Hello, my name is Ashley and I’m a player. Wait, no, I don’t mean that I manipulate and date multiple people simultaneously. A player. As in, one who plays, who engages in activities for enjoyment and recreation, like games and jungle gyms and stories. I am obsessed with play and have been since I was a kid – not just the act of playing, but its effect on us as people and our society. I’ve played with kids, played a fool, played with animals, played games, played with words, played with numbers, played with paint, played with fire, played music, played solely with my imagination.
Needless to say I play a lot. And it is part of my mission in life to play daily. I’m the girl at the office who gets up to do a dance break. I’m that person who speaks in gibberish to her baby nephew. I do weird voices and sing what I’m saying for no reason. I tease and joke and make up stories. And even with that, I still want more playtime.
When I said that it was part of my life’s mission to play daily – well, it’s easier said than done. I grew up with an unbelievable work ethic thanks to my amazing mother. I watched her struggle to provide for us. Work was a necessity, not a joy. Which is perhaps why I’ve made my play my work. And why I try to find play in the work that I do to actually support myself (you know, schlepping around town temping and doing odd jobs). It’s easy to let the humdrum 9-5 life get one down. The constant struggle to survive, to create, to live a life of meaning is overwhelming. But that struggle can also surprise us in the most delightful ways. And I find that most delight is sparked by play.
Growing up as an only child, I had a fully immersive and overactive imagination. Meaning that it was easy for me to blur the lines between my fictional scenarios and the real world. I created endless adventures, along with a myriad of imaginary friends and enemies. My favourite thing to pretend to be was a spy – and had loads of bumps and bruises from my various missions (mainly from falling out of trees and jumping fences). One day while I was making lunch, I was talking to a “colleague” about “important secret spy stuff” and ended up making two sandwiches. I didn’t mean to actually make two sandwiches, I was just so caught up in my fictional world that the logical part of my brain never said, “hey, I don’t think imaginary people eat real sandwiches.”
Do I still make food for imaginary people? Sadly, no. But there’s a part of me that wishes I would. I, like most adults in our society, have fallen into the pattern of ordinary life – one that often has a work-play divide. So I’m on a mission to get rid of that divide, to seek the extraordinary in everyday life. And play is extraordinary. So be extraordinary. Get out and play today.
#playdaily
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