☀️ the wrapping paper lesson I didn’t see coming

If you want to know where your issues live, share a giant piece of paper with other creatives.

The scene:

Christmas music. Old friends. Paint trays. Jars of water. Red wine. Some type of N/A option that felt just as special. (Ghia Non-Alcoholic Apéritif plus Cherry tart juice. Christmas in a glass, I tell you.) Michelle & Jenn—who’ve done this for years—invited others into the tradition and this was the first year I was able to come.

The idea was simple: paint your own custom wrapping paper for Christmas gifts.

Courtesy of the epically stylish and REAL actual painter, Michelle Houghton

I’d admired their pretty wrapping for years and never really thought about the process of making it.

The paint masters led with a pep talk, “Nothing is precious. You’re painting your part. But you’re also painting everyone else’s part. And no matter what happens, once it’s wrapped around a box, it’s gonna look great. There are no mistakes.”
Someone might paint over what you did!?
Nothing is precious!?
Nothing is sacred!?

We would divide all the paper up at the end and you'd go home with two rolls.
So you might not even be the one who ends up with the piece you’re working on!?

I don’t know what I thought it was going to be like. We're all painting our own? Or maybe I’d have a neat little corner? A section I completely controlled?
Something I could quietly measure as “good enough” or “not quite right.”

Instead, this became fully collaborative. Fully surrendered. Fully not about me.

And something lovely happened the moment I released ownership:
The whole thing got lighter.
Fun showed up instead of pressure.

We laughed. We roasted each other.
“You did not just put dots on my ornament!”

We encouraged each other.
“That blob was nothing until you saved it with that detail! Yes! Thank you!”

And just like real art…
The end result didn’t reveal itself all at once.
It emerged in little surprises. Layer by layer. Idea by idea. Person by person.

"I think something inside me healed tonight?" I laughed as tried to pick a stray paint-fleck out of my joggers.

Collaboration means your idea is never the final destination—it’s the launch point. You go places you never would have gone alone. And the result is often better because your original vision had to loosen its grip.

“I have half of an idea”, we say in our comedy sketch writer’s meetings before starting our pitch. We phrase it this way because we know after years of collaborating that no idea will leave exactly the way we came in with it.

How beautiful. How freeing.

This is also why I love improv comedy so much.

The most foundational rule of improv is “yes, and.”
You accept what your scene partner just created—and then you add to it.

So if they decide you’re in outer space, you’d better start fake-floating.
You don’t argue. You don’t correct.
You meet them where they are and build forward.

If you’ve ever watched bad improv, you know exactly what happens when ego shows up:
“Welcome to your dentist appointment.”
“We're not at the dentist, grandma. This is a baseball game. Did you forget to take your meds again?”
Painful. Cringey. Dead in the water.

Collaboration only works when ego stays outside the room.

That’s true in art. In business. In marriage. In parenting. In friendship.

The wrapping paper craft night became a live demonstration of this truth:
You don’t have to protect every idea like it’s fragile.
You don’t have to be the sole architect of every outcome.

Sometimes the most beautiful results come when you let someone paint over your original plan.

Simple Ideas to Practice Collaboration This Week (At Work and at Home)

• Let your partner/kid/teammate solve the problem their way—even if it’s not your way

• Share a messy first draft instead of a polished one

• Let someone else lead a meeting, a meal, or a plan

• Practice “progress over preference”

• Practice “best idea wins”. (Sometimes it is yours. Sometimes it’s not. "Kill your darlings".)

• Try “yes, and” as your default instead of “no, but”. (Just test it out for a day and see what happens.)

Collaboration is a demanding mistress.

She asks you to give up control.

But in exchange, you receive something more dynamic, creative, and alive. And the most powerful byproduct: you don't have to bear the outcome alone.

What do you think? Would you ever try a wrapping paper paint night? Are you panicking at the idea of someone putting blue blobs on a candy cane you planned to make striped? (Real example. Looking at you, Leah.) Are you as obsessed with these final gifts as I am? Hit reply and let me know!

xoxo,
-Katie Day

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