Puzzled

Countdown: 12 days until I finally board my first flight to New Zealand.  It's crunch time! 

Time is moving both painfully slow and faster than I can handle.  On the one hand, I've been planning this trip for months now, and there's a part of me that feels like I just need to get on the airplane already.  Like a kid on a long road trip, I just wanna ask, "Are we there yet?"  I've done so much research and seen so many Flickr photos, that in a way, I sort of feel like I've already gone.

On the other hand, time is moving faster than the speed of light.  12 days to do everything left to do and see everyone I need to see before I go seems like an impossible task.

But time is not under my control and August 5th will arrive sometime between the 4th and 6th, whether I like it or not.  So, I'm trying to go with the flow.

I've been working on this jigsaw puzzle (please refrain from cheap shots on my obvious geekiness), and it may sound crazy, but there are some similarities between working on a puzzle and life.  Doing a puzzle is a combination of paying attention to the details and seeing the big picture.  You have to notice the most minute changes in shape or texture to find just the right piece.  But sometimes, if you get too caught up looking for a piece the way you imagine it should be, you never find it.  It's only when you take a step back and stop looking so hard, that it appears right in front of you.  Those pieces often start a new pattern: an edge of a woman's dress, the basket of a hot air balloon, the ear of little white kitten (yes, I realize I'm inviting an onslaught of teasing with that one).  

What I'm getting at, is that we often imagine our lives playing out in a particular way.  We think about the future, about what we want to happen entirely based on our present reality.  What we don't take into account is that our lives often unfold in pleasant and unexpected ways when we turn our head for a moment.  The next piece of the puzzle falls into place when we stop trying so hard and let it happen naturally.

I've been so focused on the details of this trip (which bungee jump I may muster the courage to do, which hostels have free wifi, which bank account charges the lowest international transaction fee, etc.) that I've lost track of the big picture.  This trip is about opening myself up to new possibilities.  It's about taking a break from the monotony and shaking things up a bit.  The bottom line is that it doesn't matter where I go, which hostel I stay in, which adventure sports I'm brave enough to endure.  All that matters is that I lose focus long enough to let things unfold as they should.  When I stop searching so hard and let my glance fall sideways, the unexpected delights of life seem to present themselves.  

Where I go, when I return, and everything in between will be exactly unlike anything I currently imagine.  It's like working on a puzzle without having a reference image on the box.  I just need to put the pieces together intuitively, without expectation, and everything will fall perfectly into place.