When did we force play to become learning?
And I’m not just talking about the kids. I mean, all of us? Why can’t we just play?
Oh, I admit, this is probably a personal observational bias, but it seems more and more from what I read, and talking to other people—parents, friends and creative contemporaries—over the years the idea that anyone can just play for the raw enjoyment of something has turned into a pariah.
All too often I fall into the trap myself.
I feel like I can’t just sketch, but rather I need to be making something for my online portfolio.
I shouldn’t be playing music, instead I ought to be practicing repertoire or logging my progress.
Even just sitting here at a keyboard writing I am thinking not about the joy and fun that I get out of typing words, but rather my mind is always drifting over to content and audience and something bigger that I should be seeking from this act.
Of course, these invasive thoughts are at my own control, and maybe—lucky you—you are able to ignore them and just enjoy doing things for the sake of it. But then if you are the type of person to be reading a blog post that started with such a question maybe you too are like me and feel guilt from directionless creativity.
So I ask again: When did we force play to become learning? And how can we snap out of it?
Terms FROm this POSt
- audience
- Creativity is often a dance between creator and audience. Art can exist in a vacuum, of course, but the perception of art by a receptive human mind seems to me to a critical half of the creative equation.
- blog
- I admit, I am pretty old. And I started posting formatted words and photos online before the word blog had entered the common lexicon. Most people work in the medium of social platforms these days, but being both a product of my time and a stickler for content ownership and control, I still lean into and promote the idea that the blog (a content managed general purpose personal website) is the beating heart of the internet I once knew and loved.
- keyboard
- Maybe it’s for typing. Maybe it’s for coding. Maybe it’s for making music. A bed of buttons arrayed for digital input is my favourite user interface and I’ll write about them often in their many varieties.
- the kid
- I joined the ranks of parenthood in the early 2000s and while I won’t claim to be some kind of parenting jeenius I did pay attention and learned alot about myself and the world through the perspective of trying to build, shape and release a child into the universe.
