I immediately realized two things. First, fun isn’t the same thing as pleasure or joy. I genuinely enjoy reading articles in anthropology and linguistics (fields I’ve trained in professionally), but I wouldn’t call it fun. By “fun,” I mean carefree, lighthearted things—something that will make me laugh.
The second thing I realized was that I wasn’t sure what I found fun. This came as a shock—although perhaps it shouldn’t have. Adults don’t talk very much about having fun. We’re all much too busy.
They say the best way to lighten up your life is to think of what you loved doing as a child. When I went back to the long, hot summers of my childhood in rural Central California, all sorts of things came to mind. Swimming every afternoon at the public pool. Picnics by lazy rivers. Searching for colorful rocks in the seasonal streams in the Diablo Hills.
A common theme to summer fun for me was water. As I visualized my childhood, I remembered how much I loved to swim, wade, and simply watch the ocean. One of my most delightful childhood memories is taking a speedboat ride in the Rogue River in Oregon. Another is exploring tide pools. I absolutely adored beachcombing—searching for agates, driftwood, and interesting shells along the seashore.
Those memories opened up an avenue for bringing more fun into my writing life. I’m blessed to live in an area studded with lakes—a half dozen within a few minutes of my house. I also have two little artificial ponds, each with a small waterfall, connected by a tiny “stream” in my backyard. I’ve seldom thought of using all this water when I write. But why not?
Yesterday, instead of holing up in my upstairs office with my comfortable office chair and spacious desk and writing tools all nearby, I kicked off my shoes and wrote at the side of pond with my feet in the water and the waterfalls splashing nearby. It immediately brought me back to my childhood, to a sense of play.
Just the presence of the water gave me back the feeling of lightheartedness and exuberance I had as a child. Feeling the water on my skin helped me let go of my grim thoughts about how I absolutely must get my novel completed by the end of the summer and my sense of always being one step behind where I think I should be. As I sat shoeless on the Earth, my creativity opened up, and I began to discover things in my work I hadn’t even realized were there.
Come to think of it, it wasn’t too different from the beachcombing I did as a child. I had no worries about success or failure, what would happen tomorrow, or what I should do next. I wasn’t trying too hard or pushing myself to do more. I was just there, being who I am, turning over shells.