When Work Is Play

David Guy’s essay, “When Work Is Play,” resonated with me. I, too, am a writer, and I have struggled (and still struggle) to turn my back on the external and internal organization that says you must work, you must make money, you must do what doesn’t come naturally. Until age thirty-four, I tried to make a deal: I would do whatever it took to gain status and an upwardly mobile lifestyle. I would get a Ph.D. (in the related left-brain field of linguistics), teach college, do electronics research. With the rest of my time (what little there was after I had a child), I would write. It didn’t work. Playing, serious playing, takes a lot more time and a lot more space than I ever imagined.

Watching my daughter grow, I have learned a lot. Like David Guy, I had a sense of recognition, hearing her in the next room playing dress-up while I was in my study, dressing myself up in the guise of different characters. The connection between sex and creativity resonates too. But I wonder — what about women? A lot of women I know have a much harder time playing than men. Fathers play easily with their children, but women, locked earlier into a greater sense of responsibility for child-rearing, are often stuck in other, less flexible roles.

Women sometimes have greater latitude (although less and less these days) to sit home and not account for their time. But I felt this as an extra burden. I had a good professional job before I gave it up to chase an elusive muse around my study. The way I dealt with some of my fear when I quit my job was to tell people I was now just a housewife. I had avoided this at all costs previously; anything was preferable to being compared to those angry, unfulfilled drudges of my childhood.

But more and more I see myself as just a person, learning how to live. As I learn to play in my writing, I learn to play in other things, too. It helps to satisfy the craving I have for intensity, for meaning, for wholeness in my life. Thank you, David Guy, for illuminating that.