The Joy Diet: Play

Oh boy, this has been a rough week.

Play shouldn't be so tough for me. I am an InterPlay leader. I spent years dressing up in costume to attend Rennaisance Faires. I spent my college years playing Vampire Tag. I have a lot of experience with play beyond my childhood years. I have even taught a seminary class that included finger painting.

But, the truth is that play challenges me to my core. In one of his workshops, Phil Porter, one of the founders of InterPlay and one of my heroes, said that InterPlay often appeals to recovering serious people. And, in my case, it is absolutely true.

I follow the rules; I get things right; I do what I am supposed to do. InterPlay has forms, instructions for movement. One of the basic forms, which I learned right at the beginning of my first class is "Walk, Stop, Run." The basic form is very simple. You Walk around the space. Then, when you feel like it, you Stop. And then, if you are feeling brave, you Run around the space. Finally, you are invited to play with Walking, Stopping, and Running. And then, Serious People get nervous.

You see, what happens then is that experienced InterPlayers take the instruction to play and jump with it, spin with it, run with it, lie on the floor with it, pick up a playmate with it, lean on a friend with it, and do an awful lot of things that don't look or feel anything like walking, stopping, or running. Somewhere in the midst of what felt like chaos, I realized that the teacher wasn't enforcing the "Rules" and that following the rules wasn't making me happy. What made me happy was sometimes to lean against the wall and watch or skip or gallop or spin or make a train or hold hands or lie on the floor - not just to walk or stop or run. And, now, I am one of those experienced InterPlayers that make Serious People nervous.

But, I am a well-conditioned Serious Person, so my Serious Persona takes over under stress. Motherhood has thrown me for a massive loop on the play front. There is so much to do that has to be done for all these little people who cannot yet do for themselves. My serious self has reared it's ugly head with a vengeance and has been forcing my playful self into hiding. I have been operating from the delusion that just because parenting is important, it must be serious.

So, this week, I used an InterPlay trick of thinking about something, in this case my desire to be more playful with my parenting and householding responsibilities, and then throwing it up into the air with a "wheeee" and I just let it float around up there for the week to see what happened. It has helped me find more ease. Not enough, but a beginning.

• I have been playing at looking like I have it together. I went shopping for new clothes and bought tailored clothes which make me feel less frumpy. And, I have been putting on make-up before taking the kids to pre-school. I like looking like I have it together even when I feel overwhelmed.
• I skipped ahead mentally in the book to the chapter on Laughter and started trying to increase the number of laughs I got out of each day - which often involved getting more laughs out of my children; their laughter is infectious. And yes, folks, skipping ahead is hard for rule-followers like myself, so it counts as play all by itself.
• The kids love spray bottles. My kitchen floor always needs a good wash. If I don't care that the walls, table and windows get washed too and that spots get missed, there is a silly way to get my kitchen floor mostly cleaned and my kids entertained at the same time staring me in the face.
  

Playing a board game with my eldest son a few days ago lead to a discussion about good sportsmanship. And, I realized that I am a sore loser in the game of life. In fact, I am such a bad loser that I don't even want to play the game if I don't think I can win. So, part of my challenge with playfulness is learning to commit to the game without committing to the result.

Maybe this approach will help me with NaNoWriMo 2009. NaNoWriMo is a novel writing challenge: start a novel and write 50,000 words of it during November. Last year, I really thought it was a massive but doable challenge if I turned my inner editor off and let myself write drivel. I wrote more than my 50,000 words and it felt great. This year, because I know that I can write 50,000 words, I have set my self-expectations higher and this is causing a degree of writer's block. I need to give myself permission to write another 50,000 words of drivel.

All in all, the week has been a reminder of how much we need play in our lives. In my case, and maybe in yours, we need it most when we think we can least afford it.