WHEN DID LEGO GET HARD?

As a kid, I had a massive plastic bin of Lego. I had to drag it out of the closet and into the living room because it was too big to carry. And I'd sit there and do what you're supposed to do with Lego: build something. Anything. A house, a village, a dinosaur, a Moon base. I built a really awesome ship once with a door that lowered to let out little speed boats...

Now that I'm a dad with two boys, Lego is back in my life. But you know what? It's harder now. Not physically harder, but mentally harder to actually just figure out what to build. My boys have a big box overflowing with coloured bricks. We'll sit down and their stubby fingers will fumble with the pieces as they start to figure out the techniques of effective Lego construction. And there is a part of me that yearns to do it too - the part that remembers how much fun it is. But there's another part of me that is frustrated because it forces me to confront how difficult it is as an adult to be as creative as I was as a child.

It happened somewhere along the way - walls were built around my imagination. My brain diverted capacity from creativity to other more "grown-up" priorities. And now when I need that creativity, it's harder to get it back. But I'm going to work on it. And I think to start I just need to play with more Lego.