Digging holes, tapping manna
Hi friends,
Quick FYI before starting - I started a new gig this past week and am adjusting to a new volume of work. I’m shifting the Care & Feeding schedule to Sundays for now because writing to you is a highlight of the week and I want to keep showing up here - although with the caveat that I’m trying to make it a lighter lift (a weekend mindset, if you will). Thanks as ever for reading, sharing, commenting and staying in touch.
I hope this Sunday finds you well. Yesterday I spent the afternoon playing in our raised garden bed, planting seeds and starts and exhorting the boys to join in the fun. They might rather build a garden in a simulated world than a real one with me, but whatever. After we trimmed back the rhubarb plant, the kids rinsed off the stalks and poured white sugar into a blue ramekin. They came back to the garden sit in the sun and chomp on sugar-dipped rhubarb until their stomachs hurt.
Not unique to Covid: sometimes I struggle to connect with the kids on shared activities. I want to make a craft, they want to play Minecraft. They want me to play Legos, I want to finish making dinner. I suggest a baking project, they suggest Magic the Gathering. Ok.
(Photo: Ines Pimentel for Unsplash)
So this week I’ve been learning how to play Magic. I find the game tedious, with so many rules, exceptions, and explanations, but there’s joy in playing for only one reason - to connect with my kids. I don’t care if I drain my health points, I don’t care about the tricks that the one card has if you do the 18 million other things, I have zero interest in winning. I just want to sit with you, playing along while you get immersed in something you love, and watch how excited you get to beat your mom in Magic.
Play for the sake of play - without any outcomes or expectations attached - is the best. We might not stage impromptu performances in the park like the boys (or I don’t - maybe you do!), but whether you’re digging holes in the dirt or dancing in the living room, you still get the chance to be fully engaged in the activity in front of you and if you’re lucky, enter that sought-after flow state where time slows down and you get suspended in the present moment with whatever you’re doing. Hey, even if it lasts for 10 minutes, some flow is better than none. Especially now.
I hope you’re finding time to play and flow - and maybe you’re reimagining what it looks like. I worked on a story this week for the new gig about how people are taking time off during this crisis. So many cancelled vacations! So much time off piling up! We’re working through this time out of necessity (kids are home, how can we take time off when we can’t even get our work done?), anxiety about money and job security, and uncertainty about taking time off when we can’t actually go anywhere. It’s all very real.
We might not be able to take vacation right now, but we can play anywhere, for any chunk of time, by ourselves (hello solo dance party) or with our partners-in-quarantine. It feels so good. Here’s to more of it as spring rolls in for real.
XO
Leigh
Some just for fun links:
Forget about losing sense of time, this short story takes you back in time.
And also this talented human makes me cry laughing with every. last. video.