The Magic of Micro Play

I'm busy. I mean I’m really busy. 

I feel like most of us are. I often hear well-meaning people recommend that I should take on a new hobby or otherwise “get creative” in some way, because as we all know, creativity is super important for our mental and even physical health.

I couldn’t agree more. 

And still, I’m effing busy. 

So sometimes, I just feel overwhelmed and a tad depressed by the suggestion. 

And I’m a professional artist. I’m somebody who's “creative” for a living. And still, it’s not enough; I am always looking for more ways to incorporate creativity into my life.

Because cultivating creativity IS super important.

A creative practice, the act of being creative, is linked to brain health, a better sense of well-being and an increased sense of life satisfaction overall.

Creativity is also intimately linked with play, and I think if we all played more, we would lead much richer, happier, less-stressed lives. 

Here's the thing, play does not always have to involve a huge amount of time. It does need a little bit of time, and a fair amount of consistency, but not every time has to be an hours-long commitment. Sometimes, you can get the benefits of play without carving out a bunch of time. 

Here are three ways I sneak in some play time in 5 minutes or less. I call it Micro Play and you can pretty much do it anywhere and it costs nothing. 

Actually, you probably can't do it anywhere; for example, you probably can’t be in a room full of people…or even in a room with one other person. It's more for when you're by yourself. Like in your car, in the shower, the bathroom, getting ready to leave the house. Five minutes before you're supposed to show up to a meeting… That's always a good one. I will also point out that it needs to be somewhere where, if somebody does see you, like if you’re in your car for instance, stopped in rush hour traffic, you won't feel shame for having been spotted. You don’t want being seen to overwhelm the good feeling you’ll get from doing what I’m about to tell you to do. 

Sing.

And I'm saying this as someone who cannot sing well by any objective standard.  Still, there are a few very specific songs I will sing along with, not perhaps at the top of my lungs, but not lip-syncing either.  It can work if you sing kind of quietly too, although maybe not too quietly, because you do need to get into it. I suggest you try it out and see for yourself what volume range works best for you. 

For me, my #1 go-to song is “9 to 5”  by Dolly Parton (in case that needs to be said), at about 70% maximum singing volume. Another song is “The Gambler” by Kenny Rogers. 

These songs are from my childhood, because I’ve found those work the best, but the important thing is to choose any song that gets you singing out loud. The singing part is the key ingredient: there are songs which I'll talk about in my next bit of Micro Play that I don't sing to, but that motivate the heck out of me, but that's not what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about a song where you know all the words, know them so well you could sing them without the music. Songs where just hearing them transports you out of your current mindset. And in my experience these are songs from our childhood or from our teenage years. Journey’s “Don't Stop Believing” and that kind of thing. Sure, you might date yourself, but who cares, you’re not in a place where anyone is near enough to express their opinion. 

Dance.

And when I say dance, you might think I mean dancing in your kitchen, or for me, my studio (which is 10x larger than my kitchen). And I DO do this type of dancing, to specific songs I have saved on Spotify for just such an occasion.

But I'm also talking about dancing in my car. 

I mean, I’m already there, by myself, with total control over the music. So I will dance, right there, all snuggled down in the driver’s seat, tapping the dashboard, rocking my shoulders and moving my hips, tossing my head to the beat. It can totally transform my mood. It's incredible. 

As a side note, I am someone who stands all day, so sometimes I don't want to be on my feet to dance. I mean, that might sound lazy. It might sound whatever, and I admit there's probably specific benefits that come with dancing standing up, but I'm a huge advocate of dancing while sitting. 

Laugh.

The third way to Micro Play is to make a new Instagram account or a new TikTok account, if that's preferable. Get both if you’d like. Either way, here are the rules: do not put up a profile picture and Do not post anything. Nothing. This is solely for feel good videos. You can, however, follow as many feel good accounts as you like. 

I have one of these accounts and I love it.  I actually have several Instagram accounts, for different reasons, but this one is my go-to space when I just need a little bit of a break; when I need to laugh, see people doing kind things for total strangers, or strangers saving animals. 

But mainly it’s for laughs, because laughter, like storytelling, is a form of play. It's actually a characteristic of one of Eight Play Personalities, according to Stuart Brown, the author of the book “Play” and the founder of the National Institute For Play. You can go to www.nifplay.org to learn more, but for the purpose of Micro Play, listening to a good funny story or a funny joke, watching a few funny Reels, these snippets of play behavior, bring with them bits of all the benefits of play; mainly that you feel refreshed afterward, you feel revived. You feel more hopeful, your nervous system is a tad more regulated, so you feel more resilient to the next minor stress that might come five minutes after you stop laughing. These are some of the beautiful, very important benefits of play. 

The point is even if you're really busy, I do think everyone has five minutes to spare and the mental and physical reset is worth far more than the value of whatever you might’ve otherwise done with those precious five minutes.

What It Really Means to be Creative

I looked up the definition for the word creative this morning. 

 I do this every few months because I hope it will have changed, kind of like when I repeatedly look in the refrigerator for a snack, even though the contents haven’t changed in the 30 minutes since I last opened the door. 

Today was the same: the Oxford dictionary’s definition is                                                                   

creative, adj.                                                                                                                                                  The use of skill and the imagination to produce something new or a work of art.  It goes on to give additional definitions about creative financing and creative accounting, both of which sound vaguely illegal and more than a little bit negative.  

Creative, as a noun is just as vague and yet narrow. 

The Cambridge dictionary:                                                                                

creative, n.                                                                                                           Someone who is producing or using original and unusual ideas. 

Then, there is the highly specific Merriam-Webster’s version as “one who is creative, especially : one involved in the creation of advertisements.”

These definitions are not wrong per se, but practically speaking, they are a way to describe a proverbial container with which to put certain types of creativity inside, and leave tons of types of creativity outside.

As someone who grew up drawing horses, I never thought I was creative because I never wanted to be an Artist. I believed this despite the fact that I spent hours, and eventually years drawing. 

The words artist and creative were synonymous in my mind, in large part because they were synonymous in the culture I was raised in. And looking at these definitions reminds me that the culture hasn’t really changed all that much.

And this is so important because I deeply, DEEPLY believe that 

EVERYONE is creative.

Every single person acts creatively. 

Every day. And yes, I mean even the people who don’t think they're creative, who don’t think they have an “artistic bone in their body” or they “can’t even draw a straight line”. 

And I don’t blame you, why would you think you're creative, if every dictionary, not to mention our culture, keeps telling you that unless you can paint pleasing pictures, or sing on key, or play the piano, or have a job in advertising.

AND then, on top of all that, you must also get recognized for your “creative ability”, or you’re not creative.

There's creativity in those things to be sure, but at the level one needs to be at to be recognized as “creative”, there’s also a lot of skill and discipline, not to mention years of practice.

One of the definitions does say creative “is relating to or involving the imagination or original ideas” (it goes on to say, especially in the creation of an artwork), but at least it starts out less specific. 

Perhaps the best definition is from the Collins Dictionary, which says “If you use something in a creative way, you use it in a new way that produces interesting and unusual results.” FOR YOU.

Here’s the point, creativity doesn’t just happen at the macro level, at the “I am a Creative” level. 

It happens at the micro level, every day.  And in a lot of moments within the day once you start to look for them. 

Creativity is action. 

It’s taking a thought and rendering it in the real world. 

It’s Creative because it’s new.

New to you, in that day, at that moment. 

What the definitions don’t say, but what I’m here to say, as someone who is by every dictionary’s definition of “creative” is that 

Being creative is about the choices you make for yourself…    

from the new way you plate your breakfast, to that new picture you choose to put on your wall, to the new route you take to go to work…and of course, ANY form of art you create.

And here’s the gold embedded 

in the fact that you are creative…

There is power in being creative. 

Embracing your creative nature, that part of you that came into the world when all the other parts of you did, is the portal to a deep well of agency over how you experience your life. 

Cultivating your creative nature will spread sparkles throughout your day, unearth your capacity for joy, and eventually, revamp how you see the world. 

Does it sound too good to be true?

I’m living proof that it can happen. 

I was a professional artist for years before I started calling myself an artist. And while I loved my job, a job where I got to paint beautiful pictures for people, I was a giant stress ball in every other area of my life. 

The stress eventually outweighed whatever creativity I experienced in my job.

To deal with that stress, one of the things I learned to do was to notice all the different ways I was creative, from the flowers I chose to plant on my front porch, to the way I plated my breakfast, to various shades of beige I chose for my bedroom linens. 

No one told me to make these choices,and they weren’t for anyone but me, for the newly acknowledged pleasure of being creative.

I began to feel into the joy and daily sense of contentment that followed. 

This is what it means to be creative, not whether or not you can draw a straight line.

Do you want to feel more creative? 

Try This:

Start noticing your choices.

The small daily choices you make throughout the day. Like getting dressed for example. Take a moment to acknowledge all the options you have to choose from. Take a moment to ask why you chose that particular shirt over all the others..was it your mood, to impress others, to be invisible, to feel happy?

It might seem small, but acknowledging, understanding and appreciating the power you have to make these choices is a great way to begin to exercise your creative muscle.