Why fun is a feeling, not an activity
Why fun is a feeling, not an activity
Plus: Come draw with Wendy MacNaughton!
Hello, friends!
Welcome back to the January Funtervention—I’m thrilled you’re here! (And welcome to new subscribers — to catch up on what we’ve done so far, check out my Funtervention kickoff post from Monday.)
Today, I want to tell you about a key insight that I’ve learned about fun, and I also want to share a conversation (keep reading to listen!) that I just had with Wendy MacNaughton, an artist, graphic journalist, fellow Substacker and new friend, who’s running a program for January called the 30-Day Drawing Habit that I think some of you might be interested in doing as part of your Funtervention.
This is one of the many, many places you may have seen Wendy’s work: in our mutual friend Samin Nosrat’s James Beard Award-winning cookbook, Salt, Acid, Fat, Heat.
The 30-Day Drawing Habit is basically a month’s worth of drawing lessons from Wendy, combined with prompts and inspirations that are designed to get you drawing for 10 minutes a day. To participate, subscribe to her Substack:
And now, let’s jump right in with the #1 thing I want you to take away from today’s Funtervention:
Fun is a feeling, not an activity.
I say this because I’ve noticed that if I ask people, “What’s fun?” their first instinct is to respond with a list of activities that they enjoy. They’ll say that dancing is fun, or bowling, or going to concerts.
But we’ve all had experiences where something that seems like it should be fun doesn’t end up feeling fun. And on the flip side, we’ve also had experiences where something we’d never expect would be fun ends up feeling ridiculously fun. (One particularly surprising example: someone recently told me a story about how much fun he’d had waiting for a delayed flight.)
This is important because if you think that fun is dependent on a particular activity, you may conclude that you don’t have time for it—after all, many of us feel so overwhelmed that the last thing we want to do is to try to stuff another activity into our already over-stuffed schedules.
But if you realize that fun is a feeling, it frees you to find and create fun in your everyday life, in things you are already doing—no schedule-stuffing required.
We’re going to talk more about my definition of fun and how to put it to use on Friday, but for today, our goal is simply to get back in touch with what fun feels like to us personally, so that we can begin to better recognize it when it occurs.
What to do today:
It’s simple. I want you to think back on 2023 and call to mind a memory that stands out to you as having been truly fun. And then write it down in a notebook or, if you’re game, share it in this thread. (It’s lovely to read back on other people’s fun memories.) On Friday, we’ll be using our memories to generate ideas for future fun, so please take a few minutes to reflect on this right now.
Important: the memory does not need to be dramatic. It does not need to have happened in an exotic location or have cost a lot of (or any) money. It just needs to have felt fun.
What we’ve done so far:
As a quick refresher, in your last assignment (or “mission,” as one reader suggested, to make this sound more like a James Bond adventure, as opposed to a high school math class), I asked you to:
Joining my “daily delights” subscriber chat (inspired by Ross Gay’s Book of Delights and further explained in my NYT op-ed from last weekend).
Remember how I said I got everyone bird feeders for Christmas? Here’s one of my delights from today: a squirrel that my daughter has named “Augustine,” living its best life.
Invite a friend to do the funtervention with you (you can forward them this link, or share this whole post).
Think of something you’re interested in doing or trying in 2024 for fun (and ideally telling us about it in this thread):
Enter Wendy MacNaughton
Alternate title: In which I may have just started an informal podcast?
This is me, surprising Wendy by pulling out a print of one of her “Op-Art” pieces for the New York Times, in which she quotes me (and The Power of Fun) in a section she labeled, “More Nerdy Talk” — which may be one of the highest honors I have ever achieved.
Speaking of the last part of that assignment (trying something new), it occurred to me earlier this week that there may be readers out there who feel completely out of touch with fun and who might not have any ideas for what they might be interested in doing or trying for January.
So imagine how delighted I was (yes, delighted) when I reached out to Wendy MacNaughton, whose work I have long admired, asked if she might be interested in having a conversation with me about the 30-Day Drawing Habit, and she said yes.
A photo of her Op-Art piece for the NYT, “How Do You Have Fun?”
We spoke today on the phone and, after both deciding that we were not “camera-ready” (apparently we’d been working so hard on our respective January projects that we hadn’t even changed out of pajamas — and mind you, our call was at 3:30pm), we decided to share an audio recording of our conversation instead.
There are two versions: a short excerpt for free members, and a longer conversation for paid subscribers (thank you, paid subscribers!). Both are essentially opportunities to eavesdrop on the real-time beginnings of what I hope will become an honest-to-goodness, real life friendship — and to learn more about the 30-Day Drawing Habit.
Here’s the short version:
For the long version, become a paid subscriber and keep scrolling (don’t listen to this one!) — I’ve put the whole conversation, in which we talk more about why Wendy started this project and what drawing does for her personally, at the end.
You can learn more in her FAQs, and as I said above, you can participate in the Drawing Habit simply by subscribing to Wendy’s Substack,
.And that’s it! I can’t wait to read your stories and your delights, and I’ll be back on Friday with your weekend assignment mission, plus an explanation of my own definition of fun and how you can apply it to your life.
To scrolling less and living more,
Drawing for me is like a meditation and a joy. It's a time for myself. It centers me. If I prioritize it, everything else falls into line. —Wendy MacNaughton