Rhubarb Pie

A Few Thoughts About Fun

As I said, I've been thinking about fun lately.  I have a lot of pleasant, relaxing, contented moments in my life -- maybe more than at any time previous -- but I think I have less "fun."  

What do I mean by "fun"?  That's part of what I've been thinking about.  I mean something different from simple enjoyment, which I get from reading, watching a movie, cooking, going outside with the dogs.    

I'm an extrovert.  Fun for me used to include some component of meeting new people, or having surprising and unexpected and novel interactions with people I already knew.  I'm not so sure that's what fun means to me now.  Fun used to mean a lot of silliness -- nicknames and invented games and funny rituals.  I don't know if those same things would be fun right now.  I used to gather people together for things that involved laughter and eating and some form of competition: game nights and Olympics and Feasts.  Some of those sound fun to me now and some of them sound almost, but not quite, fun.  

I get a whole lot of my extroversion itch scratched at work now.  I don't long to meet more fascinating people, because the great privilege of my life so far is that I've already gotten to know so many, and I know it is already impossible to maintain a strong connection with the ones I know right now.    

What is fun?  Making things is fun.  Excursions are fun.  Rituals can be fun, as can silliness -- making a big deal out of something small, or going to elaborate lengths on something.  But those things can also feel forced or lame, so it really depends on the tone.  Pranks are fun, when the recipient thinks so too.  

There's more to say, but I'll get to it eventually.  

It's Suddenly Winter

I don't know why it should take me by surprise, but it does.  I don't know how I can forget things like how to dress for the cold or how to walk on ice, but seven months of mildness lulled me into a different state.  Last night in the car I was watching the snow do that thing it does on the road.  You know how there's sort of a little ghostly dance of snow that glides along in the air currents behind cars, sort of braiding and settling and rising?  It's like a tiny snakey dance of snow and it happens in the winter time, whenever there's a little bit of powdery snow blowing off the roofs of cars.  It can't settle on the road because the cars kick it up and so it sort of dances over the surface of the road, and I had completely forgotten.  Oh yeah, I thought.  That's the way snow behaves.  

I'm thinking a lot about fun these days.  I realized not so long ago that I don't have as much fun as I'd like to.  I mean that word very specifically -- I have a lot of pleasure and contentment, a lot of satisfaction, a lot of involvement, a lot of social stimulation and personal growth.  But there's a piece missing, and it's "fun".  When I started asking myself how to get more fun in my life I naturally thought about what I used to do that is fun, and I realized that some of the same things that were once fun wouldn't be fun to me anymore.  I've been thinking about things that are obviously fun for other people and which ones would and wouldn't be fun for me.  Anyway, when I get a few minutes I'll sit down and tell you what I've learned from these thoughts, and what I still haven't figured out.   

I Failed

My thoughts are turning to next year, and I'm starting to think about what I will declare 2010 is the Year Of.  Which is impossible to do without also thinking of what I declared 2009 to be the Year Of.  2009 is the Year of Shakespeare, the Year of Planned Reading, and the Year of the Definitive Cure. 

I have much to say about each one of these, but my purpose of logging in tonight was to declare, officially, that I have FAILED to make 2009 the Year of Shakespeare.  Mark that one squarely in the loss category. 

I have been NOT reading Shakespeare for months now.  I started with a bang, early, and concluded from the ease of the early reading that making 2009 the Year of Shakespeare would be a cinch.  In fact, I decided, it was easy enough that I could postpone it until later, and instead read stuff that I actually wanted to read.  Reading the complete works of Shakespeare would be easy to squeeze in later.  No problem. 

But then I continued to not read Shakespeare.  I will tell you about what I read instead, in another post, and how it relates to the second goal I set, which was to make 2009 the Year of Planned Reading.  But essentially, 11 months of not reading Shakespeare got me to the point where three days ago I declared December to be the Month of Shakespeare.  I read Shakespeare's poems on my iPod in the airport.  I can still do this, I thought.  

But I know what I want to read tonight, and it is not Shakespeare.  I have a pile of books ready, and they are not Shakespeare.  I still think that I *could* read the complete works of Shakespeare.  I even think that I *should* read the complete works of Shakespeare.  It is perhaps true that I *will* read the complete works of Shakespeare.  But it would be stupid to read them crammed into a month, under duress and resenting it, when I have books that delight me that I actually want to read right now, here in my hands.  I would rather admit that this was not the Year of Shakespeare.  

The truth is that I don't remember the Shakespeare that I did read this year.  I think I read three or four plays and several dozen sonnets and some poems.  It was easy reading: clever, funny, evocative.  But I was reading to turn pages and to check a box, not because I cared about the material.  I think that's a bad way to spend my time.  And I feel lame and lazy, but I also feel pretty certain, because I'd rather declare the whole year a failure than resign myself to a dutiful regime of daily pages for the last month of the year.  That seems like a dismal approach to Shakespeare and, worse, a waste of precious reading time.  

So, I'm going to leave the big Shakespeare at my bedside sitting there, where it's been for so many months.  Tonight I'll pick up the book that I look forward to, and when I'm done with that I'll pick up the other one I've been excited to read.  I hope that someday I read the complete works of Shakespeare, but this year, the fact is, I didn't really want to after all.  This probably means that I am not only unsophisticated and semi-literate, but also lacking discipline and willpower.  Fair enough. I wish that weren't true about me, but probably it is.  But I get to spend perhaps 7 hours a week reading for fun, which is not nearly enough to get through everything I aspire to read.  Those hours should be a treat, not a chore.  If I get to Shakespeare a little bit at a time, that's okay.