Puzzles

I've always enjoyed doing puzzles.  Some of my earliest memories involve doing puzzles at the age of 3-4.  I would do 50-100 piece jigsaw puzzles.  My mom would help me pick out a puzzle and dump out the pieces on the dining room table.  She would tell me to start by flipping over all of the pieces and then begin with the outside pieces.  I would toil away and eventually complete the whole puzzle.  I don't know if I enjoyed puzzles so much because I was good at them or if I was good at them because I enjoyed them and spent a lot of time doing them.

Fast forward 30 years or so and as an adult I find myself approaching problems in life as a series of puzzles.  Each potential solution is like a puzzle piece that I'm trying to match to the problem puzzle piece.  Some pieces are obviously wrong.  Some look like they are a good fit, but upon further inspection, they aren't quite the right size or shape.  Some appear to have to solution at all so I just work on some other part of the puzzle and hope I'll find the right solution later.