shipwrecked

Imagine you sat down at a table and found a jig-saw puzzle in pieces. With nothing better going on, maybe you'd take up the pieces and try to work them together. Once you have a corner in place, the puzzle starts to get easier, and now you want to see it finished, mostly because the heap of loose pieces stands in stark defiance of the work you've already done. So, perhaps you'd drop a few more into their place, line up the edges, make it all sit flat and pretty. Soon, you'd have more pieces essembled than you have left to place. After all you've done, you now have a nearly complete view of what it would look like once it's all added up.
Imagine, after coming this far you realize that, now that it's a picture, you can clearly see that it isn't a picture you'd want to have around. You're not going to frame it, that's certain at this point. Maybe, in a way, you liked it better when it was a heap of possibilities, little mysteries. Maybe you didn't care so much what it turned out to look like, but now that it comes to it, now that you have just a few pieces left, do you toss it back into a pile and step out for a smoke, or stick around and finish what you no longer need.

Anyway. This is my situation. Within the year, I will be among some of the best in the world at what I do, the undisputed top end of a tiny little food chain. I believe that fully, and that isn't the problem. The problem is, I don't care about any of it. Not even a little. Now that I see the full picture, feel like I have done what I wanted to do, I'm having a hard time waiting for those last pieces to fall into place.

I am sorry to say that if it were not for a sense of personal honor, I'd drive east until I couldn't remember the names of any of the things I've created, then I'd fly until I'd nowhere in particular to go, and somewhere along the line I'd most likely find a big pile of pieces staring me down, and I'd probably do it all over.

Next time, I'll look more closely at the box.