Looking for fun

 I still kinda got nothing. After the stressful meeting last night I did a bit of crocheting on the never ending blanket of doom but I was mostly too tired to do much.

I think a lot of us are just tired. I feel like I've hit a wall yet again. I know I *should* come in here and work on my manuscript this weekend, and grade, but oh, I so don't want to. 

***

I was thinking of something on Monday. They did, on campus, an Easter egg hunt aimed at the students - plastic eggs literally scattered everywhere (even around my building, which is distant from main campus). And yes, good on them for trying to inject a little fun and "enrichment" for the students, many of whom are kind of stuck here right now. But. I would like something that is just pure fun and *not more work* aimed at faculty.

Like, we have "mindfulness webinars" but that feels like extra work? Or socially-distanced yoga classes? It's like everything offered for us is "self improvement" - get in shape, or somehow tweak your mental health, things like that. Just nothing that's just....simple fun?

Is it assumed that adults don't want that? Or don't need that? I would have liked to have been invited to hunt eggs and I suppose I could have just gone out and grabbed a couple but my stupid Lawful Good tendencies told me, "No. That is Not For You" 

I don't even need the candy, just having....well, a little rat-cage enrichment....is what I want. 

Making your own fun is hard sometimes and it's hard for me to think of things, the stuff I do come up with either costs a lot, or can't be done just yet, or would involve me driving somewhere with woeful construction on the roads. 

So I don't know? I guess I "hibernate" for a while longer and watch more endless re-runs of cartoons? 

I don't know why they don't offer just plain FUN for adults, why it always has to be "this is being presented as fun but it's really self-improvement." It feels like a cheat. 

***

That said, I don't KNOW what I would want to do. Go to a petting zoo? play with clay? Punch a punching bag (I was thinking yesterday, tamping down my annoyance at how that student treated me, that if I had infinite money and infinite patience with work-people, I'd hire someone to clear out and tear down the little shed on the back of my garage and rebuild it just big enough to hang a punching bag in, and get one, and whale on it (wale? I'm not sure how that verb is spelled, I have only heard it) when I've had a bad day.)

I guess it's just going to take time? I watched a short YouTube video called "What's New," and while I didn't react in the visceral way some of the commentators said they did (I didn't cry, though I admit I kind of nodded along at parts of it), yeah, the idea of maybe not yet being ready to go back out is a thing. 

I don't know. I want fun, but right now I almost feel like it's too much of an effort to go seeking it out. That's why I'd like somebody to set something up and say to me "here, come and do this, it's fun"

But I don't have that kind of thing in my life.

I think that is the crux of it, though; I feel like I have 100% been on my own this past... well, it's over a year now, really.... I've had to be all my own companionship for like seven months of it, and I've had to mostly provide my own food, and I've had to work around shortages or not-being-able-to-get-things-because-they're-not-sold-in-town and I've not gone into a stinking restaurant and paid someone else to bring me food and take away the plates and wash them. I've had to do all my own self-care and I'm tired.

no one is willing to admit, I think, that self-care is exhausting when you're alone. Yes, you have no one leaning on you to care for them but you know? Sometimes taking care of someone else who appreciates it helps give you back the energy to keep going. Caring for myself, just myself, it gets to a point where aspects of it feel almost not worth it - like, cooking an elaborate meal, what's the point, when you could just melt down a couple kinds of frozen vegetables and choke those down? It's nutrients and calories, it keeps you going, doesn't matter if you enjoy it or not because preparing it is not as much work as something you might enjoy. 

I've been getting carry out food occasionally, probably more than is ideal for me (given my weight, given the fact that I really need to restrict sodium) because.....well, because someone else fixed it. I can either call up a place (or even better, order online) and drive up to a window, and there is my food, hot and ready and I don't have to think about it or do the complicated logistics to get everything cooked at the same point in time. And food does seem more delicious when someone else fixes it some times. 

But yes: I am asking myself: "What would be fun?" and I am, kind of like Ralphie in A Christmas Story, when he's frightened and baffled by the department store Santa says to himself "Football? What's a football," I find myself asking "Fun? What's fun?"

I mean, I remember what I used to do for fun, but going into a tight-quarters antique store doesn't feel quite comfortable yet, and my allergies are a little bad for going out hiking, and I have too much yarn and fabric already, and I don't know of any interesting museums within a close drive...

I dunno. Maybe after all this is over we're all going to need - what did they call the people on cruise ships who planned out activities? Activity directors? Anyway, I'm going to need someone to teach me how to have fun again because I fear I have forgotten.