The Power of Fun by Price, Catherine;

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Prologue

When is the last time you had fun?

I m serious. Think about it. When s the last time you felt exhilarated and lighthearted? When s the last time you didn t feel judged, by yourself or other people? When s the last time you were engaged, focused, and completely present, undistracted by thoughts about the future or the past? When s the last time you felt free? When s the last time you felt alive?
 
Maybe you were laughing with a friend. Maybe you were exploring a new place. Maybe you were being slightly rebellious. Maybe you were trying something for the first time. Maybe you felt an unexpected sense of connection. Regardless of the activity, the result was the same: You laughed and smiled. You felt liberated from your responsibilities. When it was over, the experience left you energized, nourished, and refreshed.
 
If you are having trouble thinking of a recent moment that fits that description, I hear you. Until recently, I didn t feel like I was having much fun myself.
 
And then two things happened that transformed me.
 
The first occurred as a result of the birth of my daughter. After years of debating whether to have a child, followed by more than a year of trying, I became pregnant in the middle of 2014. Instead of expressing our nesting instincts through reasonable, small-scale projects, like closet organization or rethinking our spice rack, my husband and I decided that my pregnancy would be the ideal time to embark upon a full kitchen renovation as in, one that involved ripping the room down to the studs and removing the back wall of our house in the middle of an East Coast January.
 
With a shared love of creative projects (and control), we also decided to design it ourselves. In my husband s case, this resulted in him spending hours researching kitchen faucets. In my case, it meant figuring out how to incorporate salvaged architectural elements into the kitchen, such as a mirrored Victorian armoire front that I had found in a dead neighbor s basement (long story) that I decided would make a perfect façade for a cookbook case and pull-out pantry.
 
I also spent hours on eBay searching for interesting details that we could add to the kitchen, a quest that left my search history littered with entries such as vintage drawer pull and antique Eastlake door hinge 3x3. (Even today, my eBay watch list still includes items such as Victorian Fancy Stick and Ball Oak Fretwork or Gingerbread original finish and Old Chrome Art-Deco Vacant Engaged Toilet Bathroom Lock Bolt Indicator Door. )
 
As my belly grew bigger and our house colder, we had a running joke with our contractors who by that point had become friends about which project would be finished first, the kitchen or my pregnancy. It turned out that I won that contest, not because they were slow, but because I had an emergency C-section five and a half weeks before my due date. Eventually the kitchen renovation was finished, the armoire front became the pantry façade of my dreams, and I could finally stop my eBay searches.
 
Except I didn t stop. Even though I no longer had any plausible excuse for spending thirty minutes at a time trawling through listings for antique door hardware, I still found myself picking up my phone and opening eBay on autopilot, often during middle-of-the-night feeding sessions with my daughter. I d cuddle her in one arm and hold my phone with the other, using my thumb to scroll. It didn t matter that all of the doors in our house already had knobs and hinges. I was searching for architectural salvage in the same way that other people consume social media: eyes glazed, hypnotized by the stream of images on my screen. The photos were less glamorous, but the compuls

An antidote to all the darkness . . . a guide to tapping into True Fun. The New York Times Book Review

If you feel like modern adulthood has sucked the fun out of your life, you ll find hope in these pages. With clarity and levity, Catherine Price illuminates why our days are so dull and how we can have more play and more joy. Adam Grant,