Welcome to new subscribers who came by way of Luke Crane’s new substack.
Years ago, when I was a kid with a rifle stomping through the Michigan snow on a deer hunting trip with my dad, he pointed out a series of tiny deer footprints that ran up and down a gulley. The bigger prints of the deer’s mother ran in a straight line along the bottom. “The baby was playing,” my dad pointed out. The sight filled me with joy. Knowing that play and fun were concepts that even deer enjoyed made me feel connected to a force that I knew mattered in the universe: the joy of being.
Then I discovered adult forms of fun, and though I was still a child, I took to them like a pro. They nearly killed me, and I quit those hazardous habits. But I also quit the idea of fun altogether, because it had been so bad for me. It caused me too much trouble. I grew up, and my path turned from the waveform of a baby deer bounding in a gulley to the flatline of its mother, a joyless, wary slog in a land stalked by hunters.
Years ago, when this mature worldview metastasized into a personal crisis, I went to a shrink who was very helpful. Part of her practice, she explained, was to improve her patients’ relationship to fun. She would often ask me at the start of session: “What did you do for fun? What are you looking forward to?” She took fun very seriously. She categorized fun into three types: something small to look forward to each week, (i.e. dinner with a friend), something medium to look forward too every few months, (i.e. a weekend away, a night out) and something big to look forward to all year (i.e., a vacation.)
At first, I was tempted to dismiss her suggestions. I was in a very dark place, and the idea that I should be running out to take swing dancing lessons or go for a hike seemed ludicrous. Life was a quicksand of misery, and the more moves I made to make it better, the deeper I sank into despair. The best I could come up with was to lie still and, inch by inch, let my misery consume me. But that was my solution, and I was paying for hers, so I tried to rethink fun as she suggested.
During that time, I had a friend, Luke Crane. We commiserated about the difficulties of being broke but wanting to follow our dreams. Over the years, he created an incredibly sophisticated game. He attended conferences and ran demos. He learned desktop publishing and design so that he could publish his own books. I can’t say he worked tirelessly, because he was tired, but he worked nonetheless. One time, I had hoped to take him canoeing, and he bailed out of the trip because he needed to spend that money on a new computer to make his game. It was, and remains, the center of his life.
I learned, from my attempts to reframe having fun as a necessity rather than a luxury, that Americans have a very unhealthy relationship with having fun. We tend to see it as either an experience for children and are suspicious of adults who partake, for example: Disney parks, video games, role-playing games, etc.
Or we look at adult fun as vice. The adult fun capital is Las Vegas, which is the epicenter of porn conventions, (I’m old enough to remember when porn sections of video stores were called “adult entertainment), gambling, and sex work.
But what about the fun my shrink was selling me? The fun of playing games with friends, picking up a sport, watching birds? I followed her advice. I got back into role-playing games with some friends. I was never good at the mechanics of the games, but I loved being with people who were spending time with each other for the purpose of having fun. It was transformative.
I became so invested in a character I played (a gnome) that I quit my job to write a novel based on his life. Abandoning my career to pursue such a thing could not have been possible without the example of my friend, Luke, toiling away at his game. My novel never sold. But I learned so much in writing it. I learned about plot, rewriting, editing, and the publishing world. I learned about committing to something that existed only in my head. I learned about sacrifice. I learned to fight the voice in my head that said, “Grow up. Do something better. What’s wrong with you?”
I still battle that voice, but it’s no longer my master. I climbed out of the quicksand a long time ago. I don’t seek fun in vices that destroy me, nor do I scorn the idea of play. Discovering the value of fun was one of the most liberating things in my life. I now believe that fun and play are spiritual acts. I know that spending time — in a world where time is money — to enjoy life is an act of courage.
I hope you have some fun today, whatever that means for you. Take a mindful walk, go to a museum, read a good (or bad) book, or play a game with friends.
Luke is now not only a game designer, but a deep thinker in the field. If that sounds fun to you, he has a substack where he describes how games work.
Having fun while I write this to you,
I am,
Sean Sakamoto
As I learned in my recreation degree program: Recreation is re-creation :-)
Thanks for sharing your thoughts Sean. We modern Americans are so busy, and so biased towards sheer survival, that anything that smacks of play gets shunted aside. Same with exercise, or living without screens, or healthy eating… things that used to be just organic parts of being human, are now things we must choose deliberately. Play is the same way. Playing as a creative, purposeful act is something that doesn’t just happen. It has to be understood as a virtue and space made for it to happen.