And will we ever have it again?
In a culture that is obsessed with work, in which even the act of rest had somehow become a thing to optimize or make productive, we need fun. |
 | | Are we having fun yet? Nino Scenderini and Mel McBride at a skate park in Brooklyn.Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York Times |
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Even before the coronavirus pandemic, I'd begun to wonder if we'd all forgotten how to have fun. The three-martini lunch was dead. Everybody, it seemed, was detoxing or avoiding carbs, hunched over their phones or hustling so hard at work that they hardly had time to sleep, let alone relax. |
When they did relax, usually only after facing a severe case of burnout, even that became a thing to optimize or make productive. No longer could we simply rest or veg or do something fun or hang out; we were engaged in an aggressive pursuit of self-care, which demanded self-betterment by way of bubble baths and self-actualization, not just purposeless leisure. |
And then, of course, the pandemic hit, which made everything worse. Suddenly, many of us were stuck at home, without the ability to socialize, drinking too much, so sick of being with partners or roommates or children or just ourselves that we didn't want to touch or dance or, God forbid, have sex; we didn't even have anything to gossip about. Sure, there were early attempts to buck the desire to crawl under the covers — baking bread, living room karaoke, all those Zoom happy hours — but eventually, even the thought of attempting to enjoy oneself felt distasteful. How could anyone possibly have fun with all the suffering around? Wasn't the ability to have fun at all just an extreme symbol of privilege and thus something to be renounced? |
Things should have gotten better when the world opened back up again, but they didn't. There were new variants in 2022, war and wildfires and the loss of fundamental rights to add to our existential doom. The promise of hot girl summer came and went, and nothing replaced it, except for a heat wave — not the same thing. |
I started to feel starved for joy, for delight, for euphoria. I wanted to feel … I don't know, alive again? And so I set out on a journey to reclaim fun. (Yes, I felt as ridiculous as I sound.) But what is fun, anyway? Oof. Turns out that's a complicated question. |
As you'll read in my essay, this pursuit ended up being much harder than it might have seemed. |
| READ JESSICA'S ESSAY HERE | | |
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