Learning to Play as a Grown Up: Part 1

Awakening the Toddler Within

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“It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.” 

- Pablo Picasso

Last time on the Creativity Guild my co-conspirator Steve laid out his journey for creative experiments. His goal is to write a song, make some comedy and write a book (I am grossly over simplifying here, for all the details you can read Steve’s full post.)

Steve and I have been talking about our creative journeys with each other for a while now, but even so what surprised me about reading his piece was just how different our aspirational creative journeys are. To me Steve’s feels like it is in service of upping his creative output, and as Steve alluded to in his last post, mine is a little different. 

I had spent a good part of last year mired in a bit of a funk. It wasn’t that I was depressed, but I did find myself living with a constant state of non-inspiration. I was equally uninspired in my job and in my personal life. I desperately needed help. Someone I respect suggested that what I needed was to see a life coach.

I’d never given much thought to seeing a life coach before. To me life coaches were for people who were trying to climb some sort of corporate ladder and in my state I didn’t feel much up to climbing anything. I just wanted to feel more alive. But I had little to lose, so I gathered two recommendations and set up initial calls with them both. 

The first coach I spoke with felt exactly like what I had feared. Her focus was to have me set goals that I would then be accountable to her to follow through on. That whole idea exhausted me and only served to confirm my prejudices about how seeing a coach was definitely not for me.

The second coach I spoke with though couldn’t have been more different. This coach let me know that she didn’t do the kind of coaching that would instruct me on what to actually do with my life, but instead she would help me tap into my creative essence; a process that would make me a more grounded and connected human being. This approach appealed to me and so did having my own creativity coach. I hired her on the spot. 

Through working with her I began to appreciate the idea of creativity for creativity’s sake. That the very act of entering into a creative state was reward enough, even if there was no real tangible or marketable “thing” created from it. Using creativity as a medicine to make me a better human being, or at least closer to the human being I aspired to be, spoke to me in my core.

I’m not sure what prompted this, but at some point during my last coaching session our conversation turned towards my relationship with water. I’ve always been drawn to swimming in freshwater lakes and I’ve never met a lake I’ve not wanted to jump into. Same goes for warm baths, I love ‘em. Immersing myself in water, hot or cold, has always been a grounding experience for me. It’s the place where I feel most alive. 

“What if the next time you took a bath,” my coach said, “you scribbled all over the walls with bath markers?” I took a pause when she said this, and I had no idea how to respond. Mainly because the last time I had bathtub markers in my home was for my kids…when they were toddlers. And just to be clear, I am definitely not a toddler. 

Yet inside of me a toddler version, let’s call him little Geoffrey, is still very much alive. Sometimes when I’m feeling goofy he comes out to play, and other times when I most want to burn everything down, he is inside of me throwing a full on toddler tantrum. He’s a part of me that I love, but I also tend to ignore him when I fill my life with the whole gamut of adulting that needs tending to. 

With my coach’s encouragement, and in the spirit of The Creativity Guild’s interview with AJ Jacobs, I set out to honour little toddler Geoffrey with a creative experiment. My goal was to find a way to tap into that part of me that thrives on playing just for the sake of playing. Could I conduct an experiment that could provide the structure and safety to make that toddler in me squeal in delight?

A couple of weeks later I took a trip to my local big box store to stare at their wall of Crayola markers. None were specifically labelled “Bath Markers” but most claimed to at least be washable. I grabbed a box of fat ones, made sure to keep the receipt so I could still feel like an adult and write the expense off (against what, I’m not quite sure…) and home I went. That night I ran a bath, poured the markers out onto the floor beside me and began my soak. 

Bathtub Drawing Attempt #1

After lowering myself into the warm tub I sat and stared at the walls. “What should I draw?” I thought to myself. Followed by the predictable voice of my inner critic who piped up with, “And what if what I draw sucks?” 

Trying my best to ignore my critic, I uncapped a big fat red Crayola marker and very tentatively began to draw a line across the clean white tile that surrounded my tub. I drew slowly and cautiously. First I drew a cartoon pig, then a man with crazy swirly eyes. It was definitely fun to break all the rules and draw on my walls, but this pig and this hazy eyed dude were both things that I have been doodling for my entire life. They are my doodling greatest hits. They are fine, but they definitely don’t offer the creative release I was hoping this exercise would provide. On this night, my inner toddler is no where to be seen.

Meet my first two bath drawings: Sir Pigs-A-Lot and Mister Hazy Eyes

Bathtub Drawing Attempt #2

A week or so later I try again. I sit down in a warm tub. Crack open a box of washable markers and once again stare at the white tile that surrounds me. Suddenly I’m struck with a feeling that is not unfamiliar. Something I face most times when I sit down to write; the intimidation of the blank page. 

Determined to get over the challenge of bathtub artists block, I uncapped a purple marker and slowly and carefully wrote out the word “BANG”. I’m not sure why that word, but it felt right, so I went for it. I then sat back to looked what I’d done. My critique is that once again it felt tight and uninspired. Not that this kind of drawing in the tub really lends itself all that well to art criticism, but it is clear just from looking at it that my heart wasn’t really in it. If I were to give myself a grade on my ability to surrender to the creative process, I’d give myself a B minus. 

(Looking at the photos afterwards I also realize that I really need to re-grout my tub.)

Bathtub Drawing Attempt #2

Bathtub Drawing Attempt #3

A week later and I’m back in the tub. This time I decided to take a moment to close my eyes and concentrate on my breath. My goal was to see if I could get “inside” of the process of creating. To get out of my head and enjoy the delight that the act of being creative could offer. Meditation has become a big influence in my non-bathing life, and so I decided to use a mindful entry point for this bathing/creative experience as well.

I grabbed a marker from the box, and then paused to take in the wall in front of me. With one more deep breath, I leaned forward and began to draw. I’m colouring fast this time, without hesitation and without any particular outcome in mind. There’s a rhythm to what I’m creating that I’m totally digging. 

I ended up making something that looks like a pink tornado. I liked it, and so I made another, then another, and then another. Then after about 10 minutes of mad scribbling I laid back to take in what I had just created. It had a psychedelic quality to it. But even so, in as much as I tried to lose myself in the experience, I was still clearly trying to create a “thing”, even if that thing was…weird. This attempt felt close, but still left me wanting more. I needed to allow myself to get truly messy in the process. 

My Quasi Psychedelic Bathtub Experience

Bathtub Drawing Attempt #4

For this attempt I found myself back at an art store, once again scanning the aisles for inspiration. The bath markers I had been using now felt too tight, too controlled for the feeling of release I was after. I needed something that could help me surrender, so that the toddler within could finally come out and play. I hummed and hawed until I finally came across a box labelled “Super Washable Finger Paints.” Bingo.

Five fingers. Six paints.

That night I cracked open the box, ran a bath, and settled in for the adventure. I opened the tube of blue paint and squeezed a glob out onto my hand. My eyes travel from my hand to the wall. It’s in this moment I realized that I had actually forgotten how finger painting works. I wondered if there is a YouTube video I could watch to remind me, but there was no time. Paint was beginning to seep through the spaces between my fingers. I needed to get started, but how?

I slowly edged my hand close to the wall, and then, tentatively, began to smear the blue paint onto the tile. Slowly I drew one long curvy line. Then I drew another. And then another. After a minute or so all the self-consciousness I felt at the beginning of the process evaporated. It was just me, some blue paint, and a giant canvas of previously white tile.

My “Blue” period

From there I proceeded to smear all sorts of colours onto the wall. The inner Jackson Pollack in me began splattering paint on the walls too. I had entered a flow state. Both of my hands, my arms, and most of the water in the tub now saturated in paint. It was satisfying in a way I could never have imagined. The walls were now covered in a magnificent smear. Even if I had wanted to jump back into my head and paint a specific “thing,” the limitations of finger paints would never have allowed it. Instead of painting with my head, it was just me, enjoying the tactile feeling of smearing globs of paint onto my walls. My whole body felt light. After 20 minutes of painting I sat back to take in my creation. It was magnificent.

My bathtub masterpiece

Once I was done I drained the tub and began the lengthy process of cleaning the paint off the walls. I had done a pretty good tidying up when my wife walked in and noticed splotches of paint all over the shower curtain. “Oh god…” she said, with a smile, “it’s like living with a toddler again.” 

Even though it may not necessarily have been meant as a compliment, in that moment comparing me to a toddler may have been the highest praise she could have given me.

The toddler version of me is pure and raw, he exists in a place that came before all the plaque of adulthood got in the way. He creates simply to experience joy. He’s not interested in following the rules, and could care less about the finished product. He has no ego and his only goal is to chase fun. Smearing something as ridiculous as fingers paints all over the wall of his grown-up house is fun. It helped create a moment where my toddler could shine. Honouring what makes him happy is ultimately honouring what makes me me. I love little toddler Geoffrey. Nothing makes me happier than watching him happy at play. 

I get occasional glimpses of what it feels like to have the toddler at play in other areas of my life too. It can be a huge struggle to get there though. I want more of that, but exactly how I get there in ways that don’t involve finger paints is still a huge mystery to me. More experiments perhaps? Stay tuned…

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Interested in letting your own inner toddler come out and scribble all over the walls of your tub? Or maybe you have your own version of fingers paints that is calling to you. If so, please send us some pics of what happens! We’d love to see what your inner toddler creates. You can send them to GeoffAndSteve@TheCreativityGuild.com.