A good summer is childish

I got a little pouty this past Sunday morning. It was actually an appropriately immature response to an immature problem: I was irritated that my summer hasn’t been playful enough. At that hour, sitting at the laundromat, I hadn’t yet pinpointed this specific problem — I only knew that my summer felt fine.

Fast forward seven hours: I am splashing around Lake Michigan with friends and we are taking turns doing very impressive underwater somersaults.

What I specifically feel I haven’t done enough of this year is silly little warm-weather shit. I haven’t bopped around on my bike enough, haven’t hopped in the lake enough, haven’t played any games of mini golf or hit a flea market to buy nonsense. And why? Because of work — which is a distressingly adult problem that I have no interest in when I can hear the paleta cart’s siren song.

In Chicago, everyone gets very excited for patio season. And as much as I love having a pét-nat at a picnic table while the L rumbles by, this is just an adult activity that we’ve moved outside. I want to do activities that relieve restlessness.

I poked around at why play is important for adults and — while great! — my findings were so coated in academic research that it made play sound like one more thing to check off of our old-fart to-do list: Eat well, exercise, have a good skincare routine, do something playful. I realize scheduled play is still play, but doing it for the scientifically proven results is the least childlike approach. You will not get a child to eat more vegetables by explaining the benefits of fiber (though they do enjoy discussing poop. And who doesn’t?)

But within all the technical talk, I also found an expert’s definition of play that I actually really love: Play has no result. 

“A lot of us do everything hoping for a result,” Jeff Harry, a positive play coach (what.) told The New York Times. “It’s always, ‘What am I getting out of this?’ Play has no result.”

I fall prey to taking a really great, ambling walk and then seeking the sense of accomplishment that my iPhone’s step counter offers. Why am I seeking a measurable result!? Catch me one day soon, finally busting out the typewriter I bought in February and terrifyingly pecking out “Play has no result.”

I also stumbled across this Medium post by Kristin Wong, in which she writes that after she entered adulthood, “summer vacations would never be the same. Sure, I take time off and travel the world — which brings its own kind of joy — but there’s something different about the carefree, go-nowhere-and-do-nothing summer vibe of childhood. Back then, without a car or money, there wasn’t much you could do but live in the moment.”

This summer, one of the things I’ve found myself craving most is an idle week. Whether at a nearby lakehouse or just in my own apartment, I’ve been salivating over directionless free time. The last time I had anything resembling this was during the pandemic, which did have a childlike quality in how I spent my free time — but was also warped by the very aggravating (and also childlike) problem of RULES and BOUNDARIES and even — during the George Floyd protests — a CURFEW???

I downloaded a copy of “Power of Play” by the National Institute for Play Research (would this be the best or worst place to work?), a 2024 report that pulls together not just research on the benefits of play, but also what constitutes play and why play is natural — uniquely so for humans:

“We are designed by our biology to possess the quality that biologists call “neoteny”— the retention of juvenile qualities throughout a long childhood and even into old age. This is thanks to neuroplasticity, the extraordinary ability of our brains to grow and organize new connections, that lasts a lifetime (Brown and Vaughan 2009). … Thus we as a species are primed to play throughout our lifetimes, and we experience less than the fulfillment of our overall design if play gets suppressed or lost in our task-dominated adulthoods.”

We experience less than the fulfillment of our overall design if play gets suppressed or lost. You are not living up to your uniquely human abilities if you don’t fuck around and find out! What an incredible thing to learn. Take me to the Lincoln Park Zoo so I can drop this knowledge bomb to the children and their nervous parents. **Me standing next to the zebra exhibit* But do you know what they CAN’T do???

While I was taking a break from writing this newsletter (staring at your kids’ first day of school on Instagram), a Julie Beck article in The Atlantic caught my attention. Apparently there’s some TikTok trend where people show how they optimize their day before and/or after work — apparently referred to as either “5 to 9 before the 9 to 5” or “5 to 9 after the 9 to 5” (may an Amazon truck to run me over after learning this). 

But what struck me was this: “These videos reflect a truth that predates and will almost certainly outlive them: When life revolves around work, even leisure becomes labor.”

Beck notes that the “threat of waste” exists in these videos, which just breaks your heart. Even as I’ve admitted to becoming more of a morning person, fitting a workout and a shower in before my day starts isn’t rigid: If I’m caught in the middle of a great book, my squat thrusts are going right out the window so I can lazily wade into what I’m reading for a bit. 

The idea of “operationalizing rest” (back that delivery truck RIGHT over me, my god) is also a blatant disregard for play. Meeting up with friends at an evening street fest didn’t accomplish a damned thing, but I got to dance in the street to the “Percolator” and the “Cha-Cha Slide”, then bike home. I felt great. And perhaps tellingly, my evening was totally free — suggesting the best play exists outside of the economy and work.

(Incredible Wikipedia lesson: DJ Casper originally wrote "The Cha-Cha Slide" as a step aerobics routine for his nephew, a fitness trainer at Bally Total Fitness in Chicago's Hyde Park.)

I have a hell of a workweek ahead of me, but I’m going to clear plenty of time for play while it’s still summer. I want to jump in the lake more. I want to go to a minor league baseball game for $1 hot dog night. I want to meet up with friends for a picnic and listen to them talk about a podcast I will say sounds interesting but never listen to. I want to optimize nothing and probably fall a little behind on assignments.