I currently have 21 partial newsletters in my draft folder. Some are just a sentence, a reminder to go back later and explore an idea further. Some are more than half-baked, fairly coherent ideas that still need a lot of revision.
Often, this newsletter—something I’ve sworn I will do only when it’s fun, something that’s called Remembering Play—becomes outsized in my mind as this thing I owe the world. Since it’s a public representation of my writing, it’d better be good. It should be a certain length, fairly thoughtful, probably fun. And I need to find the right block of time to make it so. In other words, it becomes really serious.
Eventually I remember no-one cares that much. I give myself the challenge to finish quickly, thereby switching on some version of “don’t overthink it” brain.
I often feel pretty protective of play as something that needs to remain separate from work. I don’t want work to infect it, dilute it. But maybe this is like saying I don’t want to be anywhere near fear when I feel love, as if the fear will gobble up the love. That’s not how it works. When true love is present, it seeps into the fear, even embraces it, and eventually melts it away.
Maybe it’s the same with play. Maybe my obsessive need to not let my work near my play has meant that work is slowly transformed into something more and more negative, less inspired, less imbued with life force. Maybe I should be bringing play to work every day.
Some peoples’ work is really fucking serious. Just this week, I had a second appointment with my psychiatric NP (Finally got an appointment!!! Finally got a formal ADHD diagnosis!! Finally about to start meds!) who laughs and inserts anecdotes from real life throughout our conversations. She sees a lot of people who are suffering severely, she says. That could break you, she says, but her silliness offsets it. “To work in psychiatry I think you have to have a little bit of your own crazy.”
In the movie Life Is Beautiful, a father makes a game out of the heavy labor in a concentration camp to protect his young son from their brutal reality.
Maybe a sense of play is actually possible anywhere.
A couple weeks ago, I went to the Port Townsend Writers Conference. I was thrilled to discover such an impressive lineup of instructors gathered not far from where I live. I went because of Melissa Febos, whose writing has probably informed/inspired mine more than any other writer. She was as awesome in real life as we want our heroes to be. A normal and accessible human with a palpable sense of self-possession.
Among the writers I hadn’t known was Anastasia-Reneé, who read the first night and blew my mind. I attended her lecture toward the end of the conference which was all about permission to play. She listed examples of ways to find purpose and meaning in the mundane. Perhaps most importantly, she introduced me to a sanctioned version of internet rabbit holes: Obsessions. We all have random things we go deep on for an hour here and a month there. She encouraged this, told us to choose a weekly obsession and keep notes. Recommended a notebook solely for these obsessions. By putting a container around something I already do, she transformed a behavior from something associated with guilt to something of delight.
Melissa Febos’s workshops were also full of play. In one, she asked us to write our sexual autobiography in 3 sentences. In another, a whole story in a single sentence, incorporating as much of the past and future as possible. For me, the most impactful thing she said was this: find the form before you begin. Learn about different structures (in this case, formal essay forms) and make your thoughts fit into the form. You can break the form later if you need to, but do so knowing why. This is a revelation to me because many of the things I think about and write about are scattered across drafts, amorphous and rambling, jotted on random floating pieces of paper I’ll never find. They aren’t being held.
Maybe because we’re in the thick of blackberry season here, I think of it like this: I could find myself at a blackberry bush and start picking, eating some berries and finding more I really want to save for later. I could carry some in my shirt, others in my pockets, and it would all be an insane smushed disaster by the time I get home. Instead, I should go to the kitchen and find a big bowl or bucket before heading out to pick. There’s a limit to what the bowl will hold. If I pick too many berries, maybe some belong in the next container. There has to be something to contain our thoughts.
I didn’t realize until today how much my mind is like a blackberry bramble: wild and unruly, littered with berries, some still green, some which will rot in the rain, many which I’ll never get to because of all those damn thorns in the way.
May we all find the right vessels for the things we want to make.
Optional Assignment: Buy a notebook uniquely for Obsessions. Keep it on the kitchen counter or somewhere central. Keep track of your rabbit holes—not all the details, just larger themes. Maybe it will inspire great art. At the very least, it will be fascinating for someone to read after you die.
Love this! Starting Obsession NOW 😘
Feeling relieved to hear that my Internet Holes are worthy of my time! Clues for us. More containment needed indeed, for me!