What Is Fun?

Webster’s dictionary defines fun as…

Ok, no. We’re not doing that. (Though I do love definitions, and I do have an English degree.)

When I was trying desperately to achieve a perfect SAT score, I would write down any unfamiliar word I encountered  to look up later. This practice served me well. I did, in fact, achieve a perfect score on the verbal portion of the SAT. It never occurred to me to look up  the definition of “fun.” This anecdote might suggest to you that I was not as familiar with it as I could have been.

The truth that must be acknowledged, though, is that pursuing that perfect score was fun for me. I relished learning strategies, taking practice tests, and justifying my non-school-related reading as a tool that was helping me reach my goal. If we look to our past selves to determine what we enjoy, I can’t deny that pursuing academic achievement was, well, fun to my teenage self. As an adult, I still find setting goals and making plans to achieve them fun. And I certainly still love to read.

I’ve managed to fit lots of goal-setting and reading into my adult life. And with the goal-setting has come personal pursuits of various kinds. I’ve enjoyed making quilts, completing LEGO sets, and organizing my closet thanks to my goal-setting. But that can make these fun (yes, even the closet) tasks, feel more task and less fun.

So I’m trying to pay attention to what really does feel fun to me – and make time for it. I’m trying to say yes to board games with the kids, to watching a television show when the toddler is napping, to staying up late for book club, to going to brunch on a preschool day.

It’s so much easier for me to say yes to fun when I build it into my schedule. The challenge I find myself running into is remembering to actually put in on that schedule. When I do, I’m so thankful. And I really do want more of it.

What’s fun for you?