Everyone’s signing up for ‘adult play’—and it’s not what you think

“As a child, colouring and drawing were activities that I loved doing. When I became a mom, I assumed my home would always have a stack of crayons and a child happily making a mess with paints. But that wasn’t my son’s thing at all. Messy play never excited him. And strangely, that’s when I realised I missed it,” begins  Diana Fernandes, founder and group CEO of Bloomingdale Public Relations.  

During Covid, when the world was baking banana bread, Diana knew the kitchen wasn’t her zone. “Instead, I picked up two things: photographing birds with my Canon and painting. Six years later, despite having far less time, painting still gives me that inexplicable happiness. It sends me into a zone —almost a daze—where everything else fades away. Most of my work is inspired by Pinterest or art I see online. I’m not obsessed with originality right now. I’m just obsessed with the feeling,” she reveals. 

While the inspiration, the flow, the quiet joy can feel levitating to a latent artist, the underrated feeling of uninterrupted free time is what inspires Simran Dua, a 25-year-old communication professional, to schedule a puzzle date with her little niece as regularly as she can. “Puzzles have become a quiet, almost meditative escape. They help me slow down, step away from screens, and focus on something simple yet engaging, without the pressure to perform or produce,” she says. “Between work, social media, and everyday expectations, we rarely make time for ourselves. Play gives us a break from that mindset. It helps us slow down, switch off, and reconnect with ourselves in a way that feels light and grounding, reminding us that life does not always have to be about doing more.”

Backing these behaviours up are recent global surveys that indicate a sizeable percentage of older adults have returned to activities they enjoyed when they were younger—splurging more on toys (LEGO and the like)  than preschoolers. What’s more, cultural trend reports have shed light on how adults embrace play and nostalgia as comfort, stress relief, and joy-seeking. 

For Meghna Bhimrajka, founder of Maison Malabar, going back to a long-lost hobby felt like revisiting a part of her that was almost forgotten—a kind of catharsis that occurs only when you’ve done your work in terms of self-reflection. “I restarted painting during the pandemic, which was incredibly grounding. More recently, I’ve taken to solving puzzles. It’s fun, challenging, and deeply engaging. It’s something I loved as a child but somehow forgot along the way. Rediscovering it has been a reminder that joy can be simple, tactile, and screen-free,” enthuses the 30-year-old.

As offline leisure activities that were once considered optional to the point of oblivion are slowly gaining steam as soulful acts that help reclaim your inner child, Sheelaa Bajaj, a hypnotherapist and transformational coach, avers that these “harmless” hobbies or activities help you unlock your best version as an adult. “Keeping your inner child alive, or going back and giving your inner child a voice, creates a cascading and rippling effect on the adult version of you and helps you move into the future version of yourself. This can be done through the process of hypnotherapy. If people feel they have a disconnection from their inner child, despite following childhood hobbies, they can go through hypnotherapy to address it. You’ll be surprised at how your healed version feels and perceives the world around you,” she concludes. 

In a world obsessed with optimisation, perhaps the most radical thing an adult can do is sit down with crayons, a puzzle, or a paintbrush and make something just for the joy of it.

Lead image: Pexels

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