About a year ago, I was on a train upp to Manchester to watch Manchester City play. I always take a couple of newspapers to read on the train. There wasn't much in them, so I started to do the easy Soduko puzzle in the Daily Express. I guess that is how many addictions start, not as a deliberate decision, just as something you drift into when you are a bit bored. Since then, it is the first thing I do every day. I've graduated from easy to medium and hard puzzles. Unless I make a mistake, I can generally do the medium in 10-20 minutes. At the gym, I'll do three medium puzzles on the exercise bike to stave off boredom. In the paper, I still struggle with the hard puzzles, but on the online app I use, I can do the hard in 20-25 minutes generally.
But that isn't really what I wanted to write about. The thing with more difficult Soduko puzzles is that they are all absorbing. Often you reach an impass, where you are so wrapped up in trying to solve it, that you cannot see the wood from the trees. You have to step back, have a cup of tea and reset your mind. More often than not, when I do that, I see the key number and everything falls into place. It is a metaphor for life in many ways. So often, we get so wrapped up that we lose focus and can't do anything. We need to step back, chill out and clear our minds. It is strange how often a seemingly intractable problem can be easily solved when you clear your mind and refocus.
Then there is another aspect that only recently occurred to me. Like Soduko puzzles, you can solve one of life's challenges, but there will always be another one in the paper tomorrow. It all starts again. I was recently chaatting to a friend, who retired last year. I asked him how it was going. He said "It is far more challenging than I thought. Having nothing to do when you wake up is a difficult thing to come to terms with". I'd never really thought of that before. For me, I never have nothing to do. I am always composing blogs and songs in my mind. There are dogs to walk, a business to run. Gigs and rehearsals to plan for The False Dots. I hate the idea of not having things to do.
My wife gets infuriated with my Soduko addiction. She thinks I should leap out of bed in the morning and do stuff, rather than lie there with the electric blanket on, doing puzzles. She is wrong. We should all make time in life to do the things we enjoy. They say doing puzzles helps the brain ward off the ravages of age and dementia. I don't know if it is true or not. I guess, like many things, time will tell.
What I can say is that Soduko has given me another tool in the toolset that gets us through this journey we call life. There is no "one size fits all" solution to the puzzle that is life. Today I may find that 2 is the number I struggle with in the puzzle. Tomorrow it could be 2 again, or it could be 9. I don't know. Another lesson I've learned is that there is satisfaction to be had solving such problems. I have realised that when life throws curveballs, sometimes we should see the challenges as mountains to be climbed and take pride and satisfaction when we climb them. Of course, not all challenges can be solved and sometimes we have tto cut our losses. That is another lesson.
Anyway, off to walk the dogs, cook lunch, then finish off todays puzzle!
