Welcome to Funland
on kitchen dancing and solo synchronised swimming and becoming a soccer legend (in my own lunchtime)
(This voiceover is an audio version of the newsletter below. As always, it’s unedited, and today you’ll hear my scratchy voice. If you like/need to listen to these posts I hope you enjoy it anyway!)
Self-care is many things — gratitude and noticing and learning how to sink gently into being. But I’ve realised that it can also be kind of…earnest.
When we’re burnt out and overwhelmed, the stakes feel high. So we take our efforts to care and rest and heal seriously. And, as a very Earnest Ernest (something you might already know about me if you’ve been here a while) believe me — I get it.
But what you might not know about me, is that I’m also quite fond of kitchen-based interpretive dance. I love skiing and rollercoasters and theme parks in general. I’m a fan of Settlers of Catan and Ticket to Ride and making utterly useless little pots in pottery class. And I’m increasingly beginning to acknowledge that those things are all play.
The thing is, I spent decades of my life convinced I wasn’t playful. That unless I was half-pissed (which is a post for another day) I couldn’t help but be all earnestness and seriousness and slightly awkward social interactions.
I’m not entirely sure where that conviction came from. Maybe because I told myself the story that I wasn’t the “playful parent” over and over until I believed it. Or because the mental load sucked all the fun out of me, like a boring, life-admin vampire. Or because I spent a lot of my time and energy writing and thinking about Serious Adult Things. I don’t know. But recently, as I’ve found myself surprisingly and enthusiastically into both watching and playing soccer after the Women’s World Cup, I’ve been reminded just how good it feels to simply play.
Because, for an hour at a time, as we kick the ball around, I am transported back to my childhood. To those imagination-fuelled games, the joy of doing something just for fun, the hours spent in the pool, practising my solo synchronised swimming routines.
In that four-foot-deep above-ground pool, I’d imagine a world where I would keep an audience of delighted onlookers in raptures at my skilful, elegant underwater ballet.
The fact that I couldn’t do anything other than a handstand and a flailing kind of somersault thing was beside the point. It was joyful and ridiculous and I lived for the thought that I was going to be discovered as the next big thing in synchronised swimming — talent be damned.
For an hour a week I now feel the same about soccer. I am Mary Fowler. I am Alannah Kennedy. I am Mackenzie Arnold. (Only kidding. Mackenzie Arnold is a singular legendary force that can never be cloned.)
And despite the fact that I’m not particularly fit at the moment, it’s exhilarating to be moving my body after months of not much physical activity. It’s bloody delightful to be running around in the chilly twilight with my kids and husband. But above all else, it’s needless fun.
And that’s what makes it play. The needlessness of it. The lack of purpose beyond plain old fun.
“The only widely agreed-upon definition of play is that it's needless, involves some aspect of imagination, leisurely (not to be mistaken with easy), enjoyable and fun, and the motivation to do it is intrinsic, that is, it comes from the process, rather than the outcome.”
From my third book, CARE: The radical art of taking time
Play is ultimately anything we would do for fun, regardless of its benefits or challenges. Playing guitar can be about improving or collaborating or learning something new, but if we would do it for fun regardless of those things, it’s play.
Same goes for kicking the soccer ball around. Sure, I love the connection with my family and being out in nature and I know those things are good for me — but for the sheer fun of it? I’d do it anyway.
Board games, gardening, going to a water park, cornhole championships in the backyard, snorkelling… They all have benefits and Good Reasons for doing them, but when I know I’d do them for the fun regardless, I classify them as play.
And here’s the amazing thing about play. It’s good for us. So so good for us. I’ve removed the paywall (play-wall?) from the post below, where I share a chunky excerpt from Care, all about play:
What I didn’t do in my book was list all the benefits that play offers us as adults, because I was worried that by doing so, we’d no longer see play as needless and joyful, but instead as a shortcut to efficiency or happiness. But that was a mistake. We can hold space for both at once: the delight of play and the ability to see it as an act of self-care.
Play can:
Relieve stress by triggering the release of endorphins, promoting an overall sense of well-being and can temporarily relieve pain.
Improve brain function
Stimulate the mind, boost creativity and improve problem-solving capacity
Improve relationships and connection by fostering empathy, compassion, trust, and intimacy with others
Improve social skills
Increase co-operation
Heal emotional wounds
Keep you functional when under stress
Trigger creativity and innovation
Increase energy and prevent burnout
I very much view play as an act of self-care now. Not only for the scientific benefits, but also because, simply put, we’re worth it. We deserve joy. We are worthy of delight — for no other reason than delight itself.
Purposeless fun is not a waste of time, it’s an invitation to love yourself. And all your kitchen-dancing, solo synchronised swimming, soccer-playing glory.
Are there things in your life that you do for no good reason other than fun? What about things you do for Good Reasons that you’d do regardless, just because they delight you?
For me, that list is ever evolving but currently includes:
Pottery
Writing crappy poetry
Gardening
Going to Jamberoo Action Park in summer (yes, I control the action)
Body boarding
Snorkelling
Riding a rollercoaster whenever I get the chance
Skiing
Colouring in
Corn hole championships
Basketball
Board games
Barefoot bushwalking
Taking photos of flowers and bees in our garden
Cloud-watching
Writing silly little stories
Playing Mario Kart with the kids
I’d love to hear your thoughts on play. I know as a parent I’ve had to reacquaint myself with play that’s just for me — have you found the same? Or are you someone who finds play easy to slip into?
I’m Currently
Listening to the neighbour’s rooster crowing.
Sitting in the sun as often as possible, like a funny little lizard. It’s beautiful out there today and I can feel spring seeping into my bones.
Sowing radishes, spring onions and sweet peas.
Looking after my brand-new Honey Murcott mandarin tree. It’s a scientifically-proven fact that HMs are the superior mandarin and I can’t wait to eat my homegrown ones in a year or two (or three or four).
Planning to make a jumbo batch of my lemonade marmalade this weekend. There’s about 200 fruit on our dwarf tree, just begging to be made into sticky sweet marm.
That’s it for the week, mates. I’m looking forward to kicking off the Writing as Self-Care Retreat this Sunday (it’s not too late to join us by becoming a paid subscriber) and hope the rest of your week holds some delightful, playful JOY!
Take care,
Brooke xx
Fuck yes kitchen dancing. Best place to dance 👌❤️
I love the thought that there is potentially a whole scattered dance party of people dancing in their kitchens at any given point in time
Play is probably my biggest challenge. I find doing anything just for myself that doesn’t have any (obvious and direct) benefit for others really really hard. I blame my damn Protestant capitalist upbringing. I shall try even harder to put those mean inner comments to one side and do the thing anyway.