Fun? What’s that?
I’ve been stumped for a long while on this subject.
Fun seems like a simple concept on the surface, but for a workaholic, efficiency-driven, purpose-obsessed brain like mine, it’s wildly complex.
In recent years, fun has been described to me anew like this:
“Play—doing things just because they're fun and not because they'll help achieve a goal—is vital to human development […] Play can mean snorkeling, scrapbooking or solving crossword puzzles; it's anything that makes us lose track of time and self-consciousness, creating the clearing where ideas are born.”
Dr. Brene Brown pieced together these words pulling from the work of Dr. Stuart Brown.
While the sentiment of engaging activities for no other sake than pleasure sounds quaint, it also sounds like a waste of time. Futile hobby time could be invested in reaching my next goal, self-improving, reading an edifying book, anything productive.
I may naturally lean towards a work-dictated schedule, but I know what’s natural for me is not necessarily what’s healthiest. To my dismay, research shows that fun is crucial to overall health.
For this reason, I’ve worked to begin redefining fun for myself as: activities I lose myself in, bring me joy, don’t have a primary productive outcome and are ones I don’t want to end.
The hard part is figuring out what those individual activities are.
I was inspired to lean more heavily into the subject of fun after listening to Glennon Doyle’s podcast We Can Do Hard Things. In the episode, “FUN: What the hell is it and why do we need it?” one main point covered is described in the show notes as: “[Science insists] that when we’re gloomy, rest won’t fix it. We need to play the blues away.”
I agree with the idea that fun and play have a great impact on mental health. Dr. Stuart Brown shares, “The opposite of play is not work; it’s depression.”
I believe where I get stuck, and where I suspect many of us do, is the idea that we need to earn fun. We need to earn play and rest and relaxation. We work for the weekend and work for the freedom to do what brings us joy. We’re only granted fun and play when we’ve checked all our boxes and nothing is left unaccomplished.
The obvious problem with that is there is always work. It never stops. The emails keep coming. The projects keep piling up. We’re never “done.” So fun is this carrot on an end of a stick that keeps moving.
For me, I feel guilty when I finally do stop to rest or choose to engage in seemingly nonsensical “hobby time.” That feeling of guilt makes me avoid these altogether.
Or—even worse—I try to take out two birds with one stone and dream up ways to monetize my hobbies. This way, I can spend time doing things I like, but I’ve removed the purposelessness from it. I don’t have to feel guilty about spending a Saturday crocheting because it’ll be my Etsy shop side hustle.
Side hustle pressure is so prevalent in today’s culture that I think it sucks the fun out of what we consider fun.
In all, the only things I can conclude at this point in time with my wrestle with fun is that:
It’s vital to a healthy mind, soul, and body
It requires investment of time and energy
It should serve no other purpose than to bring me joy
And finally, and most painfully:
It has to take priority over work
I’m vowing to work on fun. It sounds oxymoronic, but I don’t want to be decades down the road and realize how much richer of a life I could’ve lived had I truly made room for fun.