"Fun!"

Wherein I explore having a hobby or a pastime. You know, for fun?

Oct 30, 2020

Let me start out with my family COVID report:

Uncle John felt good enough to go and vote early a few days ago. This is good news because he felt well enough to go on an outing. It is also good news because he is also the only uncle of mine whose vote is not the equivalent of Baby finding a hammer. He does live in Arkansas, so I would not expect his vote to perform any miracles. Your thoughts and prayers for his continued recovery are appreciated.

Jessica is no longer sick, but she still has no sense of smell. That will linger for some time. She is back at work in the ICU. That fills me with dread since the antibodies from this illness disappear so quickly that she (or anyone else for that matter) could become reinfected in just a few months. Texas is number one in COVID infections right now, so her ICU is unlikely to get a respite for the foreseeable future. It goes without saying, please keep her in your thoughts and prayers.

Here she is back in the trenches:

Stay safe, Keed.

On Monday I just couldn’t.

Depression? Burnout? Both?

Adrenal fatigue? Election anxiety meltdown? Both?

Whatever it was, nothing was working above the neck. I overslept by a couple of hours (which is strange for me even when depressed). Jennifer took care of feeding the kitties and feeding us breakfast. I told Jen that the eggs were good and she said that she had added both feta and cheddar cheese to them. To which I blurted out, “Fun!” I am 99.9% certain that I was trying to say “Yum!”, but my mind was not really processing language anymore, so “Fun!” it was.

“Fun!” as an exclamation for almost any situation has taken over our household this week.

“Jennyfur, I made breakfast.” “Fun.”

“Here is the remote.” “Fun!”

“Here is a meme with a cat.” “Fun!”

You get the idea. “Fun!”

With my brain unable to function at the rudimentary level that eating breakfast requires, I decided that after I ate that I was doing absolutely nothing that day. I was going to nip this incipient depressive cycle in the bud. I posted this on Facebook:

Talk about nips in the bud. Don’t be scandalized, y’all. I received neither of these things.

And this:

Bad brain day.

I took naps and tried to read a little, but otherwise, I let my brain rest for the day. As hare-brained as my mental self-care scheme may have been, it worked. I honored what my brain was trying to tell me; I let it rest, and I felt better very quickly. Twentysomething years I have been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and I can still find myself surprised at how my brain works.

*Not my actual brain.

While I did not receive the drugs (legal weed) or nudes (artistic enrichment) that I specifically asked for, my lovely friends and family picked up the phone to text, message, or call, or they sent me nice words of encouragement, pics of pets, funny memes, etc., and it really bolstered my spirits. I feel much better, y’all. Thank you. But seriously, a little tasteful sideboob and a couple of edibles wouldn’t have hurt anybody.

As I lay there in the twilight space between sleep and meditation that I spent Monday in, I started to ruminate on doing “something fun” when I felt better. I thought that maybe I should have a pastime or hobby. Something that I do just for the enjoyment it gives. I don’t really have any hobbies or pastimes.

I do not like the outdoors unless indoor plumbing can be immediately accessed, so anything that requires a trip to Cabela’s or REI is probably not for me. This means camping, fishing, hunting, and backpacking are just right out. Day hiking does have some appeal, but I do not have a car, so getting to interesting places to hike is a bit of a challenge, and if there is anything in life I hate more than a bit of a challenge, I haven’t discovered it yet.

It sure does.

I loathe playing sports of all types, so I will not be joining a softball or beach volleyball league or taking up golf, tennis, or squash when the pandemic is no more. It is not that I do not play well with others; I do not play at all with others.

I do not watch sports any longer because I now find boxing and football, which I used to love, to be racist gladiator spectacles that abuse black and brown bodies in a plantation-like system of exploitation that begins in childhood. I think that UFC/MMA is absolutely boring-to-watch garbage that only exists because white people got tired of seeing black and brown boxing champions. I will literally fight anyone who says otherwise. (I will lose.) Also, watching UFC/MMA would require having many hours of Joe Rogan in my life. I want zero nanoseconds of Joe Rogan in my life. It infuriates me that I know who he is. I hate him more than I hate a bit of a challenge—so you know I must really hate him. Basketball has those terrible shoe squeaks, hockey is both dull and violent, and I no longer have the gene that once allowed me to enjoy baseball. Soccer is absolute dullsville, and I’m not about to spend an absurd amount of money to get extra cable channels that would allow me to watch the only sports that I kind of like, cycling and rugby. I do enjoy the Olympics (except for beach volleyball), but COVID has shelved those indefinitely. What’s a fellow to do?

Not pictured: Beach Volleyball.

For a very short period, I flirted with being part of a punk rock glee club, but I am not a joiner by nature. Pre-COVID I avoided organized group activities like the plague, post-COVID I avoid them like the literal plague.

Acting and writing are things that I enjoy, but I think that I do them well enough to demand payment for them occasionally, so they are out of the realm of hobbies.

I have all of my challenges, and I suppose that one of them could become a hobby. But at this point, because of the blog, they are all kind of work. So, I am still left looking for a hobby. We will table it for future discussion.

In the meantime, is there something that I can do just for fun? I know that I just said that writing is not a hobby, but I have never aspired to write a novel before. This year I had a friend invite me to join his National Novel Writing Month group. And I decided to say yes. I have signed up for NaNoWriMo in the past, but always with the idea of writing something besides a novel. Last year I was going to use it to finish writing my screenplays. That obviously did not work out, but this year I am going to try to write the dang novel. Cranking out 1666.6667 words a day will be quite daunting (this blog entry to this point is just over 1100 words), but I will just see what happens. You know, for fun?

“Fun!”

Speaking of fun, I am continuing to bang away at the lil’ ukulele. I am going to learn a bunch of songs for little kids next. An online guitar teacher I like also teaches ukulele, and he has a book of 100+ songs for kids on the ukulele. I would like to throw him a few bucks for the book as he teaches so much stuff online for free.

I know that everyone who plays ukulele now wants to do Slayer and The Clash covers, but I just want to learn little campfire songs for now. I’m steering away from “cool” ukulele waters and into the kind of goofy, singalong channel that I think my ukulele heart lies in. In a few months, when I have tired of “The Wheels on the Bus” and “Old McDonald,” maybe I’ll tackle “Raining Blood” or “Should I Stay or Should I Go” on the uke.