Do You Think You Have to Earn Your Fun?

I have a habit of telling myself I’ll do something fun after I finish everything I need to do.

This would be an excellent system if I ever finished everything I need to do.

I don’t.

There’s always another email to answer, something around the house that needs attention, work I could get ahead on or one of those tiny tasks that takes three minutes but has somehow been on my list for eleven days.

For years, fun lived somewhere near the bottom of that list. I’d get to it when the important things were handled.

The problem was that the important things were never completely handled.

I’d reach the end of the day having accomplished plenty, but by then I was tired. The walk Joe and I could have taken didn’t happen. The puzzle I’d wanted to work on stayed in the box. The thing I thought would be fun became something I’d do tomorrow.

Then tomorrow came with its own list.

I started noticing that I treated fun differently from almost everything else in my life.

Work didn’t have to earn a place on my calendar. Appointments didn’t. Errands certainly didn’t. Costco has never once waited for me to be in the mood.

But fun? Apparently fun needed to submit an application and wait until I’d demonstrated sufficient productivity to qualify.

So I’ve been experimenting with doing things in the “wrong” order.

I’ll take a walk with Joe in the middle of the afternoon even though there is still work to do. I’ll spend ten minutes on a jigsaw puzzle after lunch. I’ll say yes to something I want to do even when my to-do list would strongly prefer I remain at my desk.

This does not come naturally to me.

There’s often a little voice reminding me of everything I could be doing instead. And sometimes I listen to it because there really are things that need to get done.

But I’m getting better at recognizing the difference between “this needs my attention” and “I don’t believe I’m allowed to enjoy myself until I’ve been productive enough.”

Those are not the same thing.

I still like getting things done. I’m probably never going to become the person who looks at a long to-do list and thinks, Eh, it’ll sort itself out.

That’s not happening.

But I also don’t want to reach the end of every day having efficiently managed my life without spending much time enjoying it.

Fun doesn’t have to be a vacation, a big night out or something worthy of a photograph. Sometimes it’s twenty minutes doing something completely unnecessary for no reason other than you like it.

I’m trying to make more room for those moments before everything else is finished. Because everything else is never finished.

And maybe that’s the question worth asking yourself:

Do you make room for fun while life is happening, or are you still waiting until you’ve earned it?