why you're scared of not having a 'fun' life

Okay frankly speaking, yes, this is a very valid worry to have. Due to the whirlwind my life has been since my master’s at Xavier’s started, a week ago I had the exact same fear, almost crippling my thoughts. As I started to think about whether am even spending my free time wisely, whether am doing ‘weekends’ right, and god forbid if I stay home for a weekend I need to make up for all the fun I could’ve had if I went out. But the real worry here was not feeling fulfilled enough by the things I was already doing, life that I was living, and to top it of, not spending enough time doing things I loved.

My immediate reaction was that something is horribly wrong with my mental health and I should be journaling about this, talk to my bestie and also obviously go on tiktok to search for a cure. A cure for a life that started to feel like a boring loop of time, the mundane tasks and the daily commute to college. And wouldn’t you like to know about the advice i stumbled upon, which is basically what I wrote my first ever article here on. The article being, “You’re not bored, you’re just overstimulated”, and precisely that is the issue, in this era of short-form content that bombards us with a dozen notifications and videos of random strangers on the internet that we subconsciously compare ourselves to, and a huge spike in our dopamine and cortisol levels before we even get out of bed.

The amount of overstimulation that sometimes exceeds the overwhelming nausea of being in an utterly crowded event. I realised that I was just consuming and not creating much that month, which also led me to observing the contradiction that we humans are so fed up of the mundane tasks and yet we say that 24hrs is not enough, but perhaps we hope for the extra hour so that we could steal a few solitary moments to ourselves, doing things we love without feeling an ounce of regret. And I came across this one excerpt from the book Fearless by Lauren Roberts (yes am on the verge of finishing it):

“So this is what keeps sailors setting off for a horizon they likely won’t meet before their doom. Adventure. The hope of a discovery thrilling enough to risk their mundane lives. They navigate from a different map, one inked in myths and legends. I admire their resilience in finding something to live for.”

And this also raises the question, are we not grateful for the privilege of monotonousness? or have we just forgotten the sense of adventure in this era? To be honest I am truly honored and I think we all are for the privileges that a consistent life brings, a stable life, where you have a job, you study at a prestigious college, you wake up at the same time everyday and travel to your workplace, you talk to the same friends and colleagues everyday, eat good food and have a home to return to.

But perhaps what we are missing is the sense of fulfillment that we get from our daily lives, and it all points towards not going on enough side-quests. The thrill of doing something spontaneous every week could be the solution fr, maybe not something extraordinary but a scheduled dosage of happiness. It could be a solo-date, a walk in the park, a hangout with your friend, creating a you-tube video from scratch, watching a movie while ordering in from taco bell, a trip to the mall to buy something that’s been on your wishlist forever, staying in and junk journaling while watching your fav sitcom.

I guess what am trying to emphasize here is that you don’t need to subscribe to someone else’s idea of ‘fun’, especially the ones who think going clubbing every weekend is the solution to their already overstimulated life. There’s absolutely nothing inherently wrong with you if you don’t have plans for this weekend, simply existing is also a big feat sometimes. We underestimate the power of a duly needed rest that a weekend provides, by trying to constantly make plans we also refuse the sense of solitary peace that one needs time-to-time.

You don’t need to catch a flight to Paris for the weekend, you don’t need to go cafe-hopping with your friends every weekend, you don’t need to spend a grand to have a fun weekend, but you do need to have a present state of mind in whatever way you look forward to enjoying YOUR weekend plans. The baseline is there’s always gonna be someone having more fun in their life, but perhaps its just because they genuinely derive a sense of fulfilment from that, and you just need to experience things that are truly fun for YOU, not according to your tiktok fyp or the Vogue, but according to YOU.

This weekend I went out with my friends to witness a Second Nature at NMACC in BKC Mumbai, and I was in awe because the poetic sense of nature’s beauty is so well captured by the artists that created this, I almost felt like each level was like a portal to a totally different dimension, something so unreal and peaceful. My fav were the orbs that with one touch of the hand had a chain reaction and lit up, making the whole room sparkle like stars do in the night sky, it also reminded me of that one scene in Project Hail Mary movie, I felt like Grace trying to have my moment, taking the most ethereal pieces of art in my memory with me.

We also got to carry home with ourselves a sketch out of the many different ones and I chose this flying bird, who’s ascending, it truly spoke to me as a sense of ambition, something that truly makes you wanna take off leaving everyone’s expectations and opinions of you behind, just your authentic self trying to go after what you really want. And afterwards we grabbed lunch and I got to try Rambokki (Ramen-tteokbokki bowl), crunch avocado sushi and the best dessert of all time, ‘mochi icecream’, it was all so yum.

That was my sense of fun, the type of hangout where I feel a sense of calmness bestowing upon me, away from a noisy world, and thje next weekend I would have more fun staying in and watching my fav ghibli movie, that’s how you diversify your fun experiences, because life is fun only when you truly live it instead of trying to escape it. The fomo of not having a ‘fun’ weekend would never even cross your mind if you’re already living out YOUR sense of fun, it just needs to be fulfilling for you, whether that’d be writing a substack article on a sunday evening (me rn hehe) or a cook-off with your bestie in the kitchen or a club night-out.

So here’s to not letting the society’s expectations of a ‘fun’ life hold us back from truly enjoying life. Stop comparing your weekends to that one influencer’s and start being more involved with what you wanna experience and how YOU are gonna make your life fun.

Thank you so much for being here, love you all.

xoxo

Shreya