.png){kind=logo}
Happy Friday and Day 9 of the Play Your Way Challenge!
What sort of SPACE did you discover yesterday? Were you able to expand your definition of Play, knowing of personalities, or accessing of playful SPACE to have fun in?
I actually found it surprisingly hard to carve out space for playing yesterday. Lots of anxiety / stress this week has resulted in my apartment reaching a mess that I identified as being a hinderance to my wanting to play indoors with any of my personalities. I know this about myself - that I am very affected by the physical space around me - and can sometimes feel that it is a reflection of how much attention I am giving to particular areas of my life. When my bedroom is messy, I'm not spending enough time playing with myself as a whole. When my kitchen is messy, I am not engaging with my artist-creator / explorer personalities. When my living room is messy, I need some one on one time with my mixed-media artist creator and also some social time in play. When my porch gets messy, my director / collector / observer is wanting some attention.
I think it's safe to say that as a whole, we are spending WAY more time indoors than ever before. Being conscious about how your SPACE affects your play moods is a huge tool in starting to identify ways you can be playing more. Set up a space to feel like the most playful wonderland you can personally imagine! I dare you.
So - for me yesterday that meant calling up some friends to ask for some socially distanced social playing. This does two things:
Gets me out of my space (physical, mental, emotional) that is feeling stale and blocking access to wanting to play
Creates a stimulant for new playful ideas to cross my path, other play personalities to bounce off of, and a quick IN to some playful moments where I can relax and blow off some steam
We hung out with some wine and an amazing cheese board spread (ahem Collector play) and threw some MYSTICAL FLAME on to a fire (Artist-Creator play), and sat around talking for what turned in to 4 hours of laughing conversation (Joker / Storyteller play!)
What i noticed about this space is that my Joker has a much easier time coming out in group dynamics. I love to make people laugh, to insert funny moments into conversation often through stories. These are not two personalties that I have an easy time accessing without the SPACE set to help coax it out.
Kindling First - Then a Spark
So while we were spending all of this time sitting around a fire pit last night, it also got me to thinking about how play starts. Particularly when it feels hard to start - which by the way is totally normal even for me.
I'm obviously going to use the metaphor of a fire here....!
If a giant bonfire represents our optimal experience, the most fun and most playful moment you could ever imagine accessing - how do we get to that amount of heat? You know, that bonfire was started with some kindling and a single spark.
This brings me to today's prompt: INSTRUMENT. Truthfully half of me wants the prompt today to also be an option for SPARK so i'm just going to roll with that and let you choose which word you like more ;)
Today, throw on a playful attitude and see what sort of INSTRUMENT / tools / catalysts / facilitators you come across. Keep in mind that these can be people, places, things, ideas... really anything. It's whatever acts as kindling for SPARKing your desire to Play. Since our overarching theme for the week is expansion the idea here is to be piggybacking on what you started learning about space yesterday, and keep building on it. What are your ideal spaces, and what do they contain in order to get you playing? Remember that the strongest play INSTRUMENTS are ones that give you a what (ie Play!) but not necessarily a how. They are props to SPARK and INSTRUMENT a playful moment for you.
You might find it helpful to create a list of the spaces you encounter every day, and take an inventory of what INSTRUMENTs you can find in each. I use something like this for days when I know I want to play but am feeling uninspired or can't remember what I like doing (yes - this really happens).
Panels below to get you going! Shoot me a DM if you have any SPARKS you'd like to share, or INSTRUMENTS that you discover today!
