What Do You Do for Fun
Photo by Wonder Woman
People in the first world take having fun very seriously. We sure spend enough money on it. Some kinds of fun are pricing themselves out of the middle-class range. Tickets and all that goes with them (parking, food, souvenirs) to major league sports and top-tier concerts can easily take a family outing into four figures. A day at a Disney theme park for a family of four is well over $1000.
I've never been to a Disney Park, and my last concert was 15 years ago. I guess I'll die without seeing Bruce Springsteen. I heard the other day that he's reached billionaire status, and I'm not giving a billionaire any of my dough to be entertained for three hours, no matter how good a showman he is. I enjoy amateur and minor league sports. Hell, I like watching my grandson's soccer games more than just about anything.
When I was younger, I was big into what's referred to as type 2 fun. Those are activities that are fun when you finish doing them, while not always enjoyable while they are happening. Hiking for days in the rain across a mountain range while surviving on Pop-Tarts and oatmeal is type 2 fun. Walking beside a flowing river on a level path with temps in the low 70s without carrying a heavy backpack on a day hike bookended by sleeping in a bed, showers, and plentiful hot food is type 1 fun, the kind that you enjoy while it is happening. Pedaling a bike in 95-degree June weather at mile 150 with your heart rate spiking every time you have to ride at the front of the pace line is type 2 fun. Tooling down a road on a Saturday morning in the spring with a big group of enthusiastic cyclists on the way to get ice cream at a country store is type 1 fun.
I'm not averse to spending money to have fun. I subscribe to ALL the channels just so I can watch what I want to watch when I want to watch it. A good weekend day in the midst of winter lying under an afghan binge-watching a good Netflix series is a pure treat. Throw in a big bowl of popcorn and some takeout food, and it just rarely gets better than that.
When I made my attempt at retiring a few years ago, I renewed my library card, researched a bunch of books and authors, and enjoyed reading more than I had in years. I got to treat something that I'd only been able to do in short snatches as though it were my job for a while. I read so many books that I'm sure someone at Goodreads was telling his co-workers, "Get a load of this liar!"
Some of the best fun I've ever had was exploring with my camera. Even in places I'd been to bunches of times, trying to find interesting things to photograph made for a totally new experience. I love going to street fairs with a camera. People tend to be relaxed and preoccupied, and it's easy to get them to pose for street portraits, a hobby of mine. Getting home from a photography outing is also a lot of fun. Plugging the memory card into a computer and downloading the pictures is a version of Christmas morning. Once, Wonder Woman and I went to a balloon festival where she actually went up at dawn with a pilot to take pictures. I remember the feeling of looking at those once-in-a-lifetime shots on her laptop screen as we saw them for the first time. OMG, I was so jealous. I'm scared of heights and wouldn't go up in a balloon in a million years.
I don't like to spend money on entertainment as a general rule, but I've been known to enjoy a trip to the bookstore just as much as the fashionistas going to the mall. I enjoy eating out, and I'm lucky to live in a city with a lot of locally owned restaurants with an international flair. I can eat Japanese, Guatemalan, Italian, Greek, Thai, Korean, Mexican, Chinese, Colombian, and Peruvian within five miles of my house.
Oh, and writing. This has been a fun post. I blog a lot because it's fun. I've never thought of myself as an artist. I still don't, but I love to create something out of nothing, whether it be a photograph, a poem, or an essay. My mom calls them columns. I just call it Monday evening at the keyboard. Whatever you do today, try to have some fun.
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