With all the extra work of staying on top of 2020’s challenges, have you lost the time and energy for fun?

Girls just wanna have fun … I bet you do, too.

Just like kids, we need recess, too.

When you hear “play,” do you translate that to goofing off or wasting time?
Do you feel you’re just too busy for something so indulgent?

In “The Gifts of Imperfection,” Brene Brown shares the 10 guideposts of wholehearted living, which she gleaned from listening to the stories of thousands of people to identify themes.

One of the 10 guideposts: Cultivating Play and Rest. Letting go of exhaustion as a status symbol and productivity as self worth.

She quotes Stuart Brown, founder of the National Institute for Play and author of “Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul.”

“The opposite of play is not work — the opposite of play is depression,” Brown says. “Respecting our biologically programmed need for play can transform work. It can bring back excitement and newness to our job. Play helps us deal with difficulties, provides a sense of expansiveness, promotes mastery of our craft, and is an essential part of the creative process. Most important, true play that comes from our own inner needs and desires is the only path to finding lasting joy and satisfaction in our work.”

If you’re wondering what qualifies as play, it’s something you do just because it’s fun. What do you do purely because you enjoy it?

I’m a member of a Coney Island Mermaid Parade dance troupe. Every summer, the Tails of Glory dress up in costume and participate in a huge, silly celebration of summer.

This year, for obvious reasons, the parade went virtual. Since our troupe hasn’t missed a year in nearly two decades, of course we were in.

As we traded emails about costumes and music to plan the little video we would contribute, I couldn’t help but feel this time was somehow wasted. That with literal life and death concerns hanging in the air, choreographing an amateur dance routine was frivolous.

But here’s the thing: Getting our group together in costume, even if it was in little boxes on Zoom, filled my heart with joy. It was a momentary escape from the weight of this year.

^^ Click to watch the Tails of Glory virtual parade dance!

Get by with a little help from your friends

A recent advice column in the Wall Street Journal addressed the challenge of maintaining our friendships in pandemic — it’s not just that we can’t gather like normal, but that when we do connect, we might spend the whole time talking about weighty topics like coronavirus or politics.

We crave having fun together!

Elizabeth Bernstein wrote in the WSJ:

A new study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology sheds light on why many of us are missing our friends so profoundly right now. It found that people report they’re happier hanging out with their friends than with their romantic partners or children. (Sadly of friends, kids and partners, people said they were least happy hanging out with the latter. But let’s save that for another column.)

The lead researcher on the study, Nathan Hudson, an assistant professor of psychology at Southern Methodist University, in Dallas, says people often enjoy their friends’ company more because they spend more time doing fun things with them. (The study was conducted before the pandemic.) This isn’t to say that people don’t enjoy being with family members. But they spend a lot more time doing stuff that’s not fun with them: Chores. Caretaking. Home schooling.

It’s natural to want to know how your friends are holding up—everything feels so serious right now—and to support each other through tough times. But it’s emotionally exhausting when every single phone call turns into a therapy session. Look for ways to bond that allow you to share more than just the constant stress.

What are some fun things you can do?

Maybe you’ve lost track of what you find fun because you’re too exhausted?

One possibility: Think back to when you were in elementary school. What could you do for hours with no sense that time had even passed?

It doesn’t even need to connect that deeply, though. Do you love watching SNL reruns? Texting friends knock knock jokes? Cranking up Van Halen and dancing?

We love to host dinner parties and cocktail parties, and since those are out:

• We’ve played virtual cards, using an app called Trickster.
• We’ve watched a live band outside.
• John has gone hiking with friends.
• I’ve joined virtual dance parties with the mermaids.

I also enjoy doing mazes, and John and I recently walked the length of Manhattan, from top to bottom.

I’d love to hear what you do for fun.
Bonus: I’d love to see a photo of you playing!