My Own Private Hollywood

1. In the Dentist Office - wherein I discover the Inner Playground: (mp3)
2. The Inner Playground - defined
3. My Inner Inner City
4. My Own Private Hollywood
5. Part Two: Games for the Inner Player
6. Freeze Tag
7. Mother May I
8. Simon Says
9. Part Three: Building an Inner Playground
10. The Inner Seesaw
11. My Inner Swingset
12. Part Four: Introducing Serious and Silly
13. Serious and Silly (mp3)
14. Kick the Can

So, I ask, what else do I do to keep it fun here in the inner playground when the elsewhere isn't as much funas it should be?

Sometimes, I reply, I just count.

How many steps between this and that? How many breaths from here to there?

I count people, I count cars, I count whatever will count enough to keep me counting.

If that's not fun enough, I estimate. 67 steps to the bench. 24 chews to finish the salad.  138 heartbeats from here to the end of the article.  And if that's not fun enough, I place my bets.  An ice cream cone or similarly unjustifiable expenditure if I make it to the door of the store in exactly 100 strides.

Sometimes I talk to myselves.

I personally have had ornate lecture halls built wherever my selves gather so that I might, when need be, astound my self with my wit. Make myself laugh, wherever I am. Give myself standing ovations whenever so moved.

Deservedly so. Because on the inner lecture circuit I am widely known for my motivational speaking. I talk with a clarity and fluidity and practiced elegance that can capture the heart and mind of my inner audience. My words sound as well-rehearsed as a long-running play, and it's all improvisation! I can speak with equal authority, about truth and God, money and power, love and sex, sex and sex -- and I don't really have to know what I'm talking about until I hear myself saying it.

When I'm not speaking to myseslves, I sometimes find it absolutely hilarious simply to attend to one of my many open rehearsals, with myself eveso versatilly starring as actor and audience and everybody I need to be talking to.

I have become a big time entertainment industry, all by myself.

Billion dollar Summer blockbuster? I can illustrate my lectures with spectaculars whose production values make Hollywood seem like a cottage industry. Million-acre amusement park? What Disneyland can compare to the attractions awaiting me in my inner playgrounds?