Piecing Together Life's Big Jigsaw Puzzle

There are a lot of pieces, maybe my biggest puzzle yet!

I’ve always loved jigsaw puzzles.

I’ve always loved troubleshooting and problem-solving… and that’s all a puzzle is.

• Start with the border.

• Sort colors and obvious similar pieces.

• Assemble the smaller chunks.

• Move them to their locale in the larger puzzle.

• Fill in the rest.

There’s a fairly clear path and a formula for success.

My favorite puzzle was a Rubik’s puzzle that was literally just a chain that ran around, back and forth, making sure it crosses directly through 1 piece from edge to edge. Along that chain were colored gems, one ended up in the center of each piece. The problem? The box just had a Rubik’s logo covering part of it, and it was missing the gems… there was no picture to work from.

The way that puzzle worked, I had to figure out the pattern for the gems as they repeated. Then I had to work my way in from the outside to the inside.

It took so long, I had sorted the different colored gems into different ziploc bags, so I could put it all away and come back to it without leaving pieces everywhere.

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Life is a puzzle with fluctuating pieces

This past week, I’ve been trying to sort the puzzle pieces by color, but also by shape and by location. At least figuratively.

Last week, I mentioned that I was processing the fact that sometimes something was an ADHD problem, and sometimes it was just a life management problem. If I didn’t say it then, I’ll say it now. Sometimes the life management problem is because of an ADHD problem, and vice versa.

Those two bags of puzzle pieces are a hot mess of overlap. It’s like having 4 pieces of a puzzle that all look practically identical, but can only go in one spot each, and 2 of them don’t even go with the same puzzle.

I had a lot of great insights last week, about myself and about my upcoming life management system. I’ve got ideas for projects and communities and workshops. I’m trying to capture them all, and then I’m trying to remind myself to just work on one of them so that it’s done. So, that’s where I am right now.

I left a message in the chat for mindfullish, suggesting setting a goal for the month. I put mine in there, which is to create, publish and market something that can help people manage their life, with the bonus that it will even work for people with ADHD.

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Making connections with like minds

In the middle of me figuring out my life and ADHD things, I also spent time with my ‘Substack Writers’ group, getting some great ideas on improving the layout and information on the newsletter.

From my Substack group, someone recommended checking out

Messy Wisdom

to see how he was welcoming new people to his newsletter. It was a bit of kismet, I suppose. He had literally just taken down that page, so I ended up poking around his past writings to see if I was missing something.

Two things happened, or didn’t happen. First, I never found the page. That being said, I learned a bit about

Brad Didericksen

was living his life and handling his newsletters. That led to me reaching out to chat with him. Let me pause to say, I LOVE that Substack has a built-in direct message and chat system.

Long story short, Brad and I connected and talked for almost 90 minutes. Sharing backgrounds, interests and bonding over the stuff that was in sync.

Brad has been laying the groundwork for his

Corporate Dropout Manual

, a community for those freelancing types who were once locked into a corporate grind. His hope is to connect people all along the path to a place where we can get over our corporate induced limiting beliefs.

So, a great new connection! I also found myself bumping into some folks in the neurodivergent space in Notes.

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Looking for work

Unfortunately, I have dragged my feet long enough about creating something of value that I could put into the world and be paid for. My writing hasn’t been enough. I do realize, I’m not interested in the ‘make money online’ guru advice of becoming a ghostwriter or a copywriter.

I’m not interested in churning out content that I know nothing about and care even less about. I’m also not interested in jumping into a corporate job again, partly because I still have some imposter syndrome, and partly because I abhor what it does to people… what it did to me.

So, I’m playing around with part-time work, trying to find something that I can do in good conscience, that lets me chase my dream on my time and on my terms, but still puts bread on the table.

Trying to find a way to be paid to live really sucks, in general. The system definitely wants you to play their game, and my brain really doesn’t like their games. And I still have enough ego that I feel like I should be doing something big.

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Grateful for the people in my life

I’m grateful to have met Brad and feel blessed to find that so many of the creators on Substack are such positive people with a kind heart towards helping people.

I’ve mentioned recently that we are a looking for our tribe. We all want to find people with whom we connect. Substack is bringing this writing and self-improvement tribe into my life, and I’m grateful for it.

My other tribe has been the crowd of artists and creators at events. My favorite days at my past employer were when we were setting up a booth at Maker Faires and getting to spend time around those creatives. I want to find a way back into that tribe as well.

For now, I’ll spend the time I can with the people I know, and grow those relationships.

Namaste n stuff