Puzzled About Everything with Monica Marlatt

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The empty nested stage was very hard for me. I don't think we talk about it enough. I really

wasn't prepared for it. People will go, oh, you're going to love it. You're going to have

your own time. You can read books and sleep in. You can go vacation. But that's not what I found.

I was very sad. I missed my kids dearly. So we're exploring our city all over again,

which is a lot of fun. And we're seeing lots of nice art. Like my city has so many art projects

here. So I had loved that. And as we're older, we should always be learning something new.

You could be learning new recipes, learning how to cook. You can learn the language. You can

learn a musical instrument. But we should never stop learning.

Hi, I'm Claire. For this podcast, I chat with people who have found or refound their creativity

as adults. We'll explore their childhood experiences of the arts, discuss how they came to the

artistic practices they now love, and consider the barriers they may have experienced between the two.

We'll also explore what it is that people value and gain from their new found artistic pursuits

and how their creative lives in which they're practical every day lives.

This time I'm chatting with Monica Marlotte. Hi, Monica. How are you? I'm wonderful. Thank you

for having me. I'm excited about our little chat together. You're very welcome me to start by

telling me how you like to feed your creative soul currently. I am a puzzle influencer on Instagram.

And I try to look at a puzzle that I complete and I ask myself, what can I do to make this look

different from what everyone else does when they take a picture? So I do a lot of stop motion

with my puzzles and I do location shoots with my puzzles. I'm always thinking about what is

different that I can do. How can I present this puzzle differently to other ones? So that's what I do.

Brilliant. It sounds so interesting and different. So I'm really looking forward to finding out

how you got on to that. But before that, when you were younger, did creative activities of any sort

play a role in your life where they encouraged at home at school? I'm going to say not so much as a child.

I don't think I was ever encouraged or nurtured that way. As a mother, that was definitely something I

did with my children. I had three children and everything they did was based around creativity.

If it was just playing for fun, if it was a school project that they had to do, let's present it

in a different creative way. I did a lot of hobbies. I did a lot of crafting when I had my kids.

So not so much as a young child, but definitely in my later years, I find being creative is very

important. If we don't have creative people, life is boring. So then when you were growing up,

did you have thoughts, plans, what you wanted to do after school, what did work life look like?

I was a program coordinator, so it was a community center, so I would create activities for

people coming in from arts and crafts. So we did Bunker, Paper Tool, wood burning, so you'd always

be trying to look for new instructors. I guess we did it four times a year. There were before

sessions a year, and then there was also entertainment involved in that and physical fitness that you

would program. So I personally did like the finding different instructors, finding new trending

crafts that people could do, and you'd always just be dropping in those programs because you wanted

to get feedback from people, or how you liking this and how the instructor. So sometimes I would go

to that instructor's place after hours, and I would learn that craft. I didn't have that opportunity

while I was working, but definitely like the crafting idea. And I remember I did Paper Tool,

and I did a Bunker Shishu. You said what? Bunker Shishu is a Japanese form of embroidery.

And the only difference is you're using a different type of thread, more of a rayon thread,

and you can manipulate that thread a little bit. It's quite gorgeous, and I have a few pieces

hanging in my house, so they did. Oh, interesting, that was a new one on me. Tell me a bit about

family life as well. I'm a mom of three. I did stay at home after I had my third child,

keeping them busy, and I will say I kept them very busy. Maybe not so much with the crafting

and stuff like that, but I'm telling you every weekend we would do an adventure. And I think that

takes somebody to be very inventive with what are you doing today? Yes, you may go to a park,

but I can tell you we did some amazing adventures where I'd organize the neighborhood kids,

and we'd go to an ice cream factory, and we'd get an ice cream tour. So I would always be the

organizer, but I'd be coming up with great adventures. We'd go to a pumpkin farm, and we'd be

able to go in the pumpkin field and pick out our own pumpkin. We would go to a vet, and the vet

would let us all come in and see behind the scenes. We'd go to the local bakery, we'd all get to

meet the bread or something like that. We were always doing fun adventures. That also sounds like

it's very enjoyable. You're doing it with the other kids, presumably other parents, so you've got

this whole rather large part of your life and the community that surrounds that. And I'm thinking

about when the children grow up, they're going to move on from that and not need you, or want you to

be doing quite so much stuff. So were you aware of how that was going to affect your life moving on

to a next stage? The empty nested stage was very hard for me. I don't think we talk about it enough. I

really wasn't prepared for it. People will go, oh, you're going to love it. You're going to have

your own time. You can read books and sleep in, you can go vacation, but that's not what I found.

I was very sad. I missed my kids dearly, and they have successful careers. I didn't want to burden

them with my blue. So I was telling myself I had to turn myself around because it's not going to

change. They're not coming back. I have to figure this out. So I thought that what I liked to do

before I had kids, and there were a few things. So I liked to puzzle and I like swimming and being

a little bit more social. So that's what I did. I started to puzzle. And I still like puzzling.

I just forgot that I liked puzzling. So in the spare time I would puzzle, and it really just

exploded. My kid suggested that because I was building so many puzzles, I should start an

Instagram account. I didn't know what that was. I'm older. I was like, what is that? So I looked

into that and I started an Instagram account. And following other people that did puzzles,

we were all taking the same pictures of the same puzzle. It was very boring. And I have to come

up with a different way to present my puzzles on my Instagram. And that's where I really got

creative. And I am still having fun doing it. I take my puzzles out. So if it's a beach,

I go out to my local beach. I hold the puzzle and I'm sitting in a nice chair with my

feet in the sand and I take a nice picture. That's fun. My husband helps me. We walk all around

the city. I live in a big city. I'm from Toronto. There's lots of beautiful art installations,

which I really love. So I'm always gravitating to a puzzle that I got. Oh, I can take that puzzle

over to this location and we can take a nice picture. So we're exploring our city all over again,

which is a lot of fun. And we're seeing lots of nice art. Like my city has so many art projects

here. So I had loved that. But then what I also started to do was I saw people do stop motion

reels. And that looked fun. So I spent a lot of time doing tutorials. I figured out how to do it.

And with a lot of puzzles, I'll do a stop motion reel. And that became very popular on my

account. And I became very popular on Instagram. I have over 17,000 people following me because

of the creative ways I present my puzzle. And I'm just like, oh, I just love that people like that.

And do you show yourself as well as your personality getting across

on these reels and things? Yes. Anyone that wants to be popular on one of these platforms,

if it's YouTube, TikTok or Instagram, you have to be a person. There should be a face behind it.

Like my advice is it becomes more real. It's more organic. You should always present yourself

in your content, not all the time. But people want to know that it's not fake. It's not a brand

doing it. They want to know that there's a real person behind it. So I didn't do it at the

beginning. But now I do quite regularly. And I actually have my husband doing it too. He doesn't

like it so much. But we both present ourselves on our Instagram platform. And I feel doing that.

I have a family. Funny enough. In doing that, I went grocery shopping once. And I had somebody

recognize me and like, do you do puffles? And I said, well, yeah, I do. Is that a Costco? And

it goes, I follow you. And I'm like, oh, my goodness. That's hilarious.

Yeah. Two things that perhaps people wouldn't think would naturally go together because you think

of puzzles is solo individual. Then you're doing the modern technology of the content creation,

the inventive ideas around it and also showing your face, being sociable. They don't sound like

they should go together. And also I wonder about the audiences, whether we might be

clichéd or thinking in stereotypes when we think about the audiences that like puzzling.

What do you think about those few points? Well, you know, Instagram is great because they give you

a lot of data. They call it insights. And you'd be surprised who follows me. A demographics,

it's more younger people that follow me and the people that do the puzzling. Yes, I have people

my age follow me. But it's mostly the younger people and the younger people that are doing puzzling

now. I get it. Like puzzling is trending. It is a pop culture thing right now, people puzzling.

They're doing it because work. They're on the computer all the time. Okay. They're consumed with

their social media platforms. They want to get offline. They want to disconnect. What a great

way to disconnect is with the puzzle. Mind you, the flip side of that, there is a big online

community presence where people puzzle socially online. Like we can all join in Zoom room or whatever

platform. And we all puzzle the same puzzle and we're from all over the world. So you're sort of

puzzling by yourself, but you're still connected online and you're puzzling with the group.

So it sort of goes both ways. But yes, younger people are really puzzling. And what they're doing

was puzzling is there is a new trend called speed puzzling. So they race each other. And when I say

race each other, they go to competitions and they start off locally. It could be at a library,

it could be at a pub. Then they go to their state or nationals and then it goes all the way to

globals where they have international speed puzzling competition. And people come from all over the

world. You can puzzle as a solo as pairs and as a group. And you would not believe the number.

I'm talking thousands of people come thousands. They can't even do it for a weekend because there's

so many people that come. There's different heats that they do. It's streamed online live on YouTube.

It's crazy, but that's what puzzling has become now. It is a competition. On the casual puzzler,

I just chill. It's calming for me. But that is why we have such a large demographics of young people

doing puzzling now because they've elevated it. They're speed puzzling. Well, I never. That is

another new thing I've learned today. Amazing. You've taken this a bit further as well. Tell me about

the cruises. Oh, that's wonderful. My husband and I, we are traveling a lot because we're empty

nesters. And I would always bring a puzzle on our cruise because we have extended sea days. So

you're on sea for about five days. There are things to do, but you know, I can only read so many books.

So I do a puzzle whenever we puzzle. People always stop by and some people join us and people just

like to chat. But then an idea came to my head and I said, you know what? I have so many connections

with different puzzle brands now just because I am a puzzle influencer. I bet you I could get a

whole bunch of puzzles and we should make this like an activity to do for a few hours for

different passengers. They can come. They can puzzle with their family. They're partner on

their own and they can do their own puzzle. Yes, there are community puzzles on a cruise ship,

but not everybody likes to puzzle with people. Sometimes there's missing pieces. Sometimes people

are puzzle hogs and they don't want to puzzle with you. They'll make it uncomfortable. Sometimes

you don't like those other people. So this is a way that they can puzzle and do their own thing

and I can introduce them to way more than the standard jigsaw puzzle. I bring plastic puzzles,

acrylic puzzles, wood puzzles, shape puzzles, irregular piece puzzles. They have no idea of all the

different puzzle brands that are available. I bring 30 to 40 different puzzle brands and they're

they can barely name one puzzle brand. So they're very, very excited. The cruise ship I work with

is Royal Caribbean. Took a little while to find the right person, the right connection that I didn't

give up. I have made that connection. We do anywhere between two to four puzzle cruises a year

and it's just a lot of fun. Like I get the puzzle and I get to travel. It's just a win-win.

And I was interested in the different types of puzzles as you started to mention there and as an

influence arm assuming that you probably get brands sending you stuff as well. Yes. So it started

more when the pandemic happened. People lost their jobs. They were trying to reinvent how can I

make some money. They were pivoting and puzzles were really trending because we were, it was on

lockdown. Everyone was at home. So they make some puzzles. Unfortunately they couldn't get their

puzzles in stores because the stores were closed. So they reached out to people that had a

following on Instagram. And I had a small following at that time, like maybe two, three thousand

followers. And they'd say, hey, can we send you a puzzle? Please post about it. And I'd be like,

okay. So that's how I started getting puzzles sent to me. Now, puzzle brands always reach out to

me and when they come out with new releases or something, they'll say, can we send you a few,

would you post about it or would you take them on your cruise? And I'm like, yes, yes, that's fine.

But when the pandemic happened, instead of let's say there were 10 or 12

puzzle brands, all of a sudden we had what it's called boutique puzzle brands come out. These

little family-run businesses, they only had five or six images. They were really nice quality,

nice packaging. I can easily figure. There's probably 120 puzzle brands now. It opened the eyes to

puzzlers like myself that it's not just this one regular puzzle brand. They work with artists,

illustrators. They've come up with different textures of puzzles. It's just been wonderful to

get to experience different puzzles like their court puzzles. Wood, oh my god, there's probably

30 different wood puzzle brands and they all use different woods. Some of them are hand-tut,

some are laser cut. They're just amazing. I feel very blessed to receive some of these puzzles

because they get very expensive. I don't make money when I post, but I do receive a free puzzle.

And if I'm not spending money, I'm happier. Yeah, I understand. I wanted to talk about

space here because I often speak with other guests and they say, I need space for my canvas or

I need space for my potter's wheel and you're talking about people sending new puzzles. You're

talking about taking puzzles to the cruises. Where do these puzzles live when you're not on the

cruise ship, etc. People don't realize, my husband and I, we sold our beautiful home. All right,

I have three thousand square foot home. I mean a thousand square foot home now in a condo. There is

no space. Okay, it's in the closet. It's under the bed. We have two bathrooms. One's in the bathtub

with the shower curtain hiding it. Like they're everywhere. All right, a puzzle comes in. A puzzle

has to go out. I donate a lot of my puzzles, I sell them on my puzzles, but I'm always being creative.

Where can we put this? Like, you know, I'm hiding them when they come. So my husband doesn't see

because it goes, we have no more room. Why do we have more puzzles here? So I hide. I wait until

it goes out before I bring them in. For our cruise puzzles, there are a lot of puzzles. I bring

over 200 puzzles in two large suitcases. What I do with those ones, I literally repackage them.

They're not in their boxes. I put them in a Ziploc bag, a photocopy, laminate, the insert photo,

I label both so I match them up. So those have been reduced in size by a lot. That works for me,

but as for the puzzles in their boxes, I know when I look at some puzzle influencers, they're in

a beautiful home. They have a private puzzle room. All right. And they have shelves and shelves of

puzzles. It looks great. But at the same time, I like that my puzzle being turned around and other

people are building them. Just to put it on a shelf, it's like a book. It's only been read once.

Let other people read the book. Let other people do the puzzle. As for our puzzle reels, that's

another great thing. I only have a small living room. It's a living room kitchen and dining room.

That's what a condo is. When we do a deconstructed stop motion, we literally move everything out.

I'll probably do three is because it's just so much effort. My husband's 75 years old.

And we're moving this big sofa back and forth each time. We move everything out. And then we set

up a little table and the lights and everything. I'll do two videos. Then we move everything back.

Like it is a whole day of production. And I do that maybe every other week. But there is no space.

We just have to be creative and use with what we have. And we do it. It works. It's fine. I never

come across to anyone that I'm professional that I have a studio. I don't. I do sometimes

a behind the scene. I go, you're looking at my living room. Okay. We've moved the carpet. We've

done everything. People can do it. Don't be intimidated just because you live in a small space.

If I can do it, you can do it. It's reality, isn't it? It's realistic. It is.

I wondered about other kind of benefits. Do you feel that as well as community and having

this joy and enjoyment in your life? Do you feel other benefits come into your life

through tapping into this creative side of you through getting back into puzzling?

Puzzling is great. For me, it's very relaxing. It's like your zen moment. When we have all this busy

ness, all this noise around us, puzzling comes me down. I really like it. As for my age, puzzling

is great because I'm learning new things. Okay. If a puzzle isn't challenging, you know, that's

nice, but it should be challenging. You know, you should push yourself. It's the same if you're

doing a seduco or a crossword puzzle. It should be hard. You know, you want to stimulate your brain.

So puzzling is really good about that. But what I do with my stop motion reels, I'm learning new

technology. I'm learning a language. And as we're older, we should always be learning something new.

You could be learning new recipes, learning how to cook. You can learn the language. You can

learn a musical instrument, but we should never stop learning. And I find I'm learning something new

with the technology. So for me, that's very good. The other thing when we're older is

there are two things. You should always be learning. And we need to be social. It's so easy to

isolate yourself and read a book through a puzzle, watch TV at night. It's very easy just to

fall into our routine and you know, maybe catch up with a neighbor or your family on a phone call

whatever. That's not good enough. We need to get out. We need to be social. So you want to learn

pickleball. Hey, now you're learning something and you're being social. You want to join a book

club. You want to join a walking club to be social. So the puzzle community is very social. I

mentioned that there's a huge online community. That counts. You know, you're interacting with

different people. Yes, it's virtually, but it's great. People are doing their speed puzzling

competition. They're getting out. They're meeting new people. That's what we need to do. As we get

older, two things being social and learning new things. And the puzzle provides me with that.

Yeah. You've given already given some really interesting insights. And I'm wondering if you have

any other advice perhaps for parents whose children are almost leaving the nest or just anyone

who faces having extra time on their hands or a life change. If you have any advice for how they

might prepare or protect themselves from possible disconnection or boredom or loneliness going

forward. You guys find the hobby. You have to find something that interests you. Like you're doing

these podcasts. Like this is amazing. You're keeping stimulated. You're meeting new people. Find

something that you like. And it could be something that's very popular or trending. Or something

that's very unique if you want to do pottery or taking a punkish issue. It really doesn't matter,

but find something that you like. Like you could start a hiking club. There's just so many things,

but it's really just connecting what is it that I like and not to isolate yourself. That's the

best thing. You might think you have all this time and you'll do all these fun things with your kids.

They're not going to want to do that. They have their own life. They have their own friends. They

will include you. They're sweet. They're kind. But you will not be with them every day like you

used to be. And your coworkers, we all outgrow our friends and coworkers. You have to find something

to fill that space. And I think another thing is when you're trying new things, I know I have tried

a number of things, is that you don't have to like it. You try something and it's not right for you.

Yeah. You can still try something else, can't you? You know, that is great because when I was

raising my kids, so I remember my eldest, you would put them in every sport and every club.

Until you find something that fits. Now, my eldest, nothing really ever fit. I think the

finally thing that fit was the Garden Club, but she's not a sports person. The other two,

they're very sporty and, you know, anything you put them in, they gravitated to and they like,

but that first child, she did not like anything and it was another parent that such goes,

keep putting them in. Keep being creative. Come up with different ideas. You will find something that

and here we are as grown adults. We're doing the same things for ourselves. Keep trying new things.

You will find something. You will. There will be something and it doesn't have to be the first thing,

or the second thing, or the third thing that you try. We're kind of told we should persevere

and that's often something we're told as children, but in fact, when this is about your pure

enjoyment, you don't have to persevere if it's not right for you. That you even try something

new is great because now I feel if you're in a conversation with somebody, you can say,

oh, I tried tickleball. It was, you know, the people were really great, but my feet don't move.

It's not for me. But now you have some reference when it comes up in a conversation,

rather than just standing there and nodding your head. So keep trying and those things that you're

doing, they will come out in conversation. Even when you're kids, you're having a conversation

with your kids ago. Mom, what new things did you try this week? There's a starting point for you

guys to have a conversation together and they might laugh at your misadventure and like, well,

I can't wait to see what you do next week, Mom. Great. That's perfect. That's what we want you to do.

That's brilliant. Thank you so much for chatting today, Monica. I've really enjoyed hearing about

everything. Tell us how we can connect with you. Well, my name is Puzzled about everything on

Instagram and even if you just did a Google search, you'd come up my website and everything else

would come out. But it's not easy. Puzzled about everything and I am puzzled about everything.

Fantastic. Well, thank you for having me. It was lovely chatting with you and you do wonderful

things for our community. Thank you. Oh, thank you very much. I hope you enjoyed this episode.

If you did, perhaps you'd like to financially contribute to future episodes at

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