The joy of construction, the glee of destruction

Jo has this kind of strange ritual she started long before she met Scott. When she was going to spend more than a weekend at the family cabin in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, she would order one of those elaborate three-dimensional jigsaw puzzles and take it with her.

She’d usually set herself up on the dining room table in the main cabin where she could build her puzzle in peace. She preferred to do it alone.

It is, simply, a de-stressing exercise and helps get Jo tuned down from the normal speed of stressful work life to normal speed of a relaxing vacation in the Tetons. She usually goes non-stop until the puzzle is done; although her earliest attempts took longer because she hadn’t yet gotten the hang of things.

Jo has built the Taj Mahal, Empire State Building, St Mark’s Basilica in Venice, Newschwanstein castle in Bavaria, among others. Almost all of them are places Jo has actually been.

She puts all her stress and anger and frustration into the pieces of each puzzle.

  

When it’s done, she admires it.

Then destroys it.

Usually by burning it up in the fireplace.

Along with the puzzle, her stress, anger and frustrations go up in flames too.

As you can see, the latest puzzle is St Basil’s church on Red Square in Moscow. Jo’s had some lingering anger about work-life toward the end of her career and we thought what a good idea to choose something connected to her last major client event.

It’s very cathartic.

 

And now she sips her wine without stress, anger or frustration!

  

 

Comments

[Kim]

You did it! May the last of the work-related stress be burned with the puzzle never again to return.

[JoEllen Zumberge]

Kim! I'm so sorry I didn't wait for you and Neill. It made this sort of siren-like call to me: 'build me now. build me now.' I just couldn't resist!
xxxxx

[Angele Switzler]

the last image is really cool

[Vicki]

If this system of yours works, I'm in. How did you ever happen upon this? Simple and brilliant.
Off to google the puzzle of my dreams.
Wow.
Really.
Cool.

[JoEllen Zumberge]

Vicki - it just kind of happened. It actually started out with the 2-D variety of jigsaws, then I saw the Neuschwantstein castle - a place I always loved - in 3-D. I could never do puzzles at home during my normal life with stressful work (all client service careers are stressful, if you're any good) so I'd leave them till Jackson Hole. I couldn't wait to get started and then I'd stew and stress over the puzzle until it was finally done. Then I felt really great, relaxed when it was done. The burning was an afterthought that just made it fun. Especially on an outside bonfire. With a beer. [smile]

[JoEllen Zumberge]

Angele: you should have seen all the black smoke pouring out of the fireplace! And we found all the cracks in the fireplace where smokes leaks out (including into the guest room!) and around the sides. Luckily it didn't burn the house down, and we've found a problem we can now get fixed in time for the next guests at Thanksgiving. !