Relaxation

So with the stresses in our lives we all have our different escapes. Cleaning the house, exercising, writing, puzzles, sports, watching tv, listening to music, reading books. There are a variety of ways. I haven't been too stressed lately but with having a night time job and not being in school currently I spend a lot of time in the apartment during the day. There is only so much watching of Netflix and Hulu one can take. So I have my ways that I relax and one of those ways is putting a puzzle together.

I really enjoy working on puzzles. A couple of weeks back we were at our friends apartment and they just finished a puzzle. Since that point I wanted to work on a puzzle. A week later I went to the local DI and bought 3 puzzles. There is always a risk in buying puzzles from DI because you never know if there might be a piece missing. The total cost of the puzzles was $3.75. That is a steal if I do say so myself.

Now that I have 3 new puzzles I started on one immediately. I started with the ocean one because it has dolphins which happen to be one of my favorite animals. But, also it is a round puzzle which I had never done before. Round puzzles can be a little difficult because some of the pieces aren't actually square or rectangle like usual. They are pieces that are rounded. I would mostly work this puzzle whenever I would feel like working on it or when I needed to escape from stress. Majority of the time I would work on the puzzles after I would get home from work at night. I have been working on the puzzle for the past few weeks. Last night I finally finished the puzzle. I spent about 3 hours on the puzzle last night. There is just something about escaping into the world of solving puzzles. You begin and before you know it, 1 hour has passed, then 2 hours, then 3 hours. It is also really satisfying when you find pieces that fit together and you are just on a roll. That happened last night, one piece after another piece. Of course you come to a point where it seems that you can't find any pieces that fit together. That also happened. Here's the final product.

But it is extremely gratifying and satisfying once the puzzle is completed. It's a great feeling. Now onto the next puzzle. 

Being married to an English major who loves to write stories, it's hard to compete. Now Kylee and I don't really compete when it comes to writing because it is a known fact that she is much better at it than I am. She is always writing. She is also always developing characters for future stories. But I have found out that writing for me is a way to relax as well. I don't write full stories like she does. I tend to lean towards poetry. There is something about putting words onto paper. I wrote a poem back in July one night, but the first draft was not very good. Since then I have edited and rewrote it several times. I have gained a lot of respect for writers because of all the revisions that has to be done just to get it up to a decent quality to share it with others.  It is still in the revising stages but it is almost finished. I'll give you a little sneak peak. 

Here's a couple of lines from it. 

The soothing waterfall

infiltrates the whooshing of the fan.

The water’s pulse

trickles down the rocks,

--N--