I’m tired of pursuing fun for fun sake.

Motherhood and Fun

Reading time about 4 minutes.

What makes something fun? And why have I always felt like the odd man out who doesn’t want to participate?

Party pooper. Negative Nelly. Refuses to play card games.

Fun as in: light hearted joy, restful activity, leisure.

Whenever I have thought about having fun, even as a child, I have felt the rise of anxiety tingle through my stomach and into my shoulders.

I want to retreat. It is the opposite of relaxation for me.

I am often annoyed by the pursuit of fun which is a shame because I want to be happy about the pursuit of it.

I love road-trips.

I love creative pursuits like painting and photography.

I have found fun in my life and joy but the pursuit of fun is hard for me to understand.

The pursuit of fun feels like too many people in a crowd. It is the forceful social interactions and uncomfortable testing of my limits. It is anxiety.

Which brings me to this weekend. Fun.

I have felt overwhelmingly negative lately and it breaks my heart. I pray for worry to leave me. I read my bible and journal and truly feel relief but as soon as I step back into an hour of life being lifey I want to crawl back into bed.

One thing we discussed in the Campfire Chat hosted by

Kindle Curiosity

last week was the question: What brings you joy?

Cue the heartbreak from me as my inner 14 year old self depressingly wrote back “I don’t know how to have fun anymore.”

You see, I don’t know if it’s because of my chronic depression or the shaming I have always felt for my unwillingness to have fun by being social when I’d rather read a book in utter isolation but it’s always felt this way.

As a mother we suddenly feel this unspoken pressure to have fun in a forceful way that doesn’t fit everyone’s needs for joy and rest.

Of course I want my family to have fun but do you refer to fun as in “let’s go spend time socially exhausting ourselves in a crowd and maybe experiencing a catalyst for a meltdown” or fun as in “let’s break our normal routine just a little to find joy in the moment”?

I swear the people who have always called me no fun are referring to the former. I ask in reply, why?

Does fun have to be social or can it be self serving? Is it ok if it’s not both? If I find that laying in the grass with my daughter fun but not playing with sensory toys fun then am I a selfish mother?

I don’t need the answers but I need to express this internal narrative that has always been in my chest.

Overall I want to learn how to grow and experience new things. I want to show my daughter that we can enjoy things outside of our box but I also hope that somehow I can comfort her if she discovers that board games aren’t fun for her or bowling isn’t fun for her but taking a hike maybe is the rest she desires.

This weekend I took her to the zoo but invited my siblings along to help me carry the mental and physical load of having a toddler. We had fun.

Then we went to the drive in movie theater down the road from us. We stayed up later then ever and my daughter got sick from eating popcorn with butter and fell asleep in my arms as the sun went down. We had fun.

Yesterday we went to the gym with my daughter (she had a kid area there where she could watch with toys). We got gelato at the park and let her run in the war zone that was the children filled playground. We went and found crabs by the shore and threw rocks in the water. We came home for our bedtime routine and the day was fun.

We feel this pressure, at least I do, to be everything for our family.

To be fun.

But, in the pursuit of fun have we lost the pursuit of true rest, whatever that looks like for the individual?

I don’t know, I’m just here writing about it.