I recently discovered author Keri Smith and her series of books, journals, and apps all about creatively exploring the world. If you aren’t familiar with her I highly recommend just googling her name, as her website really doesn’t do her or her work justice. Ultimately everything she makes is about exploration, in every sense of the word. I’ve been playing on her apps, all designed to propel the user into simply doing just that: playing.

It’s occurred to me that for all of my creativity, I tend to prefer participating in art that is more structured. I feel most comfortable when I know the rules. In fact sometimes I think what I love most about photography is its limitations, and its structure. While I believe there is no right or wrong way to make art, including photos, my very innermost being feels like there is a way things should be done, and I tend to strive toward doing them that way. (If you’re familiar with the enneagram, I’m a pretty hard core One.) And I’m sure that serves me well in a lot of areas of my life. But when it comes to art and creativity I am very bad at simply sitting down with a random assortment of things or tools or even a pencil and creating something completely out of the blue, unstructured, or made up.

So for the last week I’ve tried to do more of what Keri encourages: give myself permission to play. I wrote a while back about making images for the simple joy of making, but I still have to remind myself to do it. Fortunately I spend most of my days with two very good reminders, if I just slow down and let them show me how.