I’ve been working on a puzzle for quite some time.
It’s a big one.
Huge actually.
While I have some ideas as to how it may look when it’s finished, there’s no picture to show me exactly what I’m piecing together.
Hell, I don’t even know how many pieces there are.
I’m just putting together an unmarked puzzle that came in a blank box. No instructions, zero direction, just a bunch of pieces… and I’m pretty certain that some of the pieces are missing.
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I’ve been thinking about this puzzle and those missing pieces.
I work on my puzzle often.
Where the fuck are those pieces?
What the fuck am I piecing together?
A stray thought comes into my head:
You go through great lengths to avoid discomfort.
It’s my therapist.
She mentioned this matter of factly, in passing, several months ago.
I was telling her a story and she interrupted me to make that point.
It went into my head, took a turn, went down a hall and disappeared.
Right up until this point…
where I’m in the shower.
I’m thinking about this freaking puzzle that I can’t seem to piece together…
And I’m trying to hold up my robe, and it’s difficult to do both.
“I’m no multitasker,” I think as I shift my robe and the stream from the shower head.
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I hate the cold.
The only thing I can think of that I hate more than being cold, is being cold AND wet.
Cold for me, especially now (while off my meds - whole other story) is anything under 75 degrees.
I have zero tolerance for that shit.
So much so that I’ve developed a “robed shower”.
I’m way too OCD to skip showers.
WAY too OCD.
But I also can’t do cold… disrobing for the brief second, my body fully exposed to something less than 75 degrees: no thanks. Hard pass.
So I’ll grab the hand held shower head, walk into the shower fully robed, and I’ll carefully, and at this point, fucking expertly move the robe and stream of water across my body in a way that I can fully wash without ever once having to get fully undressed and experience for even a second: chilly air on my naked bits.
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And that brings me back to my puzzle.
It’s not a real puzzle.
It’s my business.
It’s the merging of both my role as an entrepreneur and that of an artist.
And it feels like a fucking puzzle. I’ve got all these pieces, little if any instruction, an idea of what it may all look like when it’s done, but I’m not 100% and I’m almost certain that I’m missing a few pieces.
And by golly…
I found a huge missing piece in the shower.
I hear it loud and clear. The thought that my therapist had walked into my head months ago, the thought that had disappeared down that hallway is now running at me, full speed towards me, screaming: YOU GO THROUGH GREAT LENGTHS TO AVOID DISCOMFORT.
And then another thought…
This time it’s my coach…
She’s telling us a story about how she went to a conference of highly successful women / business owners. The key note speaker was a woman who by our capitalistic measuring system of greatness was a pretty big deal, raking in millions and millions of dollars running her business.
Everyone at that conference wanted to know her secret.
Was she a genius?
Did she have THE BEST products?
The best marketing team?
What set her aside from all these other successful women? What made her so wildly successful?
Everyone in that audience was hanging on her every word, wanting to hear: the secret.
She started by telling everyone that she was no genius, she didn’t have the best products, she loved her team but there were lots of fantastic teams out there that were not achieving her crazy, hand over fist, money pouring in success…
So what was it that set her apart?
She took a deep breath and told everyone that what set her apart, that what made her wildly successful was that she wasn’t afraid to sit in discomfort.
That was it.
If she was nervous, if she was unsure, if she had anxiety, a “gross feeling” in the pit of her stomach, she didn’t pull out her robe to make the icky-ness go away, she stripped down fully fucking naked as a Jbird and dove straight into the icy water, not thinking twice.
She sat in discomfort.
That was it.
Which is how I figured out one of my missing pieces… while in the shower, avoiding the cold, holding up my robe, carefully navigating the stream of water across my goose bumped body while two disparate comments from both my therapist and coach simultaneously popped into my head.
Well fuck.
I hate the cold.
But what I hate even more than the cold is this unfinished fucking puzzle I’ve been figuratively dragging around with me, trying to piece together, to figure out, to get it right, to make this business, this career of mine work…
And now I know: it’s time to ditch the fucking robe.
“Overthrown”
Spray paint, acrylic, vinyl and resin on wood panel
11” x 14” - AVAILABLE
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