Readers who have been following my blog for a while will know that a few years back I had a huge aha! moment. While I was teaching everyone in my world to play (students, clients, even friends), I wasn’t playing in my own life. This discovery led me to write and produce a play: The Play’s the Thing. Using the stages of the Hero’s Journey, I built my own life transformation as I shaped the story to produce on stage. The production, along with pages and pages of my process journal and a paper that summed up the academic research on the value of play, made up my critical thesis for my MFA at Hamline University.
The process of creating the play was a whirlwind. After designing and sewing costumes, composing music, filming and editing clips to use as part of the show, choreographing dances, and doing a dry run of the show out here in California, I flew a few close friends and my production team out to Minneapolis. I didn’t get scared until after we’d loaded the set into the university theatre. Then, I realized what I was about to do.
I was going to take the stage and as one audience member later commented, “turn my head and heart inside out for everyone to see.” Honestly, I don’t know how I got myself out on that stage that night. I was physically shaking, and my best friend, who was also in the production, was coaching everyone on how to keep the show moving if I completely fell apart. The thing is, from the very beginning, when I saw the yawning gap between who I was (someone who took myself way too seriously) and who I wanted to be (someone who bubbled over with joy and creativity and freedom), I knew I had to create change in my life.
Creating the production absolutely produced change. However, that night was a blur. I did make it through the show, and since it was just one part of a 10-day residency, I then went on the next day into lectures and learning and new kinds of creating. As life swept me away, into the Sadie’s Sketchbook four-book contract that filled every waking minute, into my new nonprofit for young writers, Society of Young Inklings, into life and everything that life holds, it took some time to figure out just what had happened that night. I’d been deep in the process of battling my dragons and navigating my way back home, knowing I was a different person, but not really understanding what that meant. How would my real life be, now that the play was over?
With some distance, I am starting to see. Creating the production drew the battle lines for me. I learned what my challenges are and what they will continue to be. I learned who I want to journey toward becoming. But I also learned that becoming our most full selves isn’t a process we can push through the year we turn 33 and then pack up into boxes as though it’s all done. What I actually did when I created the production was to map out my own personal inner journey, one that I need to travel more intentionally, and more often.
So, I decided to experiment. On April 20, I wrote the word “begin” on the white board on my desk and started journaling. The first stage of the Hero’s Journey is the hero in her ordinary life, so to begin, I’ve been taking stock of my life as is. I’ve been doing some practical things, such as collecting all of my projects and organizing them in the GTD way, making mental room for creativity. I’ve been exploring the word, begin, as well as reading the beginnings of some books that have sent me on personal journeys before, such as The Artist’s Way, The Artist’s Rule, The Gifts of Imperfection, The Soul of Money and The Happiness Project.
I wasn’t sure whether I’d write about this journey on my blog, being that it’s a personal one. However, I remember the power of sharing my story when I created the play, and the way that telling the story helped me witness it more clearly myself. So, I’ve decided to share along the way. I can already see that the process won’t be as clean or simple as I’d like. Will each stage take exactly one month? More? Less? I can plan it out, but it’s a journey. And no one really knows what will happen when they load up a backpack and take to the trails. So, I’m not committing to anything more than to taking the journey. And we’ll see what happens from here.
