What is fun?

The writing prompt I pulled this morning was, “What if you focused on having fun?”

This question raised lots of weird and unexpected thoughts for me: If I try to force fun, it doesn’t happen. Fun requires other people. I’d rather do something quiet, like read.

And I wondered, am I a fun-hater? I don’t think I am. I don’t automatically shut down ideas for stuff to do (though in my head I might), but I do avoid risky stuff and I also tend towards inertia. I’m pretty content to stay in when others want to go do stuff, or I’m happy to bury my nose in a book when others want to play games.

I know I have fun, and I like fun, but if I want to focus on having more of it, I kind of need to know what direction to head in. What kind of stuff is fun to me? Bantering with my family is fun. Playing Drawful with my team at work is fun. Hanging out with my girlfriends is fun. Sharing dumb memes is fun. Exploring new places is fun. Sailing and paddleboarding can be fun, though sometimes I’d qualify them more as peaceful or rejuvinating than as fun. Zooming down a hill on a bicycle, ice skating, body surfing, those are all fun.

As I look at that list, I see the common threads of laughter (and to a lesser degree, exhilaration and wonder), and not by myself, but with other people. I don’t think fun has to be shared, but for me, it is definitely more fun when it’s shared.

So back to the original question, what if I focused on having fun — what would that look like? I think it would look like laughing. Now to figure out how to get more of that in my life :D.