04/16/2026
I started letting myself be a little more playful again…and my life got better.
Not more productive. Just better.
Here’s what that actually looks like for me—
I collect rocks and seashells like they’re treasures.
No outcome. No reason. Sometimes I paint them, sometimes they end up in my garden. It just… feels good to find something beautiful and keep it.
I dance at home.
Fully. Freely. Sometimes it looks ridiculous.
I don’t care. It shifts my mood, moves energy, and reminds my body what joy feels like. I used to dance for hours as a kid to my mom’s Barry Manilow records… why would I stop now?
I talk to animals. To plants. To the earth.
I don’t need to prove anything about it. I just know I feel more connected, more alive, more in relationship with the world around me when I do.
And I’ve started nurturing my imagination again.
Writing. Thinking. letting my inner world expand.
I gave that up somewhere along the way trying to be “an adult.”
Nothing I’ve achieved has ever brought me the kind of joy that returning to that has.
Somewhere along the way, we were taught to trade wonder for productivity.
I’m not doing that anymore.
Turns out… the things that look “childlike” are often the exact things that bring you back to yourself.