Motivation Monday

Photo by Bruce Christianson on Unsplash

For today, I'm simply sharing my own Play List for this week, a list of things I want to do just for fun, no perfection or productivity required. I do so much thinking and writing about being creative and a Monday is the perfect day to start DOING. I give you five simple things you can DO right now at home, wherever that is for you, guaranteed to free your creative soul.  If you're seeking permission to play, consider this your permission slip!

​1. Improvise a wholehearted interpretive dance to a favorite song.  I'm going for broke with Sia's Chandelier for this first item on my Play List, as it always makes me feel like I might just jump out of my own skin to express all the BIG FEELINGS it brings up for me.  Rocking tunes required for this Play List item, but keeping the blinds open so that your neighbors get a free performance is optional. 

2. Read a favorite line or two from a book aloud to someone. Reading aloud to yourself or your pet counts. I am reading Call Me By Your Name by André Aciman now, and the language is so lush and provocative that I couldn't help but reading a short passage  aloud to my husband this weekend at the breakfast table. 

I look back on those days and regret none of it, not the risks, not the shame, not the total lack of foresight. The lyric cast of the sun, the teeming fields with tall plants nodding away under the intense midafternoon heat, the squeak of our wooden floors, or the scrape of the clay ashtray pushed ever so lightly on the marble slab that used to sit on my nightstand. I knew that our minutes were numbered, but I didn't dare count them, just as I knew where all this was headed, but didn't care to read the signposts. This was a time when I intentionally failed to drop bread crumbs for my return journey; instead I ate them. He could turn out to be a total creep; he could change or ruin  me forever, while time and gossip might ultimate disembowel everything we shared and trim the whole thing down til nothing but fish bones remained.  

There is something to be said about borrowing someone else's words for awhile, and something that makes me feel so rich for getting to speak a beautiful passage aloud to someone I love, for free.

3. Sing a favorite song loudly. It doesn't have to be for anyone else at all; the cliche setting of the shower will do just fine. Singing was one of my first loves and too often I get hung up on if it sounds "good" or not. You don't have to be on pitch to reap the physical and emotional benefits of singing. My current song of choice:

4. Use a creative prompt to try something you have never tried before. This week, I found a wonderful creative prompt courtesy of Visual News: "If your favorite musician/filmmaker/author commissioned you to create something based on their work, what would you make?" Speaking of Nada Surf from #3 above, I think I might compose song lyrics that respond to their song "Weight is a Gift", which always makes me think of how my dance with anxiety might be a gift in some small way. I have no idea how to write song lyrics, but I'm pumped to try.

5. Draw a cartoon panel depicting your day. I'm breaking out the sketch pad, pens, colored pencils, and markers this week to do a little doodling and to remind me that anything can be turned into art, even your rough day at the office or your trip to the supermarket.  What's the point of this exercise? There is no point to this playful activity, and that is precisely the point.  Stick figures and slinky shaped hair encouraged. 

Wishing you a week of being free to play without fear of needing measure up, compare yourself, or stress about if it's "good" or not. If it feels good to you, it's all good.