Finding Fun

I’ve been working at having fun. It’s not as easy as it used to be. As an adult, I have responsibilities that routinely box out fun. Even in my free time, there’s always something to do, whether it’s to fold a load of laundry, unload the dishwasher, rake leaves, weed the garden, or cook dinner. As a grown-up, I’m busy, busy, busy. I was busy as a child, too. But I was mostly busy playing – goofing off, amusing myself, and oblivious to time because nothing needed to be done, at least not by me.

Think back to those long summer days at the beach. Somebody packed a picnic lunch and made sure the big towels were washed, dried, and folded before stacking them in the back of the car, along with collapsible chairs, umbrellas, drinks, and a canvas bag of auxiliary items – a sweatshirt, perhaps, in case the wind kicked up, and a pair of rubber sandals for everyone to traverse the hot parking lot.

In my teenage years, I still had fun. I babysat a lot (for $1 an hour!), but my unscheduled time on the weekends was spent with my friends. We’d ride around on a Saturday night, with the windows down for the smokers, picking up fellow party goers, excited chatter filling the car. Or we’d meet at a high school football game, to see and be seen in the bleachers. Watching the game was optional.

Even in college, when we were (kind of) treated like adults though we certainly didn’t act like them. Yes, we went to classes and did homework most of the time. That’s about six hours out of 24, leaving 18 hours of nothingness! Let’s give seven hours to sleep and two for meals; we’re down to nine. Team sports, club activities, Frisbee on the green, listening to music in someone’s dorm room while gabbing about college-y things, checking usually empty mailboxes for love letters, napping, walking around campus to see what everyone else was up to, getting ready for the keg party, and dancing and drinking at the party. Back then, fun was still spontaneous. Nobody wore a watch.

It changes when we graduate from college and get real jobs. Soon enough, we may get married, have children, and purchase a car or two and a house. Fun has to be planned and penciled in. It’s often manufactured and requires a credit card. We put money away for weekends and vacations that involve luggage, rental cars and plane tickets, itineraries and battery packs for our phones. Vacations have the potential to be fun, even though as adults, we are the packers, haulers, and list makers. Yet, the fun doesn’t feel, well, as unplanned as it once did.

Now that I ostensibly have more time for amusements, I’m having trouble letting go of the work ethic that defined so many years of my life – the need for productivity. I enjoy reading, but it’s also requisite for writers. So, it can feel like work. I like to exercise. But being at the gym can be Type 2 fun, meaning I’m happy when it’s over! And while I lose track of time and feel creative in the pottery studio, I’m still making something. I’m producing.

Fun, as an adult, can be hard to find. I do know that looking for it is the first step to discovering it. That’s what I’m doing – and also wondering if I can reinvent the adult version to somehow recapture the euphoria of youthful fun. Are you working on this? How do you have fun? Send me your best ideas!

Recommendation: A wise person once told me there are only two kinds of people: those who need to tighten up, and those who need to loosen up. I suspect a little more looseness might result in a lot more fun. Unwind!