Email #1
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This list has grown, and I’m so grateful you’ve joined us!
Many of the readers on this subscriber list know me personally, but just about as many don’t know me well! So welcome to “Who Exactly Is Acey and What Are We All Doing Here?”
I’m Acey, and my fun fact is that I hate fun facts. I’m a neurodivergent mother, wife, speech-language pathologist, skier, public speaker, dog-mom, football fan, runner, originally from the Southeast currently *not* sweating my life away in the mountains of Colorado. I have 8 small tattoos, a half-arm sleeve, and most of my right thigh. Every single one has meaning. I wear too much jewelry and have too many sneakers. I don’t cook or bake. I have half-finished hobby projects all over my house. I quit my very successful and rewarding speech-pathology career about four years ago because I was burnt out. In the process of figuring out what that burn out meant for me, I discovered that way too many humans working in any number of fields, but ESPECIALLY education, were also very burnt out.
And it’s because the systems are so very broken.
So I set out to fix them. Yep, little ole’ me. Since I left speech pathology, I’ve been building BoredLess. My work has meandered from just trying to get adults playing more to educating groups on the neuroscience and nuance of play… on what it means for us as adults… and how to use it in our organizations and systems to fix those broken systems.
There’s an actual field of science called Playful Work Design and this is what I bring to organizations. It’s a way to create environments and systems that incorporate playfulness into routines and team dynamics without neglecting the importance and seriousness of the work itself.
You’ll never find a hint of toxic positivity in what I share.
Work can be hard. We shouldn’t be aiming for ways to ignore or change that. But we can aim for ways to make the hard days less painful and pass more quickly. With playfulness.
So that’s what I’ll be sharing in this email newsletter. How you can add playfulness to your own workdays. You won’t find inspirational quotes or cute ideas for a classroom here. You’ll find tangible and accessible ideas for making work suck less. Know anyone else that might be interested in that? I’d be so grateful if you forwarded this to them (and maybe they will be too and they can sign up here!) Since you’ve already read too many paragraphs, we’ll keep today’s short from here.
You are playful, even if you’re convinced otherwise. We’ll talk more about exactly the why and how of that in the coming weeks, but for today, just know that you (probably) are. I have yet to have a conversation with ANYONE that is truly not playful at all in some way.
I plan to include a short, playful break you can try today or tomorrow or whenever you’d like in each of these emails. Here’s our first one… it’s the one I always share first, it’s my favorite (and one of my small tattoos).
TODAY’S PLAY
Grab something to write with, a small scrap of paper, and scribble WITHOUT LOOKING for just THREE SHORT SECONDS. I’m not yelling at you, but I do want you to make sure you focus on those two cues. Go do that, then come back to this for your next instruction.
Did you scribble yet? If you don’t scribble first and read the next part, it’s gonna mess with your scribble. So, just go scribble. Go ahead.
Ok, you scribbled right? Ok, I’m trusting you! Now, look deeeeeeply into your scribble and find a place to add a beak, two little feet, and an eye (or two)... find the BIRD within your scribble. Some folks “see” them right away, sometimes it takes a moment. And every once in a while, there isn’t a bird at all, but a fish, or squirrel, or bicycle!
What did you create? I’d love to see it! If you share yours with me, I’ll show you the scribble bird tattoo I have on my arm!
That’s a 30-second activity that boosted your cognitive health and function. To learn more about how and why, stick around for more emails! See you next week, keep playing!