Business As Play

I laughed when I found this photograph, mostly because it brought back good memories of hanging out in Jamaica with my brother on vacation. 

Then I turned it over. On the back, one of our friends had written, “You couldn’t hide from that damn phone.” He was right. I remember that phone. It rang at breakfast, by the pool, in airports, and while I was trying to convince my friends that I was taking a vacation.

They used to say that meant I was a workaholic. I think I was playing. I was still working, of course. The contracts were real. Payroll was needed to be approved. Deadlines were very very real. Clients get snotty and demanding. Yet inside my head, business felt like a game I had been playing for years. Someone would hand me a problem and my brain would immediately begin moving the pieces around. What if we tried this? What happens if we move that over there? Who already solved part of this without realizing it?

I loved figuring things out. I loved walking into problems that had no obvious answer. I loved meeting people from different countries and learning how they thought. I loved negotiating, building, organizing, improving, and seeing a project on paper before it existed in the world. Business held my attention because it gave my mind somewhere novel to go.

I had played this game growing up. On a farm, there was always something to fix, build, check, move, or understand. Water had to reach the right place. Equipment had to work. Animals, trees, weather, timing, and people all had to be considered at once. Even the neighbors who never seemed to leave. I learned to see how one thing affected another long before I had language for any of it. I had a few jokes, but those usually resulted in time out. I was judicious using this technique. After a while they said I did it on purpose. I digress. 

That may be why the phone never felt entirely like an interruption. It was often an invitation back into the game.

Children play by inventing situations and then figuring out what to do inside them. The floor becomes lava. The couch becomes a ship. A box becomes a house. The rules are made, tested, adjusted, and sometimes abandoned when a better idea appears. Adults do this too, although we usually give it more serious names.

I called mine business.

The scale changed as I grew older, and the consequences became larger, but the habit stayed the same. I remain curious. I keep moving pieces around. I keep asking what else might work. That kind of play gave my mind enough freedom to notice possibilities and enough discipline to build something from them.

My friend saw a young woman who could not hide from her phone. Looking at the photograph now, I see a woman who had found a game she loved and was still in the middle of it.