Sometimes you cannot help it. Sometimes you’re walking home, and thoughts flood your head. And they are so powerful, and there are so many of them, that you have to pick your phone from your pocket, open the Messenger conversation with yourself, and take notes of all of them, so when you get home you can put them all together, and write a blog post about them.
(from Puzzle #2. Walk home on a Friday night)
The quote above describes more or less how the ‘Puzzles’ post series came to life: toward the end of 2019, on a lonesome walk home after dinner out with friends.
When I wrote the first post, I thought it was something I’d come up with by chance, but would remain a one-time writing attempt.
A couple of weeks later, a similar writing input sprang to mind out of nowhere, and I found myself writing another ‘random’ post like the one I’d just posted. When the third ‘thought shower’ happened, I sensed the onset of a recurring trend, but more or less consciously dismissed the thought.
Then more thoughts and more posts came, and I knew I had to do something about it. So I turned those sparse texts into a series in its own right. I called it ‘Puzzles’ because that’s what they were: sparse collections of thoughts, words, ideas, feelings.
The posts were largely ignited by some tiny ‘something’ that happened during the week: a book quote, a conversation, a casual glance down the street on the way to or from work.
The series came to life in the early days of one of the toughest periods of my life. Already as I wrote the first posts, I realised that they helped me process what I was going through – at least to a small extent. So I told myself I’d keep going, as long as it made sense.
A few months into this novel writing habit, Covid happened, and everything changed. I didn’t stop the Puzzle series, but found myself writing almost exclusively about the pandemic and its massive impact on life as we’d always known it.
With the (partial) exception of the pandemic-themed pieces, the ‘puzzle posts’ have nothing specific in common. They have no pretence other than voicing my own thoughts, ideas, and feelings about things, which, I reckon, can’t be too different from the thoughts, ideas and feelings of other people.
Also, this is an open-ended series, with a beginning but no definite end: I only write puzzles if and when ‘something’ makes them happen.
This blog section is the ‘folder’ where I keep all of them. Click on the image below to open the list of posts:
