sent back for mistakes that “ran throughout the paper”. And apparently my reference page was filled out by someone who was “minimally competent” in the ways of APA sixth. Sigh. So, I have had to back up to puzzle one and learn more than I ever wanted to know about this high-brow way of putting work on paper. It’s tough, it’s not fun, and it’s taking time. I’ve had to also revise my timeline of attaining this degree just so I could be thorough, do things THEIR way, and be proud of my name stamped on the title page of the double-spaced, New York Times fonted, size 12 paper. (Again, my blog, my words ;))

I’m the kind of person who works hard and when she sees the finish line, she stokes the internal fire a bit more, digs deep, and pushes through to the very end, with gut and gusto. This whole revision situation is forcing me to sit back on my haunches and thoughtfully approach my next steps. My 30,000 foot view tells me that this will be good for my character in the long run, but the racehorse in me is faunching at the bit.

I am learning to be content with going back to puzzle one in some areas of my life. I am choosing to see that it’s not moving backwards or losing ground. It is rewinding to look at the same things in a new way. I’m choosing to see it as lateral growth. I am widening the base of my experience and building a stronger pyramid.

I keep reminding myself to look at the big picture. For example, in the big picture of having more choices because I earned a graduate degree, a few more weeks spent working on my Capstone is not going to matter in the long run. It helps to draw back a bit and gain some much needed perspective.

So to those of you in similar circumstances, take a deep breath with me, quiet the inner voice nagging for constant forward motion, and take some time to get your puzzle legs back under you. Be kind to yourself. Life is not only fragile, it is sweet, and there are many experiences to be enjoyed along the way. And by all means, if you are encountering difficult circumstances and are given the choice to work some easier puzzles for a bit, take the opportunity. The time you spend on familiar terrain can totally refocus your efforts and help you approach those difficult circumstances with a fresh perspective.

And as always…

….make it a great day!!

(editor's note: just prior to posting this blog, the author was informed that her revised paper that she resubmitted had passed the evaluation. Whoot!!)