Photo by TheLizardQueen.

Welcome to the first edition of Playing in the Blogosphere, the link love post full of playfulness & creativity.

Beplayful.org Guest Post

First up is my first ever guest post, courtesy of isabella mori at change therapy. Here's an extract from the post, 7 playful ways to turbo boost your creativity:

creativity and playfulness go hand in hand: when you are being truly creative, you are being playful; when you are being playful, your creativity and imagination can't help but show themselves

If you stop by to read the full post, please do leave a comment.

Barbara Swifford at Blogging Without a Blog has named beplayful.org 'New blog of the week'. You can read her glowing review of beplayful.org here.

Playing in the Blogosphere

Sonia Simone has a great post on why the blogging community is like a tribe of cheeky monkeys:

Community, along with ego and family and mortality, is one of those primal driving forces. If you want to tap into something deep and fundamental in order to deliver your message, community is one of the options.

One of my favourite blogs in the blogosphere is Lives Less Ordinary by Amy Palko. Every post on this site abounds with the joy and wonder of a person fully alive. One of Amy's best recent posts has been Climactic Celebrations. Her new about page is also brilliant, offering sound advice on finding your creative self and unleashing your creativity:

Embrace your creativity. Start by believing that you are a creative person, and then prove it to yourself by responding to stimuli as innovatively as you can. Pick up your pen, paintbrush, camera, musical instrument and give yourself permission to play. Don't allow your doubts to inhibit your creative response, and don't judge it or compare it negatively with the creativity of others. Just let it be what it is, and celebrate it for all that.

For any students struggling with end of year deadlines, I recommend Cal Newport's recent post on Adventure Studying. If you are still in your first couple of years at university, I recommend spending a couple of hours reading through Cal's site. All of Cal's advice will help you breeze through your studies, giving you more time to be playful.

Finally, Shilpan at Success Soul has written a beautiful post about the simplicity of rainbow living:

Simple life is a pathway to happiness. It's as simple as a rainbow of seven colors. In the modern world full of gizmo's, simplicity is an extinct virtue.

In the News

This story is slightly out of date but I only found it recently and I couldn't help but want to share it here. In Manchester, they've built an outdoor playground for pensioners. Fantastic!

Do let me know of any playful news stories or blog posts that you discover in cyberspace.

If you've ever wished there were more playgrounds for grown ups you'll love beplayful.org. Sign up for the RSS feed here. Email sign up is available on the homepage.