What Happened to Fun?

“Creativity is intelligence having fun.” — Albert Einstein

When was the last time you wrote something just for fun?

It’s not that what we write shouldn’t be useful in a way or shouldn’t have value or meaning. But it seems to me the pressure of writing something “of great value” that contains all the right words and is topped with the perfect SEO title is the perfect recipe for withering creativity.

Writing is something that brings me joy and I sincerely love. It is a channel of expression for me. However for the past year I have been questioning the purpose of it in my life. I would sit in front of the blank digital page following the rhythmic motion of the cursor and… nothing. What’s the point? The rules that come with how we should write, the “tricks” we should use in order for people to read our writing… I’d lost the inspiration. And after a fifty-five minute long meditation it all became clear — stop following the hundreds of rules and just write whatever your heart desires! Isn’t the point of having the privilege to share our writing the reward? Yes, it should have meaning but most importantly it should inspire. Because it is the inspiration that really activates all the changes in our lives. Not the rules of waking up at 5 AM and doing our morning routine. That is not to say that it doesn’t help. I rely on a morning routine to keep me sane during the day. But is sanity enough? What happened to fun? To joy…

“If you’re not having fun, you’re doing something wrong.” — Groucho Marx

I truly hope not a lot of people can relate to this question. But as I’m writing from my experience, this is no doubt something I had to ask myself. Life has been so generous to me in the past year and has made several of my dreams come true but this doesn’t mean that I’ve had that much fun… It’s interesting really. Sometimes what we think will bring us all the satisfaction we desire just doesn’t seem to do it. But it was yesterday that my husband said he misses the spontaneity in our life and simply doing things “as they come”. I admit that planning has really helped me to achieve many of my goals but it has taken the fun out of it. We keep reminiscing about the first few months when we were dating and what I think we miss is that feeling of discovery that we experienced every time we saw each other. No plans. If we decided to drive somewhere we would do it in a jiffy and it brought us joy. Even though people thought it was silly we didn’t care. So why do we care so much about others when it comes down to writing?

There is only this much that can be said about waking up at 5 A.M. or about intermittent fasting. Or any of the other things that are so fashionable at the moment. It’s so counterintuitive to write this article because I am one of those strange people that doesn’t like fun! I mean… Whos’ got time for that? There are things to be done in this life. It’s all about being serious. Life is serious, right? And I’ve been taking it very seriously but what I’ve come to realize recently is that I can only be truly productive when I’m inspired and am enjoying what I do. So how is it then that fun is not welcome in my life? Of course it should be.

Fun should be celebrated! It is the friend of inspiration and the partner of creativity.

“Have fun, even if it’s not the same kind of fun everyone else is having.” — C.S.Lewis

I stopped posting on Instagram for almost a year (and I had a lot of things to post about; getting married; producing a feature film and a doing a bunch of traveling). I also quit writing on Medium. And the only reason was that I needed a “strategy”, a message, a new way to arrange my feed… It was never-ending. And guess what the result was! Not a single word on the page or a post on social media.

There’s always something in the way of our creativity. Always. And funnily enough sometimes it is disguised as a friend. But by being so careful with our social media channels and strategizing our every move, aren’t we missing the whole point that made them so influential in the first place?

“If you obey all the rules you miss all the fun.” — Katherine Hepburn

The joy of having each other and sharing our stories whatever they may be. I mean it. Our real stories. Ourselves as we are. Not the way we should be or we want to be. But our uniqueness and inspiration. Our voice.

I am also not naïve. I know this is not how life works at the moment.

But isn’t it nice to think that it might?