[16/30] Play
We need to play more
Children engage in free play because they enjoy it - it's self-directed. They do not play for rewards; they enjoy the doing, not the end result
— Sheila G Flaxman
Day 16 of my 30-day publishing experiment where I blog for 30 days every day.
Cliché as it sounds, it’s been amazing. My mum’s visiting from Malaysia, I’m have been working late because of a major project, and I have a holiday coming up and yet, somehow, I’m still writing and publishing every day. And still enjoying it.
Don’t get me wrong though, It’s still hard. And I still worry I’ll run out of things to say before the 30 days are up. And yes, I know it's just been two weeks, so this feeling might be short-lived.
But I think I am able to do this because it feels like play.
I’m not thinking about the purpose of each piece. I’m not worrying about the outcome like I do with my other, more “serious” newsletter. I have a really simple list of running topics and every day I just sit for a 30-50 minutes and write what comes to my mind. Some times it's from the list, sometimes it's just what's on my mind at the time.
It's a liberating feeling to be able to do that. I guess I always thought that every thing I published needs to have a purpose. Like it needs to educate or inspire someone to do something. But it turns out writing for the sake of writing is a pretty good reason to write.
It’s made me realize how little “play” I have in my life. Almost everything I do in my free time has a purpose and a measurable outcome. It's definitely useful because it moves me closer to my goals but I forget that there’s value in doing something just because it’s interesting or fun or because I want to keep doing it.
It's super easy to lose that. Outside of work, social events, the gym, and sleep, there’s so little time that each hour starts to feel like it has to be useful. Not to mention in our current world, where we want to measure everything or ask AI everything, we (at least I ) feel the need to be validated by something all the time. Do something, see a number go up or do something and ask ChatGPT if it was good.
But I need to remind myself that not everything has to produce an outcome. Some things are worth doing simply because I enjoy them.