The sound Fun – annie f.

downs (the joy of being an amateur, the power of falling in love, and why you need
a hobby)

Introduction

What’s in it for me? Find your joy.

When was the last time you truly had fun? When was the last time you did something just because it brought
you pleasure, and not because you had to do it, or because it had some tangible benefit?

If you’re struggling to remember, then these are the blinks for you. They’ll help you uncover the hidden value
of fun, and show you how experiencing simple joys can bring you closer to God. From vacations to moving
house to playing chess, these blinks are a meditation on what we mean when we talk about love, hobbies, and
enjoyment.

In these blinks, you’ll learn

why you shouldn’t delay your gratification too long;

how you should approach your next vacation; and

what green beans can teach us about the Garden of Eden.

We can still enjoy simple pleasures, even when our lives have shrunken.

What’s your idea of fun? The author asks all her guests this question on her weekly podcast That Sounds Fun.
But the answers she gets vary.

Most people answer by talking about vacations they’d like to take, or special meals they want to savor. But
sometimes, instead of naming something big, a guest says their idea of fun is something small; like eating fried
food or reading a particular book. These are the answers the author finds particularly interesting.

In the wake of the COVID-19 global pandemic, all of us have had to make our lives smaller. We haven't been
able to do much of what we'd usually describe as fun. And yet, we still crave it; our hunger for joy hasn’t gone
away. What we really need in these times is low-key fun.

The key message here is: We can still enjoy simple pleasures, even when our lives have shrunken.

Fun doesn’t need to be a big flashy activity with bells and whistles on. Fun, in its purest sense, is actually
simplicity. It’s a feeling of having a clear and empty mind with nothing to worry about and no responsibilities
to weigh you down.

Not convinced by this definition? Then think about your childhood, and try to remember what fun meant to
you back then. When the author does this, she remembers sitting with her mother and grandmother on the
front porch of their farm in Georgia. She remembers how these three generations of women would snap beans
and talk, slowly but surely, until the sun went down.

Today, the author is a forty-something professional with a busy job and a packed schedule. But only now does
she truly appreciate the transcendent simplicity of those evenings. Thinking back to this golden time of
childhood, when she had nothing on her mind except snapping the next bean, she knows it was the closest
she’s ever come to experiencing that perfect paradise that her Bible talks about: the Garden of Eden, where
there was no sin or shame, just boundless love.

Looking at the world now, she’s pretty sure we’re about as far away from the Garden of Eden as we could get.
And yet, in moments of pure simplicity and absent-mindedness, we can still glimpse it. Whether we’re
snapping beans on a Georgia porch, or getting lost in a book, or joking around with a friend, for a fleeting
moment we can feel like we’re there. And it's in these fleeting glimpses that real fun lives.
2

Embrace your inner amateur, and you’ll open the door to progress.

How would you feel if you tried your best at something, only for someone to call your efforts amateurish?
Perhaps you’d feel insulted. After all, we tend to use the word amateur to mean someone who is laughably
unskilled at something. But have you ever thought that it might be good to be an amateur?

When the author looked up the word amateur in the dictionary, she discovered it has other meanings that
most of us overlook. An amateur also describes someone who undertakes an activity for pleasure, rather than
for profit. Now things start to look different. Being an amateur at something just means you’re doing it for fun!

The key message here is: Embrace your inner amateur, and you’ll open the door to progress.

Why do we assume being an amateur is bad? Perhaps the problem is that those around us won’t accept the
joy of being an amateur. Imagine you bake a cake, just for fun, and it turns out amazing. The best compliment
you're likely to hear is “wow, you’re so great at this, you should sell your bakes!”

What this compliment is saying is that you shouldn’t waste your time being an amateur baker. Instead, you
should turn baking into a professional job and start making some money. But what would happen if you
actually did that? Well, you might find you’d gained a career. But you’d have also lost the fun. 

Being blind to the fun of things is one reason people knock being an amateur. But there’s another reason:
sometimes, being an amateur isn’t just one of your options – it's your only option.

Just consider the conversations that people are having with each other in the wake of the Black Lives Matter
movement. The author is one of many Americans who is learning to talk about issues and injustices
surrounding race. In this respect, she’s an amateur. She doesn’t know the exact right way to go about having
these conversations, and she doesn’t always get it right. But that’s why it's so important she embraces her
amateur status.

After all, what would be the alternative? To give up and refuse to try to make things better? The author figures
it’s better to have discussions and make mistakes than to try to be perfectly silent, for fear of saying the wrong
thing. She’s decided to try and bring about positive change in her own amateurish way. And maybe, most of
the time, that’s all any of us can strive for.

The future isn’t promised, but the present can be a gift.

How alive are you, right now, in this moment?

That might sound like a silly question. Of course you’re alive, or you wouldn’t be reading this sentence. But in a
broader sense, are you really living in the present? Or do you often feel as if you’re just waiting for your life to
begin? The author used to feel as if she was sacrificing her present happiness for the sake of a future. And this
future wasn’t even sure to arrive.

The life that she anticipated for herself involved a husband and children. For years she put off decisions big and
small, convinced that some experiences or purchases needed to wait until she’d found a man and gotten
married. But while she was waiting for romantic love to arrive, she was overlooking opportunities for joy in the
present moment.

The key message here is: The future isn’t promised, but the present can be a gift. 

One of the major decisions the author put off for her future marriage was buying a house. She reasoned that
she didn’t want to be a single woman homeowner. She didn’t go on vacation to Europe either, thinking it
would be a whole lot better if she took her dream trip with her husband. And it wasn’t just big things she held
off on, it was small things too, like making really good hot chocolate and drinking it out of great mugs. 
But then her whole perspective changed. The author had been in the early stages of a relationship which she
thought was going somewhere, only for the guy to ghost her after a few weeks. Struggling to deal with her
feelings of disappointment and rejection, she signed up for an emotional healing retreat. After her week of
emotional discovery, she realized she couldn’t put her life on hold any longer. She deserved happiness – and
she deserved it now. It was time to stop waiting and start living.

Just months later, the author bought her first home, which she named Harvest House. Why this name?
Because it felt like she was at a time in her life where she could finally start harvesting the joy from seeds she’d
already planted, instead of constantly planting seeds for the future.

The author had accepted that her life might not turn out the way she thought – or even hoped – it would. This
was the first step toward bringing fun into her actual life – the real one, not her perfect future life. She realized
that she was worthy of love, just as she was. When you do the same, you too can begin harvesting what you’ve
sown, and start to feel truly at home.

Don’t give up your hobbies in exchange for being a grown-up.

A hobby is something fun we do on a regular basis in our leisure time. Sadly, though, not many adults have
one. One time over dinner, the author asked her girlfriends if any of them had a hobby. A hush immediately
fell over the table. And so she asked herself: why don’t more of us partake in the kind of joyful activities that
sprinkle a little fun over our lives?

Perhaps the answer to this is that grown-up life gets in the way. Many of us give up our childhood hobbies in
exchange for an adult life. The author’s father, for instance, was an avid chess player as a child and young man.
But when his family arrived, along with a full-time job, he just quit playing. The first time she ever saw her
father play was when she was an adult herself.

The key message here: Don’t give up your hobbies in exchange for being a grown-up.

Hobbies don’t just bring us fun – they also bring us closer to the people in our lives. This is exactly what
happened with the author and her father. When they finally sat down to play chess together, she suddenly
connected with him differently. As he coached her through the game, she caught a glimpse of the clever, kind
child he once was.

Playing chess also helped her connect with a friend of hers called Tim, who suffers from Amyotrophic lateral
sclerosis – or ALS. This degenerative neurological disease prevents you from doing many of the activities you
might usually do with a friend. But one thing Tim can still do is play chess, his lifelong hobby, with the aid of a
computer. Whenever he and the author play the game together, slowly, she cherishes this small miracle.
Despite Tim's illness, they can still find a fun thing to do together.

As Tim’s story shows, having a hobby you love can be a lifeline in difficult times. So when you come to choose a
hobby of your own, make sure you’re choosing it because you think it's fun, and not because someone else
thinks it's cool.

The author learned this the hard way. Back when she was in middle school, she learned to play the french horn
and joined the school band. But even though she loved her musical hobby, she quit playing when she got to
high school. Why? Because her new high school friends didn’t think the french horn was cool. Now as an adult,
she still regrets that decision. But at least she knows that you shouldn’t let anyone else define what’s fun for
you. What you choose to do in your leisure time is your decision and yours alone.

It’s okay not to be okay.

Sometimes we’re only pretending to be having fun. And the author knows all about that. She remembers the
time she vacationed at a Christian retreat in Colorado, known as Lone Valley ranch. This should have been an
incredible trip for her, with nothing but blue skies and the majestic rocky mountains in view. And yet, it didn’t
go exactly to plan. 

The mistake she made was thinking she could treat her vacation like a garbage chute. She imagined herself
disposing of all her emotional baggage as soon as she arrived. After shedding her baggage at the door, she
thought she’d feel instantly lighter, and be ready to have some fun. But once she got to the ranch, she realized
she felt as weighed down with worries over there as she did at home.

The key message here is: It’s okay not to be okay.

The author didn’t want to admit that she wasn’t feeling good. So instead, when she got to Lone Valley ranch,
she simply pretended she was having fun. Like many of us, she wanted to be who other people wanted her to
be. And she knew that the other people at the ranch thought of her as a perennially happy, smiley, bubbly
person, who was always brimming with questions and curiosity. But of course, she also knew that pretending
to be happy when you’re not really isn’t much fun.

Luckily, the retreat’s leader, Tony, wasn’t buying it. He quickly identified that she was putting on a brave face,
and he told her, in no uncertain terms, to cut it out. Lone Valley ranch, he said, wasn’t the kind of place where
people had to play the roles they play in everyday life. Instead, it was a place where people came to be their
real selves. What was required here wasn’t a thick skin, but honest vulnerability.

During that precious vacation, the author slowly discovered how to peel back her tough outer persona and
embrace her true feelings, however sad they might be. After she went home again, she didn’t feel as if she’d
gotten rid of all her problems, but she did feel like she’d made a greater connection with herself, and with
God. 

The author’s experience at the Lone Valley Ranch reminds us that we don’t need to be having fun all the time.
It doesn’t make us a failure to admit that we’re not okay. And actually, it's only when we know who we really
are, and admit what we truly need, that we can lay the foundations for a more joyful tomorrow. Now doesn’t
that sound fun?

Final summary

The key message in these blinks:

The world isn’t always a fun place to live and it's okay not to feel okay all the time. But even in challenging
circumstances, you can still find joy in ordinary life. Having fun can be as simple as enjoying the present
moment, doing things that remind you of your childhood, or practicing a hobby you love. So embrace your
inner amateur, and go forward with curiosity, enthusiasm, and hope in your heart. Now that sounds fun.

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