For the Pursuit of Fun

When I was in school, everyday was another day. Every single day and every single hour was different, exciting, unexpected, fun. When I came home at the end of a long day, it would be hard for me to run out of stories to tell my roommates as we sat in our dark room on the shoreline, listening to the waves come in and our old crappy apartment rattle in the wind.

Those days, fun came pretty naturally, because even the work you did involved all of your friends. I guess because you’re surrounded by kids all day, you kind of feel like you deserve to have fun, like it’s just an expected everyday occurrence. Even still, you knew it was special. You knew you were happy, you knew this was the life, and you also knew it wasn’t going to last forever.

The moment I graduated, everything switched around. All of a sudden I felt guilty for having fun, even for just spending a lazy day having breakfast with friends and bsing with the neighbors and harassing the cat. As I peer over at my looming to-do list, I always feel like I should be doing something else. 

This is an easy mindset to fall into once we quietly tiptoe into the real world – it’s easy to get caught up in running errands and making sure the laundry is done and you took your vitamins and the car has a full tank of gas. Soon, you’re spending everyday just preparing for the next, and you’re not even really sure what the point of preparing is if you’re just going to do the same thing tomorrow.

I miss the days where I lived life for the pursuit of fun. I miss when I felt like it was normal to hop on a bus to go to another country, or spend the day window shopping on the streets of Florence, the most beautiful city in the world, or it was just another day when you turned off your shower radio in the morning to listen to the man playing the accordion in the piazza outside the window.

So you know what? Let’s forget about the laundry and a dish in the sink never killed anyone. It may be a while before I’m out of my parent’s house and back in a real live city again and, oddly, actually live in the real world and maintain a real life, but I’m sick of that being the reason that I feel bad for wanting to remember what I did yesterday.

Never get so busy living that you forget to make a life.