This is such a loaded question. “Fun” is an innocent thing. But if someone asks us, ‘So what do you do for fun?’ and we can’t think of something quickly enough or if our idea of fun is Netflix, playing on our phones in bed, and going to bars, we feel like pieces of shit.
This is an area where having OCD is an advantage over the rest of the population.
When you have OCD, your OCD thoughts/worries can sneak up out of nowhere. Your plans for the evening may have been to watch a hockey game/ see a movie/ have a nice Italian dinner with a friend, but in your peripheral vision, it’s as though your OCD worry is perched on a stationary bike, working up a sweat, and yelling, “Hey! I’m going strong over here! How’s the piccata? Are you remembering to worry about ‘x’?”
When you have OCD, sometimes things that you intended on being fully relaxing aren’t relaxing at all. As said before, OCD has ruined many a Saturday. When OCD elects to join you during what was supposed to be a fun activity, and you do your best to enjoy whatever it was that you were doing and you keep living your life, you get an A+. But that doesn’t mean that it was relaxing. To the contrary, it’s a mental workout to be present when your brain is thinking itself in circles around a problem that doesn’t exist.
So, people with OCD need to be a little more proactive about having fun, because every now and then OCD crashes the party.
For people with OCD, fun is for a mental release, to experience joy, to develop mastery around a new skill or hobby, and, of course, to press re-set when we’re anxious.
Consider this: Ways to Have More Formal Fun
- Make a Google Map of restaurants where you want to eat and work your way down your list
- Ditto for movies
- Make a list of “culturally important” movies you want to watch (that can be Casablanca or it can be Fight Club—both count)
- Cut pictures out of magazines and decoupage them onto wine bottles or old furniture around your house
- Go hiking.
- Read books. You use Amazon Prime for everything else, so splurge on some really good books. Here are three “fun” recommendations (Where’d You Go, Bernadette?, Heart and Brain, and Bossypants) and three “thinky” recommendations (Superbrain, The Happiness Project, and Come As You Are).
- Join an ultimate Frisbee league
- Take a class. It can be cake decorating, Spanish for beginners, or a weekly drop-in yoga class. Either way, you’ll create new fibers in your brain.
- Research recipes and cook an elaborate dinner for you and a friend
- Go to a hockey game. Seriously, they’re riveting.
How can you make this list your own?
Consider the Fun You Already Have
If you approach the things you do with a more formal mindset, you can see that you have fun way more often than you think you do. You just aren’t noticing it or categorizing your fun as fun. Eating at restaurants can be a hobby, especially if you are trying different cuisines, appreciating the interior architecture, or trying to find the best fish tacos in the city. Taking showers can be fun—entire careers are built around the pleasures of grooming. Upgrade to using a set of scented bath products and your showers will feel like spas. If you like watching movies, great! Structure the activity so you’re working through a list of “Movies to Watch.”
The distinction is mindfulness: when you’re doing an activity, take pause and notice when it’s fun. Then, you can recognize, “Oh, this is fun! This is how I have fun!” You have more information for the future, when someone asks you what you do for fun or if you need to do something to cheer yourself up.
Schedule time for fun.
If you do have clear-cut hobbies—like playing an instrument, browsing at thrift stores, or reading business magazines—but the issue is that you can’t find time to do these things, schedule them. Use the “Saturday” and “Sunday” pages in your planner, and block out an hour or an afternoon to enjoy your hobby. Observe the time commitment the way you would an appointment with a personal trainer or a mentor. As in, you can’t miss it. If you do this enough consecutive weekends, you’ll find yourself drifting towards your more active, engaging hobbies, instead of crashing onto the couch with your laptop and grappling with decision gridlock while staring at your Netflix home screen. When you think about it that way, the way we use Netflix doesn’t sound like fun at all! Let’s be more proactive about better alternatives.