What are you doing for fun?

Finding fun

There’s this thing I like to do when I’m at home on Aotea (Great Barrier Island). My house is right by a waterhole, and I like to spend time there doing what I call “landscaping.” 

You know how kids like to build damns and make sandcastles and dig holes just because?  That’s what my “landscaping” is.  I move rocks.  Build damns.  Dig channels. Even pull weeds.

What you need to know though, is that I do this with no particular purpose, and also with the clear knowledge that the next storm will wash away anything I create.

I do it for fun. It just feels good!

And faaaark it's hard work and I feel so physically weary afterwards, and I LOVE that.

The older we get the less time we dedicate each week to fun

I'm 46 as I write this.  And I've been reflecting on how, as we get older, we spend less time with the intention of just having fun – doing things that just bring us joy.

Look back over your last month. How many things made you smile, or belly laugh or go mmmmmmm with that deep sense of peace and satisfaction?

How many of those times were planned? What kinds of contexts and activities were happening?

Can you PLAN to do any of those things more often?

I don’t have any answers for you – just those questions. You have to find the answers yourself. Maybe you need to look back a few years to a time in your life that you had a lot of fun.

What's fun for me

Seriously this could be an unending list.

I like to make fun everywhere I go.

Like when I picked up 3 young guys hitchhiking and I had just started blasting Lizzo and I said I hoped they could sing like a large back woman. Two of the guys pointed at the other and he said, "Oh yeah. I am definitely that bitch" (it’s a Lizzo reference, if you didn’t know). I belly laughed and had to fist-bump him. Best come-back!

Fun is:

Riding an inflatable pink flamingo while drinking iced coffee. Long story. But it was FUN.

Walking by water with my headphones in listening to P!nk or Six60 with the sun on my skin. That is SHEER JOY for me.

Just dancing while I wash the dishes. Turning up the music and moving my body. That feels sooooooo good.

Your fun might be so vastly different from mine.

But the question really is –

are you having enough fun, and can you plan to have a bit more?