FEELING COLLECTOR, an Existential Game

What Feeling Do You Want to have More Of in 2022?

FEELING COLLECTOR is an Existential Game that takes a year to play

WHAT FEELING DO YOU WANT TO HAVE MORE OF THIS YEAR?

I started asking myself this question on New Year’s Day, 2017. Rather than setting new year’s resolutions, I wanted to select a feeling to orient my next rotation around the sun. The feeling I chose that year was INTENSITY. It scared me. I wanted it. I had felt dull and trapped for some time and I wanted to feel alive. I got a glimpse of intensity in the last months of 2016 and I could sense that this level of aliveness had a lot to teach me. To liberate me. To make me feel my edges and stretch beyond them.

I spent time meditating on the word and its contours. I explored what I feared about it. I came up with synonyms for intensity: DEPTH, ALIVENESS, COMMITMENT TO STAYING WITH THE FEELING, FIERCELY UNCONDITIONAL LOVE. That year, in pursuit of intensity, I pushed myself to new edges in different areas of my life. I did 30 days in a row of hot yoga, and kept up a regular practice for the rest of the year. I meditated daily on the moment of death. I fasted for Ramadan as a practice of embodied solidarity, and through it learned about the power of intention and devotion. I left an 8.5 year romantic relationship and distanced myself from a controlling academic supervisor, even though these changes scared me immensely. I deepened into a level of love more intense than I had believed was possible, discovering that it could heal long-held trauma. Each of these domains and practices became my portals into INTENSITY, and over time, rewarded me with profound experienced-based lessons to integrate. Intensity taught me to feel fully, to not shrink myself to a smaller container than I need to, to love even when others are afraid they no longer love me, and to practice self-mothering.

Each January, I chose a new feeling to guide me for the upcoming year, and collected wisdoms it had to offer. The following guides were: TRUST. SPACIOUSNESS. GENIUS. BEAUTY.

This is FEELING COLLECTOR, a solo existential game that takes the length of a calendar year. Here’s how you play it:

1. Choose a feeling you want to have more of in the new year. Make it something you’re a little bit afraid of, a feeling that you have a hunch you need to face, something you believe will stretch you, something you’re yearning for. You probably already know, in your gut, what it is.

2. Explore the feeling in whatever ways you like to learn about something new. Listen to audiobooks or podcasts, journal about it, reflect on times in your life you’ve felt it before. You already have a seed of this feeling inside you. The game is to cultivate it with intention.

3. Explore what scares you about this feeling. This is important. Be ready to face those parts too. Even very “positive” feelings can produce shadows and unhealthy extremes. Relentless HAPPINESS risks the denial of ugly and challenging parts of life. EXCITEMENT can be manic. INTENSITY can intensify pain as well as pleasure. SPACIOUSNESS can lead you to experience profound loneliness or confront you with your inner demons.

4. Commit to the WHOLE feeling anyway, the bad and the good.

5. Next, identify domains or practices in your life that can become your intentional PORTALS into the feeling. What are ways you can embody or explore it? Can you take a class or join a 30-day challenge or start a creative project? These have to make sense only to you. My year of TRUST, my portals were taking a stand up comedy class and plant medicine. My year of SPACIOUSNESS I stopped having a job and began writing a novel. My year of GENIUS I launched the Ludic Liberation Lab! More portal opportunities might become clear throughout the year. Don’t rush.

6. As time passes, keep remembering that you’re playing the game.

7. Collect the wisdoms your feeling guides you to. Enjoy the surprises and synchronicities.

8. Share the game. Ask someone next year, “What feeling do you want to have more of in 2023?”

A few years ago, I led a guided version of the game via email. My friend Kyle blogged about his experience, and several folks have told they’ve have kept up the yearly practice since then. I love this game! It’s beautiful and simple and transformative and deep.

I’ll be doing a version of guided FEELING COLLECTOR for paid subscribers of Lab Report, where I’ll also share the personal wisdom I’ll collect in my year of ORDER (my feeling for the year!). But all the high level instructions are above. You have all that you need to play the game solo 🤡.

If you want to join the guided game (with fun prompts and “worksheets”) and have reminders of your play throughout the year and community accountability, you can subscribe now with a hot 20% discount! Every time someone subscribes, I feel so much more encouraged and committed to keep writing this newsletter. I love writing it! I love sharing it! I love receiving tiny little sparkly little gifts of 💵 to remind me that people are intrigued and liberated by this project!

Whether or not you commit to play, I invite you to think about the question “WHAT FEELING DO YOU WANT TO HAVE MORE OF IN 2022?” and share your answer with someone (you can do it in comments of this post or by replying to this email). Naming your feeling evokes its spirit, sharing it with others makes it witnessed, supported, collective, summons it in. So, once again:

WHAT FEELING DO YOU WANT TO HAVE MORE OF THIS YEAR?

In Play and Liberation,

Natalia