Messing Around

cosmo quiz style

In this Saturday’s upcoming Substack, I’m writing about fun and how to find it, or better yet, why it’s been missing from my life lately. It turns out that a big part of fun is play, or as I like to call it, messing around. It seems like a bad sign that I don’t love the word play for myself. It seems too… childish. [The researchers at the National Institute of Play throw their papers up in the air and slam their heads down on their desks.]

Yes, believe it or not, there is a such thing as the National Institute for Play. (Check it out now while you can before 2025 squeezes the life out of this whimsical organization.) They encourage adults to identify their “inherent play personality” so they can incorporate more play into their lives. Apparently adults aren’t great at playing. I know, you’re shocked.

Who would have guessed that adults tend to lose their sense of play after years and years of homework, exams, then student loans, deadlines, schedules, responsibilities, overtime, chores, budgeti— [Alissa’s head slams down on her desk, thereby immediately waking her.] Wait, where am I? Sorry, I blacked out.

The National Institute for Play defines play as “a state of mind that one has when absorbed in an activity that provides enjoyment and a suspension of sense of time. And play is self-motivated so you want to do it again and again.”

Play is less about what a person is doing and more about being in a flow state.

In the same way that every single person on this planet is an individual (isn’t that wild? I mean really… 8 billion of us, each unique. Can we take a minute?), people play in different ways. One person’s dreamy day of painting with watercolors is another person’s afternoon of doldrums.

I am without a doubt playing when I write to you each week. I often get lost in the words and images and look up to check the time and then panic because if I don’t hustle, I’ll be late to pick up the boys from school. The clock lies! It hasn’t been two and a half hours!

Since today is Wednesday, you’re likely in the thick of your work week, but this can give you a wink of an idea for your upcoming weekend. You deserve to play. You deserve to mess around! You deserve that flow state, to lose track of time, to separate beads into groups based on color and shape and then make a bracelet, to dance in a rumba class, or to hike in the woods and sit on a log. To do whatever gets you lost, in a good way.

You can take the Adult Play Styles Quiz here. It will also make you look busy at your computer at around 2 p.m. on a Wednesday.

The eight styles or play personalities are: The Joker, The Director, The Creator, The Explorer, The Kinesthete, The Competitor, The Collector, and The Storyteller.

I took the quiz twice, once last year and once today. The first time, the results told me I am an Explorer, and today, they said I am a Storyteller. A combination of both feels spot-on. Tell me your play style in the comments section below. I want to know what you are.

Thanks for reading.

XO

Alissa