Eve Rodsky - Find Your Unicorn Space: Reclaim Your Creative Life in a Too-Busy World

Fair Play: A Game-Changing Solution for When You Have Too Much to Do (and More Life to Live)

Find Your Unicorn Space was written with the intention that all readers feel seen and heard and worthy of the gift to pursue creative expression that brings their lives more joy.

My personal identities include hetero cisgender, white, female identified, born into a Syrian Jewish immigrant family. I am married to a hetero cisgender, white, Jewish man. I grew up in a single-parent, working-class home. However, access to my education and profession have afforded me economic security.

For this book I interviewed individuals who represent an abundant diversity with regard to age, race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, marital status, educational attainment, employment status, geographical location, religion, and cis, trans, and nonbinary gender identities. Forty-four percent of the people I interviewed identified as people of color, 33 percent identified as members of the LGBTQIA+ community. I recognize my own racial and economic privilege in coming to this topic and have made a concerted effort to talk with people of diverse racial and socioeconomic backgrounds to discover how they live a creative life.

My research for Find Your Unicorn Space used a qualitative approach rooted in informal interviews with open-ended questions and observations. You can describe it as my heroines journey to create my own Unicorn Space, motivated by personal curiosity and fueled by the creative insights of the interesting people I read about and had the privilege to meet. I read through hundreds of articles, original research, and books. When particular themes emerged, I interviewed experts in psychology, sociology, social work, neuroscience, behavioral economics, and law. I reference this as my book research. I was fortunate to be able to work with one expert (and a fellow Uni) in particularProfessor Darby Saxbe, a clinical psychology professor who is both an expert in the gendered division of labor and actively pursuing her own Unicorn Space as the lead guitarist for an all-women Mom band.

In addition to experts, I interviewed approximately 150 individuals for this book and found incredible creativity insights within each story and journey. These particular individuals engage in a variety of creative pursuits, in the sense that they were not scientifically found or selected according to a standardized protocol. I purposefully sought voices from other countries to interview: Argentina, Australia, Canada, El Salvador, the European Continent, Hong Kong, Japan, Mainland China, Mexico, New Zealand, Nigeria, South Africa, the United Kingdom, as well as the United States. These stories are weaved throughout the book as sources of inspiration and are combined with the more than five hundred diverse interviews I completed for my first book, Fair Play. Collectively, these two sets of interviews are referenced as my research interviews. Individuals are referenced by first name only unless they are an expert or self-identified as a public figure. Not every story made it into these pages, but my goal is to tell many more stories through subsequent writing, podcasts, and other mediums.

Many of the people I have had the privilege to meet through my research have become friends, teachers, and integral sources of inspiration for my continued pursuit of creating Unicorn Space and even more motivation for sharing it with the world. I write to honor these women and all womencisgender women, trans women, femmes, two-spirit peopleanyone who identifies with women. I focus on women for two reasons. One, because the Fair Play themes address the unfairness of society being built on the backs of the unpaid labor of women and, when paid as care workers, the undervalued labor of women of color. Two, research shows that since women hold two-thirds or more of what it takes to run a home and family, they are less likely to have leisure time for Unicorn Space. As my friend Professor Darby Saxbe puts it, Men spend a larger proportion of their time at home engaged in leisure... Men benefit when they get more leisure time and their wives get less. A couple more things to note: throughout this book I refer to the 3 Ps of partner, parent, and professional. I define professional as anyone who works for pay or anyone who works unpaid as a caregiver. When discussing communication advice for you and your partner, I am presuming a safe, nonviolent relationship.