The importance of play

Hi everyone! 

As summer streams on, we’re in peak OOO zone. Travel perks up, the weather gets friendly, wedding season pops off (Our co-contributor Rachel is just DAYS into her newlywed status as we speak!) and the beach is, indeed, calling.

Like many of you, I’m fresh off the July 4th holiday long weekend here in the US, which for me, made the rest of the week following it feel sluggish and totally unmotivating. It’s tough to ramp up when we’re gifted a reprieve from our normal work routine. 

Instead of being efficient about my long list of projects and tasks, I complained to a friend about not wanting to dooo any of it, and sent a verbal wish up to the stars to drop all my current responsibilities and somehow make a living sifting through soft sands, building rare collections of the smallest and most unique sea shells - my personal hunting-for-treasure-heaven. 

My hope to become the “she” who sells seashells down by the seashore was a half-joke when I said it, but it’s not completely out of left field. This daydream was born from a memory - from last September, during a monthlong live/work trip to Mexico. Though I immersed myself in my little Mexican beach town for 30 days straight, it was a single day that has stayed extra ripe in my mind. 

Among the many beaches where I stayed, there is one that requires an animalistic climb among big rigid rocks to enter, and because a coral reef lives beneath the water in the cove, the shells + sea-things that wash to shore are especially stunning. I lost myself in my sifting and searching for hours, and I felt such deep satisfaction and fulfillment from my day spent that way.