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Day 22: Contrast


HELLO play fam! Today is our 22nd day of the #playyourwaychallenge and the beginning of our fourth (?!) week of getting to know your unique play signature makeup.


In week 3, we focused on intersection as the overarching theme. In week 4 we will be taking our intersections (that is - where multiple play types connect in your signature) and starting to nest them together. This week when you are playing, try to make some space for multiple play types within yourself to play in a single activity. This is where the magic starts to happen and you begin to access "deep play" where you can satisfy your playful self more, with less effort.


I will be honest that I have a chart in the works that will help us with this task! I am hoping to drop that tomorrow to be ready for our Saturday and Sunday playing themes :)


NOW back to the day at hand - or rather the VIBRANT day you just had. How did playing VIBRANTLY feel? Did you find a vibrant space, or person, or object to play with? What did you notice feeling most VIBRANT about your memories of playing as a kid, that you can start to bring forward and upgrade for some sort of playing in the here and now?


Here are a few things that I noticed in my own playing!

  1. I feel most VIBRANT throughout the day when I am able to play first thing in the morning after waking up. This means setting my alarm a bit earlier, and taking my kinesthete out on a playful wander around my neighborhood before I start my workday. I notice this gets easier with time as the memory of how it feels to be moving starts to overpower my dislike of getting out of bed.

  2. I love to fill my play with VIBRANT materials, and colors are super important to me! I notice i gravitate towards deeply colored environments, ideas, and objects as an easy jumping off point to get myself playing

  3. VIBRANT SPACES are really inspiring to me! Just being in them helps me absorb the feeling of vibrancy, to bring to my own playful world

  4. The feeling of playing VIBRANTLY shows up for me in terms of variety of play, as well as in how I use play to (are you ready for it--- today's theme--) CONTRAST my serious adulting world responsibilities.


Diversity and Variety

Today, we are going to look at the idea of CONTRAST. And I mean this in terms of a few things. The first being, what does play help bring in to CONTRAST for you? Are your feelings in play, in contrast to feelings when you are at work? Are your playful environments in contrast to your home environment? Where do you go to look for CONTRAST in the world against your preferred way(s) of playing? Meaning.... what resources do you have for looking at your play, and how others play?


I was on a zoom call this afternoon with two of my most playful friends and we were talking about artistic process and playing with new creative materials. Sometimes when you first pick up a new tool, you aren't quite sure how to use it. What bums me out is seeing this in itself discourage people from trying it! Instead, think about how you can use CONTRAST here. Where can Youtube, Instagram, Tiktok, or other online platforms provide instances of CONTRAST for your playing?


I'll get specific here. This particular bestie just picked up some new watercolor pencils, but has never worked with them before. I am familiar with watercolor pencils only from my own curiosity in picking them up once, without knowing exactly how to use them. What i found was that I needed to experiment with them, to provide moments of CONTRASTING results in order to choose how I wanted to use this new tool. Even then, never quite sure how one is supposed to use this material, I then find myself turning to places like Youtube and Tiktok and searching the hashtag #watercolorpencils to find approximately a zillion process videos showing me how other people in the world pick up and use this playing tool.


What I am doing here is providing my play type (artist-creator) a CONTRAST in the visibility of other artist-creators and how they choose to use and work with that same tool. This is a drop, that creates a ripple, and inspires me to nest within other ways of using the same tool. I get to try it on, CONTRAST it against my own results, and choose my path forward from there.


CONTRAST doesn't just apply to tools and materials though! What does it feel like when you pick a CONTRASTING play type person, and nest your playing? How might a storyteller and an observer CONTRAST in the same environment for playing, while playing together?


I'm definitely stepping up the game here, but I am super curious to see what everyone comes up with for our theme today! Panels below for each play type and questions to get you going.










Happy playing, and see you tomorrow for a breakdown of CONTRAST and our next challenge!

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