When my mother died, the me that was me for the previous six years was no longer needed on a day-to-day basis. but moving my brain from watch-mode, prepped for any contingency or emergency, to a flow mode of creativity wasn't going to be an easy task or short journey. I needed to engage my thinking brain first. The Ceramic Materials Workshop classes were the meat and potatoes of the thinking journey but I needed a trigger first and the intuitive step was to solve a puzzle.

First you turn all the pieces over then you find all the edges.

In the days after she died, I went back to a happy memory of my childhood and bought a 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzle from the creator of The Oatmeal and set out to solve a puzzle, to pull the trigger, to engage my thinking brain. I think that puzzle took me about two weeks to chip away at and finish. I was rather proud of myself and it was as fun as I remembered. From there I went on to take my classes.

And now what? I'm still trying to connect to the creative flow, to put together the pieces of my technical knowledge and my organic voice. I admit, it's still elusive and somewhat difficult but I'm trying to be patient with myself and keep things relaxed, not rushed. Doing this with all the continuing existential crises that abound everywhere on the planet is not helping with my hypervigilance mode but, back to the jigsaw puzzles we go! This one only took me three and a half days to complete. :o

Spring is about to burst into full swing here in Kentucky. Maybe my inner self will go along for the ride.

Putting the pieces together