Creative Gifts You Can Give Yourself In 2025: Time to Play

Continuing this series of looking ahead at creative gifts you can give yourself in 2025, today's post is giving yourself the gift of time to play.

This can look like so many things, but the core is to allow yourself time to create just for the fun and joy of creating. Creating not with the intent that it will be consumable by others, or ultimately for others, but creating something just for you. For the process more than the result.

For the last two years, at the suggestion of my adult daughter, our family has done a parallel-play (where we do it at the same time but everyone works on their own) new year vision collage. This has involved going through old magazines, cutting out images and words and just letting things flow, assembling something that resonates both visually and with words that can be like a poem or even a rallying cry of encouragement for the year ahead. I keep mine up by my desk all year, as a reminder of the joy of creativity.

You don't have to collage, but I encourage you to start playing in some way. With art. (Try out a new medium - get messy!) With words. (Try a new structure of poetry!) Build a sand castle. Or a snow fort. Maybe even put on some music and dance, as if—as the saying goes—no one is watching. 

Interestingly, I don't have a lot of photos of me playing... mainly because when I do it's not something I document to share with others. But this is a photo from a vacation, where I did play with some balloons and created a hat. Balloons are not generally my medium. No one is going to write a symphony about the creativity behind this balloon hat, but that wasn't the point. It was play pure and simple, and joyful just for the creative process. 

The act of creating, just for us, has so much joy and value built in it, and it's a great thing to remind ourselves that we can give ourselves this gift whenever we need it. We can even give it to ourselves regularly, if we find it contributes to our joy. If it helps to make it happen, put some time aside in your calendar now. 

I hope, in the year ahead, you'll consider giving yourself the gift of time to play, whatever that looks like for you. I fully believe the rest of your creativity—and you—will benefit.

Illustrate, Translate, and Write On,
Lee

P.S. If you haven't seen it yet, I invite you to check out the first creative gift post, the Gift of Community.