Permission to play
I am hard at work on September’s Journal, which will be all about Wolf and letting go of what does not serve us, but knowing I needed a little break from sitting like a prawn all hunched over my keyboard, I thought we could, oh, I don’t know, maybe have a play.
I was going to say you don’t need anyone else’s permission to play, but sometimes (👋) we are so invested in getting things right and doing what we are told that it kind of feels like that, in fact, we do need permission to play.
🪄🪄🪄 And here it is, my magical-sparkly wand giving you ALLLLLL the permission to play! (This permission lasts from right now until the end of time, with no caveats and all the possible inclusions you could imaginate).
Somewhere along the way, many of us learned that art should be serious. That materials are expensive and shouldn't be "wasted", and that sketchbooks should be filled only with keeper pages. That every creative session should produce something worth showing, something to put on social media, or even something to sell.
😝**blows raspberries
I really feel like all this misplaced seriousness limits our growth. I know it does for me, and yet I still have to remind myself to play, always. To not be so serious, or not only serious, but to play and be full of wonder, and far out man, this world, this wild world, is FULL of play!
Creating for the joy of it, for fun, and without expectation frees us from:
The pressure of outcomes and "success"
The limitation of "correct" techniques
The fear of wasted time or materials
The need to always improve
The requirement that everything be shareable
The belief that mistakes are failures instead of learning opportunities
I think of play as the seed of our own private creative evolution. Play is an endless experiment - trying combinations, seeing what works, keeping what thrives or becomes of interest, letting go of what doesn't.
Play is really important. Kiddos who don’t play don’t thrive - and as an adult neither do you.
So, I got an inexpensive ‘visual diary’ from the supermarket. It cost $6.75 for 120 pages, and the paper is not completely rubbish, but that is also the selling point, right? I can scribble and do all sorts of play and then…turn the page. I call this my scribble-book and it serves a lot of purposes, including play, curiosity, and ideation. Brain-fluffs. Imagination-hiccups. Raging against the patriarchal-capitalist systems. You know, all the things.
Creativity thrives not through rigid adherence to rules, but through curious, compassionate, wondering.
What if I tried this?
What happens when I combine these?
What would this look like in a different medium?
What if I broke my usual rules?
What if I remember there are no rules!
Reclaim your experimentation mindset. Your sketchbook is not just a gallery of gorgeous finished pieces - it's where your growth happens. A space for wonder, testing, discovery, and yes, glorious failures that teach you something new. If that needs to happen in a separate scribble-book, that is ok too - if it lets you play, it is a good thing.
Don’t think you are an artist? (You know I am going to challenge that!). Treat yourself to an inexpensive supermarket visual diary (or colouring book!) and pack of coloured pencils or markers and just play anyway. Who knows what that might unlock, but if nothing else, you will have made time for play.
How can you lean into play for the rest of this month?
P.S. Stuck for what to scribble? Why don’t you start by making a list of all the birds you see in your day to day life where you live. You don’t need to know their scientific names, call them what you call them - they don’t mind! And if you want to understand how to see the shape of them so you can maybe start drawing them next to their names, Drawn to Wild will help you with that!
