Why so serious?

My problem with play.

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Most days a week I spend about an hour travelling. Thanks to the excellent public transport infrastructure in Berlin, I mostly walk and take trains. So though I could scribble in my journal or watch Netflix on my phone or paint an acrylic portrait of my fellow commuters on my way to work, I usually listen to something. This week I listened to a book recommended to me by my dad: Hidden Potential by Adam Grant. The book, as suggested by its subtitle, “The Science of Achieving Greater Things,” uncovers and discusses the methods that allow select individuals, teams and organisations to succeed and excel in areas no one else deemed possible. The book is largely practical and evidence based, and comprises the real stories of real break throughs like the public high school chess team of colour from an underprivileged neighbourhood beating out the elite, private school teams that had been groomed since birth. Rather than touting the innate talent and greatness of notable individuals, the book focusses on how regular people achieve great feats by employing particular skills, enabled by a framework of peers and mentors. It’s all very encouraging. One chapter in particular talks about purposeful play: a method of becoming more familiar and skilled with your subject of choice by engaging it from multiple angles through play. Stories from Steph Curry, a basketball legend mentioned in the same breath as Michael Jordan, and Dame Evelyn Glennie, arguably the world’s most recognised solo percussionist (who also happens to be deaf), outline how imperative play can be for our lives—it not only supports relationships and cultivates learning, but through persistence, leads to sizeable growth in our ability and comprehension.

Excellent! I thought as I listened to this apparently miraculous answer to all of my career questions: just play! The book underlines how Steph Curry’s coach ditches boring exercises in favour for games that sharpen Curry’s skills. Curry’s coach and the book’s author, Grant, encourage the reader to seek out and invent games rather than lean on boring, routine exercises to increase results in a field of the readers choice. Just play! Play often, play consistently, and in as many ways as possible. Goodness, what a revelation! I thought. Play and fun could enable me to… to what? I was struck with two more revelations.

The first: there isn’t anything I’m currently working towards. Despite the feeling of creative potential beating in my chest, despite occasionally stumbling across a song or a film that sparks something within me, stokes the coals of my dreams and breathes a new flame into life, there is no singular project I am pointing all of my effort at. A few weeks ago I was in a good rhythm of writing my book every morning, but it’s a habit I lost touch with since moving and starting my new job. I’d love to shake up my creative routine with purposeful play and see my progress skyrocket, but I suppose I’d have to have a routine to shake up in the first place, wouldn’t I?

The second: I think I’ve lost touch with play, professionally and personally. The last few months have entailed some fairly serious challenges and I think a combination of the pressure I’ve suffered under while addressing those challenges, coupled with my performance driven, system-loving, semi-anxious personality has caused me to lose touch with play. Working overtime every weeknight and for the last two weekends probably hasn’t helped much. Every morning I wake up and worry that I’ve overslept. In the shower I obsess about the tasks I’ve got on my plate that day. When I come home I struggle to turn off without feeling like I’ve missed something and that the repercussions of my forgetfulness will be catastrophic. Play, personal or professional, is at the bottom of the list. It has been for so long, that I’ve forgotten to glance down at it.

My parents think I’m tired, which sounds about right. They also think that I’ve been running on adrenaline for so long, wandering through the forest of joblessness and flirting with the banks of the river of homelessness, that even although the forest and river are far behind me and I am safe in the green glades, I keep reaching for my sword every time I hear a noise. (Most of what they said was absent of ominous forest nonsense, but I’m trying to play, remember?) How then, to shift into a mindset of play? At home and at work. If it’s so brilliant, how can I let go of the stress and grab onto purposeful play? And how can I limit the useless, grey time spent in between the two. They also think I’m being tohard on myself (a shocking and not at all repeating theme in my life).

That’s my goal this week, I think. Let go of stress, and step into play. Hell, let’s get silly while we’re at it! Shrug off the week, stop obsessing about missing the train or forgetting a minuscule detail for work. Cook something new, take photos for fun, write again! I’ll report back next week on how its been, taking play more seriously.

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I shook my rump listening to cowboy rock ‘n’ roll while I was standing at a red pedestrian light opposite Lidl this morning. I don’t know if that counts as play, but I’ll take it as a step in the right direction … If you enjoyed this journal, please subscribe!