Who's Having Any Fun Anyway?
What is fun? Does it matter? Is it possible? All the questions.
Fun is a serious topic, people!
I’ve been thinking about it for a long time now, over the intense years of intensely having babies/toddlers/small kids till now; when I have a little more time to actually have fun. I’ve always been stingy as to how I describe fun, and it’s made me second guess myself often, or even just give up and assume I’m a stick in the mud and why change my disagreeable nature now!? The last couple months I’ve had conversations with my dear friend trying to figure out how to get more fun in my life and what actually constitutes fun to me and it has been challenging.
I think challenging because it’s hard for me to define fun! Do I think taking my kids to the zoo is fun? Not really. It can be enjoyable, but a lot of work. Watching my kids in activities is not fun. Am I happy to see them happy? Yes. But am I having a rollicking good time? No. Even when we’re hanging out with friends it usually happens to be with at least 11 children which is wonderful and great and I love all our time together, but usually the corralling and feeding of said children limits “fun”. I consider thrift shopping or eating lunch by myself to be pretty fun, but is that more recharge/resting? At this point I find an empty house fun and that’s simply because it’s happened maybe once in the past fifteen years.
And of course, you have the question of is fun necessary? I went many years of survival mode of motherhood where any kind of organized fun was nonexistent and I made it! I didn’t suffer that much because of it, but when the dust settled and I had time to realize I hadn’t had fun for a very long time I realized that it is a key part of life. I am overloaded with obligations both inside and outside my family that feel like important necessary tasks and activities, and they are all things I don’t want to eliminate from my life at all because they’re all rewarding and important, but not necessarily fun. I obviously believe I shouldn’t be living my life with fun being the top order of each and every day. Nor do I think it should be a daily requirement. Rest is probably a daily requirement—as in rest that gives me some real time of feeling like myself amidst the work of daily life. But fun is necessary if I want to create an intentional life that is one that practices joy and for my soul to flourish and not become languid and depressed.
In this week’s new episode of The Lazy Genius Podcast, Kendra discusses what makes up fun according to the author of a book on fun, Catherine Price author of The Power of Fun. The three components needed for fun according to this author are: play, connection, and flow. I am not sure if I agree with these components fully because I haven’t read the book, but it is helpful to me to finally have some terms to help think about fun. I find a lot of things fun that I do by myself, but does that mean they are not so much fun as refilling or refreshing because they lack connection with others? Hanging out with friends doesn’t feel like pure fun, because usually there isn’t that play element because you’re trying to feed a lot of people in a chaotic situation that feels very much like my regular supper hour. I definitely don’t experience flow while watching my children play. (I know, how dare I not be perfectly in flow while watching my offspring climb playground equipment!)
When I tried thinking of things that brought me a genuine feeling of fun I usually thought of dinner out with friends, book club, travelling, playing games with my husband, skiing, gardening, and a whole slew of grandmotherly activities. So should I be defining all the things that bring me enjoyment differently?
I should probably read that book.
Am I a lot more introverted than I previously held because I enjoy a lot of things done by myself or am I a typical mother of fifteen years who is around her kids 24/7 because she weirdly homeschools? Do I find these things fun because over the years of living physically far from any friends this is what I have accepted as fun? Is fun rare and close to extinction in our modern 2023 world for those of us who are responsible adults with families, jobs, mortgages, and many children? I mean, fun was basically banned by the government for over 2 years, so it was sort of drilled out of us.
Many questions for a topic that I feel most of us don’t think much about. I think it’s a very personality driven part of our lives, but I do think that most women, especially mothers, have let intentional fun fall by the wayside. Never having any fun while letting your schedule balloon out of control with the many activities you do for the rest of your family should not be a thing! Frankly, I find that about 99% of the other mothers I talk to do 99% more things than I do for their family that they don’t like doing because they may have just completely forgotten what real fun actually is! I have a very low bar for what I will not do if it makes me miserable. And let me tell you, it’s a lot of things. Now there has to be some middle ground where not all of us live as curmudgeonly as I do, but also make room to do the things they find enjoyable in the very least, and fun as the goal!
And we have to figure this out for those of us who basically think group activities are gross. I’m not joining a sports team or community choir, Candice!
Okay, this is enough of me screaming my weirdness into the void for today. But I will try to carry on this conversation more in the future. I’ve got a barn burner of a philosophy that I call, “Let people do what they do because they find it fun and enjoyable but you don’t have to!” I’m sure it will speak to fellow first borns out there.
Most importantly, tell me your much more thoughtful thoughts on this, tell me your secret community choir stories that bring more fun into your life than me drinking gin while crocheting alone in my bedroom. But if you tell me you have the most fun watching your daughter’s volleyball tournament…we’re gonna have some words!
Some of things that were 'fun' when I was 22 just simply would not be anymore... I don't recover as well! Ha! But I do think of 'fun' as a bit different than pure 'enjoyment' or rest... Reading and learning can be 'fun' (and is) but it doesn't quite have that exhilarating quality that I think you're referencing. I think there's a certain carefree aspect to "fun" that is simply hard to replicate as an adult with real-world possibilities. When I think of pure fun I mostly think of college - not really the wild times out, those were sort of frantic and usually ended it not fun ways - but the freedom of that time, the possibilities - and just the lack of responsibility frankly. we went to school on the river and we would swim at sunrise or go on long hikes or make campfires in the woods and just the freedom and recklessness of this time with good friends, well there really is nothing like it. I think also how when you become a parent there's a part of your brain that is now FOREVER WORRIED. Like even if you get a night out or time away or even when you're asleep (or trying to sleep) there's a part of you that is always thinking of and worried about your kids. There's also this meta awareness of your body and self as being so needed and I think fun requires you to forget yourself and this is kind of impossible when you have humans depending on you and your survival, ha. So I don't know if it qualifies as 'fun' or if you really have 'fun' in that pure way in adulthood BUT what I really 'enjoy' is being outside, whisky or wine nights with friends, a good film, a good mystery novel, watching shows/reading/debating with my husband, a hot shower, coffee in the afternoons. The closest I think I get to that exhilaration is horseback riding which I have less and less time for, but the physicality of it allows you to lose yourself a bit more. Thanks for this thought-provoking topic, Christy... And I'm with you in the Grandmotherly interests!! We were just ahead of the game (I was a coastal grandmother long ago)
Super interesting topic/questions! My mum has always joked that she is “not a fun person” and I think of myself the same way. And btw, I am an only child who was pretty independent pretty early on and my mum was plenty financially comfortable, so I don’t think this was something she connected to her motherhood so much as her personality. I would say my mum knows how to enjoy herself but would also have to agree that “fun” is not a word that comes to mind when I think about her or how she spends her time. Same for me. I *enjoy* similar things to those you mention - book clubs, travel, a glass of wine or several with friends. I guess those things can be fun, but it’s hard for me to think of times in recent years when I’ve had that somewhat exhilarating feeling of “wow, that was really *fun*”. Maybe it’s because there has to be an element of the carefree to have fun, and it’s so hard to be carefree when you have kids because your responsibilities are always present? Like staying up until 2am with friends drinking cocktails is not very appealing because I am very aware all that time that I cannot just lounge in bed until whenever the next morning, and even if I agreed with my husband that I could, I would know that at some point I would have to emerge to face my responsibilities, which inevitably would have stacked up in my absence.
Anyway tl;dr - good question, I have no answers, but interesting topic!