Hello beautiful people!
Let’s play!
It’s early October my sophomore year of college. Crisp, cool air. Beautiful blue skies. A campus filled with young co-eds efficiently moving between classes that take place in centuries-old buildings.
I’m leaving Park Hall headed back toward the dorms. As I head down the hill, I spot in the valley below the sidewalk I’m on in front of the ROTC building a huge pile of autumn leaves, all raked up and soon to be bagged and carted away. I stop. I look ahead on the sidewalk and see my friend Wendy. She stops. She sees me seeing the leaves. We look at the leaves and then at each other again. We run to each other, grab hands, and then go RUNNING off the sidewalk and into the pile of leaves in the valley below, slinging our backpacks off into wherever.
We start tossing leaves around overhead; we’re squealing and laughing and laughing and laughing until we’re crying with the kind of laughter that WILL NOT STOP. Our sides are aching and we love it.
There’s now a slowing down of the crowd of students headed toward their 11:05am classes. Some are smiling. Some are laughing with us. Some have a little “tsk tsk” on their faces.
But we don’t care about them. Any of them. We’re having the time of our lives.
We are engaged in play.
And every single person on campus that day — even the stuck-up accounting major with the snooty remark under her breath — had at least the teeniest space in their hearts that went, “I want that.”
Y’all.
We — creatives — get to bring into our work a sense of play like no one else is “allowed” to do in these lives of ours. Yet how often do we remember the importance of play in our daily lives? How often are we embracing moments to find — in even the most serious scenarios — a little something that feels like frolicking in a huge pile of leaves?
Today’s “work”: Go play.
I’m not talking about some “artist’s date” from The Artist’s Way (although those are great and they have their purpose of course). I’m not talking about forcing yourself to use an adult coloring book, paint pottery, or grab sidewalk chalk and create a hopscotch grid to hop through. All of these things — and so many more things — are fair game, but I want none of it to feel like work.
I want you to find a moment (more than a moment, hopefully) today in which you can do the equivalent of spinning around in circles in a field of daisies. I want you to put your feet in the grass, the sand, the water, or even the snow or a stack of pillows next to a blanket fort you’ve built and engage in real, OMG-this-is-so-much-fun play.
It’s a part of your job to bring moments like this to your work. And especially before your work is comprised of being on a set or a stage more days of the year than not, this element of play is of vital importance.
“As a young kid growing up in St. Louis, Missouri, I was constantly told, ‘You play too much Kelby. Whyn’t you quit playing?’ I decided not to listen. My name is Sterling K. Brown, and I’m an actor.” (Watch it for yourself.)
Kerry Washington, Jeff Bridges, Ellie Kemper open #SAGawards – “I’m an actor.” pic.twitter.com/Eb0JONNPof
— The Hollywood Reporter (@THR) January 30, 2017
In the comments below, don’t you dare share what you PLAN to do to play today! Take that excited energy you’re feeling and go play! THEN come back and share what you DID to play today. Share how it felt. Plan to do it again. Bookmark this page and come back to it (daily if you need to) and keep sharing what you’re doing to keep this vital sense of play active in your daily life.
Because it’s so damn good for you. And it makes the work you do for the world that much better.
’til tomorrow… stay ninja!
