“But…What Do You Do For Fun?”
[all conversations paraphrased as time has elapsed]
Many years ago, when we were living in the San Francisco Bay Area and I was teaching private piano lessons and accompanying a high school choir while teaching some Alexander Technique lessons on the side and playing Irish fiddle for occasional profit, someone asked me what I did for work. I told them I taught piano.
“So what do you do for fun?”
“Play Irish music. And piano.”
“Uhhhhhhh…more music? For fun?”
William and I performing at the Plough and Stars pub in San Francisco in 2005. Professional fun!
Similarly, at the Los Angeles AmSAT conference in 2014, I had made arrangements to get a ride to the local contra dance on Saturday evening. As I was waiting in the hotel lobby, dressed in my finest contradance fashion, Luc Vanier (AT teacher and dance professor) asked me where I was going, I explained, and he said, bemusedly, “Ah…dancing for fun. How strange.”
All of this is to say that fun is important! Even in increasingly more unprecedented and dire times. And it’s okay to have fun by yourself but fun is better with other people. Which brings me to community. I was absolutely delighted to be able to visit and exchange hands-on work with other AT teachers in and around Seattle a couple of weeks ago - work-related fun, but still fun, and with the added benefit of feeling absolutely terrific when it was over. AmSAT is promoting regional gatherings instead of a national conference this year so hopefully we will be able to meet up again soon.
We also have a lovely group of Irish musicians in the Pacific Northwest, some of whom we see multiple times a week for sessions, and many of whom have become friends that will hike, knit, or go thrift store shopping with us on occasion. The important thing here is that, while we are spending time with people doing things that we enjoy, I AM NOT THINKING ABOUT THE NEWS. The news is not going away, and neither are opportunities for action related to the news. A few hours off of the treadmill is good for us.
Hiking is fun, at least for us, Heart Lake, Anacortes Community Forest Lands, WA
