The Way Fun Sees It
A candy store, a clogged drain, and a magical forest.
So, I totally had an idea of what this week’s post was going to look like, but the universe/life/Mr. Roger’s ghost had other plans.
I think the best place to start, then, is to invite you into my writing process a bit and give you a peak behind the curtain (don’t worry, I have pants on) so that by the time we wind ourselves around to today's f-word, you'll have everything you need.
The Process
Most of my new writing projects begin on a Thursday. That’s the day I wrap up tasks for the week, choose a new topic (currently: f-words), and spend some time brain-dumping all my ideas onto paper.
Friday is a reading day. I typically read 750-1,000 words for every 1 word I write. An article like this requires 1-2 nonfiction books to fuel my brain. Excessive? Maybe. 😅 But all that content gives me lots to agree with, disagree with, and run down interesting rabbit holes.
For Saturday – Monday, there’s only two things on my mind: marinate in the ideas I just consumed and make an outline. The longer you sit with ideas, the more they evolve. Saturday’s article concept is good, but Sunday’s is better, and Monday’s is just beautiful. I mean, the first time you meet Rachel Weisz in the library kind of beautiful.
But the weekend that shaped this post was particularly relevant for one reason: everything went terribly wrong.
The Weekend of Unfortunate Events
Ok, when I say weekend, I really just mean Sunday because Saturday I spent ½ the day cleaning the house and the other ½ at a dadchelor party where we gamed and ate pizza for 4 hours.
(Yes, it’s ironic that this day, filled with “fun” had less of an impact on my writing than the day after, but I think you’ll see why soon.)
Sunday was an errand day. I was going to wake up early and knock out a short checklist of to-dos before settling in with my wife to binge some Netflix and inevitably take a glorious afternoon nap (the kind where you leave the window cracked and a slight Spring breeze wraps around you as you drift off…perfection).
Well, that didn’t happen because when I hit the button to open the garage in the morning, it rose about two-and-a-half feet before letting out a screeching whirl and getting stuck in place.
45 minutes later, the car's free, and I'm on my way to the grocery store.
Wow, it’s kind of extra crowded today... Weird since the eclipse is still a bunch of days away.
If you’re decent at math or know how to read a calendar, you’ll recognize that I’m completely wrong here. The eclipse is, in fact, less than 24 hours away at this point in the story. This will come into play soon.
I finish up groceries and head to get a much-overdue car wash. The one near our house is automatic — you pull in, pop the car into neutral, and let it pull you through for 2-3 minutes while you relax and listen to the parade of sounds. Normally I love these. But today, the two cars in front of me decided they had no f*cking idea how it worked.
The first car sped in like it was a drag race to see who could reach the finish line first. After a loud enough yell from the worker that I could hear it through closed windows, they proceeded into the wash, in neutral, like a normal human being.
The second car, directly in front of me, which I can only assume was spooked by the whole scene, proceeded to lightly tap on its brakes every few seconds during the ENTIRE wash. You’ve gotta be freaking kidding me.
This turned what would normally be a relaxing 2-minute vacation from the world into a heart-pumping am-I-about-to-rear-end-this-idiot-in-a-car-wash kind of thing. It all came to a head at the drying station when the conveyor lightly pushes your car off the track so you can safely drive away.
Well, the car in front lost its shit and came to a full stop INSIDE the wash, causing me to also slam on my breaks, along with the 3 or so cars behind me. Now we’re in a tunnel with horns blazing as the conveyor crawls under our wheels, bumping us up and down, inching us ever-so-much-closer to a clean car pile-up.
A flurry of workers rush around and get the asshole out, then me, and eventually all is back to normal. Except that our cars kind of all look like sh*t because we interrupted the pattern. By this point, I just want to get the hell out of there, so I leave. No free rewash today.
I'm back home, ready to call it day, unloading groceries, telling the Mrs. about my adventures when she asks me this question, "Did you get the eclipse glasses?"
I confidently answer “no” because I knew I had several more days to worry about it. 😑
In the way only someone who really loves you can, she softly asks me, “Babe, what do you think today’s date is?” I ramble off a number. “And when do you think the eclipse is?” I ramble off a much higher number. “I love you, but both of those are wrong.”
My eyes go wide.
She pulls up the calendar on my phone and reveals the truth my mind had already started to calculate. Sh*t.
Ok, well before I get too settled I’m just going to head straight out, grab the glasses (because I’ve seen them advertised at literally a dozen stores around me) and be back in no time.
That is not how it went.
What actually happened is that I had to go to 11, yes ELEVEN, stores to find somewhere that wasn’t completely sold out of the damn glasses.
I return home, eat (a late) dinner, go to wash my hands in the bathroom sink only to realize that it is now completely and utterly clogged.
What Even is Fun?
When I originally chose “fun” as an f-word for this series, I did so because most men I know have a severe lack of it in their lives. And when I thought about the males we as a society typically look up to, fun isn’t in the first five words we’d use to describe them.
Successful, strong, intelligent, determined, powerful — those are the words we use to describe men who have "made it." They've done or have something we want, and so maybe we can get/be it, too, by emulating those qualities.
But fun…well, that’s a distraction. It’s a waste of time for serious people on serious missions. Fun is something we grow out of. And then, eventually, maybe once we’re retired, a thing we grow back into.
But what if we have it backward? What if fun isn't the thing keeping us from everything we want but instead the thing we need to get there?
One of the books I picked up to help me think through this topic was a title written by Annie F. Downs called That Sounds Fun. The book is a hoot. At times, a bit religious/spiritual for where I am in my life right now, but there was one element I really liked.
Annie would randomly drop a clue as to what fun looked like IRL. The chapters weren't organized around these traits; they were just sort of dropped in, like sprinkles on a sundae. You'd be reading a story, and then, bloop, there goes another one. What a treat.
So, after I finished the book, I combed back through and made a list of all the ones I could find. Here’s what I came up with.
Fun is:
Simplicity (like snapping beans on a porch in summer)
Sometimes big (like a once-in-a-lifetime vacation) and sometimes small (like trying a new tea flavor at the local shop)
It’s limited, or maybe time-constrained (like a Ferris wheel ride)
Energetic (it keeps you up – or wakes you up at the crack of dawn)
Newness (a mashup of curiosity and awe and stomach butterflies)
Connection (like a game night that fills the house)
Incredibly personal (because we’re supposed to like what we like)
Sometimes challenging (hard is not the opposite of fun — just this bit alone is worth the price of admission)
And always, always in the present (it can be fun to think about what will happen or did happen, but that feeling is here – and the fun is here – and when you’re not here, the fun isn’t either).1
Fun is always some of these things, sometimes all of them, and occasionally just a really loud version of one.
But it wasn’t until I took a step back that I realized there was an even clearer way to see the answer.
The Filter
As a quick aside, it’s worth mentioning that fun is different than play. Play is this powerful rest-producing activity we’ll dive into one day soon (working title is: The Law of Play, and it’s very cool imo).Fun, the way I see it, is a filter. A layering that is available to pull across any of life's activities, events, or hurdles.
And the way this filter works is like a gravity-lightener. Like when you see people experience a zero-g flight and they and everything around them just start floating and rotating in midair.
That’s what happens when you apply the fun filter. It lightens things up. You can feel it.
The fun filter gives us permission to inject simplicity, energy, connection, novelty, personality, and presence into anything we face.
In my hot mess of a Sunday, I found myself laughing quite a bit.
The broken garage door was due to one missing screw that had popped out of place. My light/fun/simple response was to think about the most ironic places it could have popped to. I ended up finding it on top of the car (which I had pulled out of the garage at this point). I laughed, screwed it back in, and kept going.
The 11-store journey did not feel fun in the moment. Except that I asked for help in every store I went to and ended up having several conversations with workers about their eclipse plans (see: connection). Some of them were wild. But the best part was where I ended up finding the only place in town still stocked with glasses (which came from a tip I got by talking to an awesome woman at Target): a candy store. 🍭
That sink clog which became the cherry atop my crazy day was solved the next morning with a $3 plastic drain snake. Now the sink drains faster than it has in months, and I acquired a new skill.
When things get lighter, we're able to lift heavier. A fun filter doesn't deny the present situation; it reframes it and allows us to find a more favorable entry point.
The Enchanted Forest
While finishing the notes for this article, I stumbled upon an interview with Dr. Gabor Maté, an 80-year-old accomplished physician, author, speaker.2 Accolades from here to Timbuktu.
During it, he talks about how the ending of Winnie the Pooh made him cry for years, to the point that he would avoid picking it up for his kids’ bedtime story.
The reason was, in order to go back to school and enter the real world, Christopher Robin had to leave his toys behind in the Enchanted Forest. He abandoned his play. His fun. And Dr. Maté felt this was the mistake he had made with his own life.
“If I were to choose to live my life over again, I wouldn’t live it in this way… I wasn’t aware that when I went to medical school and when I was a physician is how driven I was to justify my existence in the world… [I] sacrificed my playfulness, my joyfulness…”
He closes by saying, “In a sense, we can always [choose] to keep playing in the Enchanted Forest.”
The fun filter is an invitation back into the Enchanted Forest. An offer to lay down the heaviness we take for granted, that we accept as a necessary byproduct of being alive. It's a voice whispering, "You do not need to justify anything."
Fun is a perspective shift continuously available to you. One that promises to open up your life in ways you’ve never imagined. Not by taking you away. No, not at all.
But by showing you it's all here, already.
The newness and connections and adventures and goodness. The lightness.
You just have to choose to see it.
Here are some page numbers in case you want to go read a bit: simplicity (25), big or small (35), energy (56), connection (193), personal (198), challenge (206), and presence (209).
The clip is from episode #440 of the Feel Better, Live More podcast.
CRUSHED IT!!
Accepting the “offer to lay down the heaviness we take for granted.” and apply the fun filter, which is my default mode. But the conference I’m going to is causing me not to act from that space. Changing immediately!!