Day 24: One piece of a piece of a piece at a time.

Day 24. I realize now it’s a puzzle.  My documentary.  It’s a ginormous jigsaw puzzle just without a picture on the box to guide me.  There is no exact image to copy from or to reference or to make me feel safe that I know what landscape I’m shooting for.  I have no idea what the final portrait is going to look like.  And if that unknown isn’t scary enough, I have to actually cut out the shapes of the puzzle pieces myself and then refine them until they fit together.  It’s daunting.  It’s intense.  And even though I’m a self-proclaimed hater of jigsaw puzzles, this particular form is quite expansive and enjoyable, too.  And then there are days like today where even if I had an exact instruction manual and my own private puzzle master by my side, I’d still get lost.

I fire up the Avid later than I plan simply because I can’t focus.  The contractor and his sidekick are on a ladder right outside my office door.  I’m trapped.  I am driven loony with the non-stop drilling and shouting from the attic of, “not that one!  I need the wrench with the brown handle,” all before 10am.  By noon I’m having homicidal thoughts.  What was supposed to take three weeks is now clocking in at 8 and ½.  My patience runs out at 2:37pm when I need to go to the bathroom.  Sidekick is in one so I have to go to the other one.  Fine.  I go.  As I wash my hands and turn to leave, I see that right above the toilet where I have just peed is a three foot hole in the ceiling…a clear view from the attic—where they are working.  Really?  A head’s up would have been nice!  Wait.  Oh god.  Did I fart?  I don’t think so.  It’s a challenge to shrug off the indignity.  I take solace in the presumption that this will be a “don’t ask don’t tell if you just witnessed or heard me peeing” situation.

One piece of a piece of a piece at a time.

I slump back to the edit system a broken, embarrassed woman.  Yesterday I was an Olympic god of documentary puzzle pieces.  I completed not one but two bin preparations for Dan the amazing editor man.  I was the poster child for the thrill of victory.  I had high hopes for today and what I was going to accomplish.  Let’s just say, now I’m agony of defeat personified.

The piece I’m working on right now is close, I think.  At least that’s what I’m telling myself.  My new plan is to finish cutting out its string out shape tomorrow.  For now, I remind myself to think outside the box inside the box and create from what I have.  And what I have is one piece of a piece of a piece of the puzzle.  I can’t worry about the big picture right now.  All I can focus on is my one piece of a piece of a piece at a time.  Eventually, it’ll look like something and that’s better than nothing.

Until tomorrow, create from what you have…one piece of a piece of a piece at a time.

Kelli Joan Bennett is a filmmaker, actress, writer, entrepreneur, advocate for creative thinking and Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Think Outside The Box Inside The Box Media.

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