Flexing Your Magic Muscles

The Importance of Stretching Your Imagination

So those of you who know me well may know that I'm a nerd. Like a capital N, had a favorite classic novel, owns first editions of comic books, kinda nerd.

If you didn't know, now you do--and I'll let you in on a not so secret: I'm especially a nerd for Dungeons and Dragons. Ali Mohamad introduced me to it in our Junior year of college, and I've been hooked ever since. It speaks to my former fantasy novel reading self, and was a world I had always wanted to break into, but had been a bit of a boys club at the time I was in high school. I was lucky enough to be introduced to my current coworkers at F2B Services through the game–tagging along to a monthly game night DMed by our resident master of tech and stories, Stephen.

Over the past few years the folks at CH Media and Critical Role made the game accessible to people who have never really had groups to play with, and showed a whole new swath of people, me included, how easy it can be to keep your imagination active while dedicating yourself to a life of work. Game Masters Brennan Lee Mulligan and Aabria Iyengar create worlds that are witty spin offs of fantasy series we know and love, craft places of their own design, and walk their friends through immersive and transformative stories full of jokes, jabs, and just plain old fashioned wisdom.

With very real issues of capitalism, corruption, and evil entities that possess your soul forming the central tensions of campaigns, Mulligan and Iyengar are two of my personal favorite game masters of the current swath of actual play shows and podcast DnD campaigns. Their ability to marry real world issues with fantasy and friendship have helped support a more realistic and welcoming culture to tabletop and RPG spaces--which has shot a whole new generation of people into a trajectory of imagination and gaming, mapped simply by seeing people like themselves on that path.

You might think that putting on silly voices and pretending to be an elf for a few hours a night has nothing to do with LinkedIn, but it really has everything to do with it. This Wednesday I walked into a gaming store full of strangers--all of them dudes who had at least ten years on me (ah, how similar it is to the world of business) It was a new and foreign space, and we only had one thing in common, or so we thought.?

Through the night we all came to the same conclusion: we were there to play so we could exercise our brains and tap into that part of fantasy that we have to tuck away during the work day. All of us were capital N nerds who found that dedicating ourselves to the daily grind, while rewarding, made us dig too much into the data driven side of our minds. We reminisced about fantasy series we used to read, video games that captured our attention, and got excited about picking out mini figurines that matched our ideal selves.

Manufacturing executives, mechanics, BDRs, sign craftsmen, and software developers can all come together around a little bit of magic that they feel is missing in their day to day. Play is important to stretch the muscles of the mind. So here I am to say, let's pretend that cold calls are evoking old gods, sending emails is sending word to neighboring castles to ask for aid, and doing R&D on Sales Navigator is pouring through spellbooks. Make your day to day fun for yourself, and allow the imagination to shine through in the way you treat people–you might just be bringing a little bit of magic to their life with what you have to offer.

So if you need me I’ll be here–but maybe with elf ears on, and definitely listening to an epic soundtrack.