I Took Myself on a 'Play Date' at 35. It Was the Most Inspiring Thing I’ve Done All Year.

Hello Inspires 

Yesterday, we talked about "glimmers"—those tiny, fleeting moments of joy you can catch during a busy day.

Finding glimmers is a beautiful, necessary practice for staying grounded. It’s about appreciation.

But sometimes, appreciation isn’t enough.

Sometimes, your creative well is so completely dry that no amount of noticing dandelions in the sidewalk is going to refill it.

You feel stagnant. Bored. Your daily routine feels less like a rhythm and more like a rut. You aren't sad, exactly, but you certainly aren't inspired.

This is where I found myself last week. I was getting my work done, my house was clean, but my brain felt like gray sludge.

I realized I hadn't had a genuinely new idea or felt a spark of real excitement in weeks.

I needed a jolt. I needed to stop waiting for inspiration to strike and go out there and hunt it down with a net.

So, I borrowed a concept from one of the queens of creativity, Julia Cameron, author of the seminal book The Artist's Way.

I took myself on an "Artist Date."

Don’t let the name fool you. You don’t have to be a painter or a writer to do this.

If you are a human being who needs to solve problems at work, manage a household, or just hold an interesting conversation at dinner, you need inspiration.

Cameron defines an Artist Date as "a block of time, perhaps two hours weekly, especially set aside and committed to nurturing your creative consciousness, your inner artist."

It has two basic rules:

• You must go alone. No partners, no kids, no friends.

• You must do something that feels like "play."

It sounds simple, right? Almost ridiculously so.

Yet, when I looked at my calendar to carve out two hours for "play," I felt an immediate wave of resistance.

I had deadlines. I had laundry. I had emails that needed replying to.

Taking two hours in the middle of a Tuesday to do something frivolous felt incredibly selfish. It felt unproductive.

We live in a culture that worships the "hustle." We have moralized being busy. If you aren't producing something, you are wasting time.

But here is the truth that the hustle culture doesn't want you to know: You cannot exhale if you never inhale.

Constant output without input leads to burnout, mediocrity, and a very dull life.

I had to force myself. I put "Play Date" on my calendar in red ink, treating it with the same respect I would a doctor's appointment or a client meeting.

For my date, I decided to revisit a place I hadn't been to since I was twelve years old: a retro pinball arcade in the basement of an old strip mall.

Walking in was a sensory assault in the best way possible.

The air smelled like stale popcorn and ozone. The cacophony of bells, synthesized explosions, and digitized voices was deafening.

For the first ten minutes, I felt deeply awkward. I was a grown adult standing alone in a dark room on a weekday afternoon, clutching a cup of quarters.

I checked my phone three times. I worried that people were looking at me, wondering why I wasn't at a job.

But then, I walked up to an old Addams Family pinball machine. I pulled the plunger. The silver ball shot up the ramp, and something in my brain clicked over.

For the next ninety minutes, the outside world ceased to exist.

I wasn't worrying about my unanswered emails. I was focused entirely on keeping that metal ball from draining down the center lane.

I laughed out loud when I hit a jackpot. I groaned when I missed an easy shot.

I felt a rush of pure, unadulterated adrenaline that I realized I hadn't felt in months.

When I walked back out into the bright afternoon sunlight, the world looked different.

The colors seemed sharper. My brain felt clearer. The problem I had been agonizing over at work suddenly seemed manageable.

I hadn't done anything "productive," yet I felt recharged in a way a nap or a coffee break never could have achieved.

Why did this work so well?

Psychologists tell us that novelty is fertilizer for the brain.

When we stay in our routines, our brains go on autopilot. We stop really seeing things because our minds are just predicting what will happen next based on past experience.

Dr. Stuart Brown, founder of the National Institute for Play, argues that play is not just for children; it is a fundamental human need that is essential for our well-being and survival.

"The opposite of play is not work," Brown says. "It’s depression."

When you engage in novel, playful experiences, your brain releases dopamine, a neurotransmitter associated with pleasure, learning, and motivation.

You are literally forging new neural pathways. You are training your brain to make new connections.

Albert Einstein called this "combinatory play." He believed his best ideas didn’t come when he was slaving over equations, but when he was playing the violin or taking long walks.

The pinball arcade didn't give me the answer to my work problem directly.

But it jarred my brain out of its rut, allowing the answer that was already there to bubble up to the surface.

The beauty of the Artist Date is that it doesn't have to be expensive or elaborate.

It just has to be different from your normal life, and it has to be something that delights you.

Not something your partner likes. Not something your kids want to do. Something just for you.

If you are feeling stuck, bored, or just a little beige, I challenge you to try this.

Here are 7 ideas for low-cost, high-inspiration "play dates" you can do in almost any town:

1. The thrift store treasure hunt.

Go to a local thrift shop with a budget of $10. Your mission is to find the strangest, funniest, or most interesting object you can find. You don't have to buy it. Just the act of hunting with fresh eyes is the point. Feel the textures of old fabrics. Look at the weird cover art on old vinyl records. It’s a museum of everyday life.

2. The nursery immersion.

Visit a large garden center or greenhouse. You don't need to buy plants. Just walk around and soak it in. The air quality is different there—more oxygen, more humidity. Smell the dirt and the flowers. Look at the incredible variety of shapes and colors that nature produces. It’s impossible not to feel a little awe in a greenhouse.

3. The "tourist in your own town" hour.

Is there a weird little local museum you’ve never visited? A historical marker you drive past every day but have never stopped to read? Go there. Pretend you just arrived from another country and are seeing your town for the first time. What would you notice?

4. The art supply store wander.

Even if you can't draw a stick figure, art supply stores are inspiring places. They are full of raw potential. Look at the colors of the pastel sticks. Feel the different weights of paper. Buy a cheap pack of colored pencils and a pad, find a park bench, and just doodle circles and lines without caring what it looks like.

5. The library deep dive.

Go to your local library. Don't go to your usual section. Go to a section you have never visited before—maybe architecture, or graphic novels, or historical costume design. Pull five books off the shelf at random and just flip through the pictures. Let your brain make weird connections between disparate topics.

6. The exotic grocery trip.

Go to an international grocery store—an Asian market, a Mexican tienda, an Eastern European deli. Buy a snack or a drink you have never heard of before and try it. Read the labels. Look at the packaging design. It’s the cheapest form of travel there is.

7. The analog afternoon.

Leave your phone in the car. Go for a walk with an actual film camera (a disposable one works great). Knowing you only have 24 shots forces you to really look at your surroundings before you click the shutter. It changes the way you see the world.

The most important thing to remember is that there is no "right" way to do this, as long as you are alone and you are having fun.

If you go to a museum and hate it, leave after ten minutes and go get an ice cream cone instead. That still counts.

The goal is to signal to yourself that your joy, your curiosity, and your inspiration matter.

When you fill your own cup first, you have so much more to give to the people and the work that you love.

So, open your calendar right now. Find a two-hour block in the next seven days.

Block it out. Defend it fiercely.

Go take yourself on a date. Your brain will thank you for it.