Eat the
Fruit

It's a funny question — especially when you've spent a good portion of your life thinking about what everyone else was hungry for. The kids. The partner. The clients. The boss. The business. The mortgage. The dog. The group text.

But here you are. Maybe the kids are mostly grown. Maybe the career you worked so hard to build doesn't light you up the way it once did. Maybe you're happily partnered, gloriously single, newly divorced — or simply realizing you have more freedom than you've had in a very long time.

And somewhere underneath all of that is a feeling: there's more.

More you want to experience. More you want to create. More you want to contribute. More you want to enjoy. You just may not know exactly what it is yet.

Good. You don't need to.

You're not starting over.

You're starting with everything you've lived.

The good decisions. The questionable ones. The things that worked beautifully. The things you would absolutely not recommend. The careers, relationships, adventures, heartbreaks, skills, stories, instincts and ideas that have accumulated along the way.

You don't need another five-year plan.

You might need an experiment. A question. A ridiculous idea. A conversation with someone interesting. A plane ticket. A notebook. An afternoon with absolutely nothing scheduled.

Clarity doesn't always arrive before we begin.

Sometimes we have to move toward what interests us and see what happens. Sometimes we need to play.

There comes a point when personal growth becomes another way of postponing your actual life. Another book. Another course. Another habit to master. Another thing to heal. Another version of yourself you need to become before you're finally ready.

What if you're already ready?

This is the heart of Eat the Fruit: allowing yourself the sheer pleasure of your life — your experiences, desires, wisdom and gifts. Not so you can disappear into yourself or a bathtub of champagne. (Although that could be fun for a bit.) But so you can become more fully part of the world.

To create. Contribute. Speak. Lead. Love. Make something. Try something. Share something. Or simply enjoy the hell out of a Tuesday afternoon because you can.

How to hear desire again beneath all the shoulds, responsibilities and perfectly reasonable reasons not to.

How to run small experiments instead of five-year plans — and let clarity arrive on the way.

How to turn everything you've already lived into your material — instead of your evidence.

Go ahead.
Eat the fruit.

See what tastes good. See what surprises you. See what you want more of. You've spent a lifetime becoming this woman — let's see what she wants to do now.

Not ready to pre-order? Read the first three chapters free — they're yours either way.

Hi, I'm Vanessa. I'm a Playologist.

I've built businesses, written things, made things, started over and changed my mind more than once. Along the way I noticed that the qualities we're told to leave behind in childhood — curiosity, imagination, wonder, experimentation and play — are exactly the ones we need when the old rules stop fitting. That became Play Intelligence™, and this book.