Are We Having Fun Yet?

Tap tap tap... is this thing still on?

Of course it is! I just haven't been exercising this part of my writing brain lately — and for that, I'm sorry. At least, not publicly. Sure, there's the weekly links newsletter, but the secret project is now underway. And as you may know, the first rule of a secret project is not to talk about the secret project.

Anyway, I digress. I've noticed something about myself recently that's been fascinating to explore — and maybe, when I mention it, it'll sound familiar to you too.

"Do you remember who you were before the world told you who you should be?" — Charles Bukowski

As I approach 55, I've realized I've forgotten what it's like to see the world with the eyes of childlike curiosity. While I plan to delve deeper into curiosity itself in a future post, I wanted to focus on one small yet vital aspect of it that helped me this week: having some pure, silly fun.

Somewhere along the way, some form of adulthood or seriousness crept into my life. I mean, I am a grown adult with two near-adult children. And, I'm not saying that I don't have "fun", per se, and it's not like I don't experience joy.

It's more like, just doing a thing, because why the hell not? Remember how much fun it was as a kid to jump in a puddle when it was raining? Or just randomly rolling down a hill because it's there? It's about just doing something because it seems fun in the moment as an act of natural resilience.

When did I stop letting myself just ... play?

Over the last few months, I've been starting to rediscover that injecting random, even sometimes chaotic, fun has become a way to deal with things, and I shouldn't shrug it away as frivolous. I think I've been doing this subconsciously for some time; I know I freaked out some family members when I had my first heart attack in 2019, and one of my first pics after that was a "happy holidays" picture of me in a hospital bed, all hooked up to wires and a complete mess.

I get it - that may have been too soon. But I was trying, without realizing it, to let humor be a mechanism in which I had control. I wasn't minimizing what happened; in my own way, I gave it a shape. And heck, if I could laugh at it, it wouldn't own me.

Sure, it was a coping mechanism. The reality is that I had no idea how to really process it all. I still don't know how to process those feelings. But serious things don't always have to feel serious.

Turns out, I'm not the only one thinking about how and when we have fun. Tim Urban (highly recommended reading), talks a bit about having fun during the wrong time, in what he calls the 'dark playground'. From his epic post (and TED talk):

The fun you have in the Dark Playground isn't actually fun because it's completely unearned, and the air is filled with guilt, anxiety, self-hatred, and dread.

The point is, doing 'fun things' at the wrong time (when you know you shouldn't be) doesn't feel fun. So the timing and context of 'fun' can matter. But when fun is aligned with and engaged in purpose, it's genuine and satisfying. Humor and honesty can coexist; perhaps even amplify one another.

We've all been dealing with a lot lately. I'm shocked at how cruel many things in the world are today, and I don't think I've fully figured out how to process everything — but maybe that's not the point.

Maybe the point is to laugh, even when it feels like you shouldn't. To play, even when it feels like you can't. To remember that fun isn't the opposite of serious, it's how we survive it.

Here's a call out to bring some fun back into your life. Play, make jokes, dance, sing out loud, roll down a hill, jump in a puddle, do something that's creative nonsense. Be ridiculous.

Admit it feels awkward and do it anyway.

And you know what? Writing this down may be part of rediscovering some of my fun.

Perhaps, it turns out that fun wasn't lost for me after all. It was just waiting for me to stop taking myself so seriously.

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