Rules of Engagement

Good morning, Cadre. It's Betsy. It's 10:00 in the midwest right now. m. and I am here for the weekly live stream. Yay. And what is my topic this week? I'm gonna make myself a little more vertical. I am gonna talk about fun. I think I've talked about fun before, but I'm gonna talk about it again because it is a core, core value of mine is having fun, because I find fun makes everything else way more possible in my life. And focusing on it helps me be more positive. And focusing on it helps me see what's possible.

And the reason I wanted to focus on it today is this past Saturday was my birthday. Yes, I was born on September 7. And I've mentioned here before and will mention again, I am a big fan of the music of Bruce Springsteen. And he very kindly rescheduled his concert from last year. He had to reschedule some shows at the end of last year for health reasons. He rescheduled the show for my birthday here in Washington, DC last Saturday. And I figured I, for once in my life, just one time at least, I wanted to do the whole, like, be right up at the front.

And so I enrolled my friend John, one of my best friends flew in from Minnesota. Hello, Miss Mary. I'm talking about fun and the fact that my birthday was last Saturday. Hi, Jules. And Bruce Springsteen rescheduled his DC show for my birthday. And I wanted to have some fun. So my friend John flew in the night before, got in late. We woke up very early the next day. By 07:00 we were in line and we got our numbers. They. There's a whole thing that they do if you show up extra early and they give you a number on your hand.

And my number was 97, which was pretty magic for me because just serendipitously, it was 97, but my birthday was on 97, and then there was 97 on my hand all day. And we raided around all day. We raided around all day. And then eventually a whole bunch of stuff happened. That process isn't the most important thing. But I was right up front. I was right up front, like on the rail. It didn't matter that I am short because there was no one in front of me. And I could just see we were a little bit to the left if you're facing the stage.

So I was looking this way, but, like, there was just nothing but space between me, Bruce and the band. And I chose the Nils Lofgren side was where I really wanted to be because Nils has been sober a long time, and he's open about that. So in 2022, in 2021, I started choosing a word of the year every year. And in 2022, I chose the word fun. And I learned so much from that. One of the things I did was I created a 22 fun things to do in 2022 list, and I set about doing those fun things, like goals.

And some of the fun things I did have made it onto my annual sort of ongoing list, like where sequins wear casual sequins. That's very fun to me. So now it's just on my ongoing fun list. But every year since, I've done a list, so I have a 24 in 24 fun list. And the important thing about fun is other people cannot define for you what is fun for you. Right. I learned pretty early in life, you know, sometimes things other people think are fun, I do not think it's fun. I'm not up for going out to see some band I've never heard before and some bar I've never been to at 11:00 at night.

But I have people in my life, like, that is their thing. I will do that with comedians. I will go see a. I don't need to know who you are to go watch your comedy show, but music is a little different for me. So this year, on my fun list, things I've already done, I'm just gonna give you an example. These are things I find fun. I defined it for me over time. I've been on a fun podcast. My friend Anna Marie Cox is doing a 90 days podcast between now and the election, and I was day 88, maybe I went to Dollywood because I had a conference in Knoxville, and Dollywood's been on my hopeful list for years now.

I went to see the Nell Arthur window at St. John's Church over by the White House because I have a niche president. My niche president is Chester A. Arthur, and I'm just very interested in Chester A. Arthur. And his wife passed away before he became president, and. But they created a Nell Arthur window at St. John's church, and they placed it so that he could see it from the White House. So we went to see that. I wanted to see the movie taken. I like action films I'd never seen taken for some reason.

So I went and saw taken, not went. I just streamed it. It was easy to do. And I hope you're getting a sense that this is soup to nuts, right? My list has anything from watch a movie on my couch at home to take an entire trip to Tennessee you know, and everything in between. I also watched the film once upon a time in Hollywood. I just always wanted to see it, so I put it on my list. I've had a movie night with myself. I try and do it at least once a month, so I'm doing little check marks as we go.

The other night I watched my husband was out of town, so I watched Rebel Ridge. If you have not seen Rebel Ridge, it is very good. It was very good. I wanted to see a play on Broadway with my friend Julia. She lives in New York. It's an easy train ride from here. I went a few weeks ago. I went in August, rode the train up. We saw one play off Broadway. Very good. And one play on Broadway called Job, which, if it doesn't get nominated for a bunch of tonys, I'll be shocked. It had only been open a couple weeks when I saw it, but it was amazing, right?

Fun. It was fun. It was fun to just go see a show. Somebody. I have reread the secret garden, my grandmother's. I have my grandmother's copy from 1912. I reread that, and I reread the entire little house on the Prairie series, which led to more fun because I wanted to do more research about the real stories versus what she wrote about in the books. Right? And I have my mother's childhood copies with the original Helen Sewell illustration. So that made it extra fun for me, was to read those copies, because I read those books a thousand times when I was young.

Dan Savage, who does Savage love? He does zooms for his subscribers, live zooms. And that's an oxymoron, but you know what I mean. And I went to one of those just to be there and do that. I'm going to go to another one this week, I think I made a dish using citrus zest because I really like citrus zest. And I try and have at least one cooking thing on my fun list. I listened to all the tortured poets department playlists that Taylor Swift put out before she released the album. I listened to them in a row from start to end.

I usually have many music ones available, and I saw John Hyatt in concert in Maryland. So it was about 45 minutes away. So you can see, like, these are things I find fun. You probably heard this list and were like, God, I would never want to do that. And that my question for you is, what would you want to do? Like, if you want to put in the chat, what would be on your fun list? One of the things that happened in 2022 is I put the fun list together, and I started pursuing it, and my anxiety went through the roof.

And that led me on two paths. One, I kept having fun. I didn't let the fact that it turns out feeling good and having fun feels very scary and threatening to me, to my nervous system. Given some of the things I went through as a kid, that was good information to have. And I have pursued that in many, many ways. That information, but it's what got me back into specific trauma therapy, actually, because I read the body keeps the score, finally. And I was like, oh, I need some somatic healing strategies.

I've done a lot of talk and other strategies, but I need some somatic body based strategies. So I pursued those, and that has enriched my life so much. Going to grocery stores in small towns. Yes. That is great. That is a good thing to have on the fun list. Hi, Dana hope, zero five, this is Betsy talking about fun and my 24 and 24 fun list. This is 22, 23. This is my third year doing a fun list, and it has been great. Every year I've done it, and there are things left to do for the year. I've gotten pretty far through my list, but I got a few months left, and I've been pacing myself, and some fun things don't happen till later in the year.

So put on your, oh, I was talking about the trauma and the fact that, that having fun. Let me understand that I had things in the way of having fun. Like, I was in a very narrow bandwidth, like, I was okay in here, but if I felt too good, I started to feel bad, and if I felt too bad, I started feeling extra bad. So I. But it's a. It was a very limited bandwidth, and it took a lot of energy just to stay inside of it. Oh, take a hot air balloon ride over the lake. That sounds great. That sounds great.

If you haven't done it, put it on your list and go ahead and do it. Because having a list has been a real prompt to actually do some of the things that I think are fun. And I learned there's some, like, one year I had used temporary tattoos. I thought that would be a fun thing to put on my fun list. And now I do temporary tattoos all the time. I just do them all the time. I have this ongoing list of fun things, and maybe I'll do a live stream about that at some point in the future. Like, what's on my ongoing list?

But you already know, too. Wear sequins as day wear and casual wear and wear fake tattoos, temporary tattoos. Fun has been illuminating. I thought if I focused that much on fun and had that many goals around fun, that it would take away from other goals I had, that it would take away from the work that I was doing. And here's the funny thing, I found I became more productive. I had more energy for other things in my life. I got more done. And this was happening at a time in my life when my anxiety was so bad.

I was in freeze mode a lot. I wasn't scared active, I was scared passive at that point. And that was a problem because I work for myself and I was really trying to figure out what do I do about that. But I also knew that living that way was not fun, and I just needed more fun in my life. That had come out of the word. My word of the year in 2021 was success. Like, what does success mean to me? And the idea of fun naturally grew out of that. That success included me feeling good and having fun in my life.

And so I created a whole list and that led me to fun. And then, of course, fun. One of the things that was fun for me was connecting well with other people. So warm was my word of the year in 2023. That was very interesting. Maybe I'll do a live stream about that sometime. My word of the year this year. Maybe I'll do another live stream about my word of the year this year as I'm wrapping it up later this year. But it's been enormously fruitful for me to focus on fun, and it felt like a risk. It feels like a risk.

I don't have time. It'll take away from other priorities. And I swear to you, it created more space for my other priorities, not less, just because I was lighter, I had things to look forward to. I wasn't feeling the burden of life as much because I knew I had so many fun things on the horizon. I am a big advocate for fun. Fun is a production. You know, if you need to be productive, you know, we don't have, production is not what we're here for. But if you are worried about your productivity, fun is a great productivity strategy.

So all of that because I went to see Bruce Springsteen from the very front this past weekend on Saturday, stayed there all day. Good glorious morning. Speak wonder. It's great to see you here. And that's a great fonthen to interact with. So put some, if you, if you, you know, we have another minute or two if you want to put some more things in the chat that you think are fun. I love to hear about what other people do for fun, especially because it's just so different than what I've done. I will.

I mean, and fun. Some of the things on my fun list are bucket list items. I also have separate bucket list and so seeing Springsteen doing the whole be at the front of the pit for Springsteen was on my bucket list and my fun list. So I got to kill two birds with 1 st fantasy football. There you go. Super fun. Super fun. I find award shows very fun. I love to do the Oscars and the Golden Globes. I might watch the VMA's this week. There's a lot going on. So. All right, I will just end with what are some things I have left to do?

I'm going to take the Clifton strengths finder that was on my list and it's also I have a fun list with my best friend and once I take it, she and I are going to talk about my results. I want to go to a double feature. A lot of movie things. I really love movies, so I want to see a double feature between now and the end of the year. But I was waiting until more of the Oscar season films were out so I could really do back to back with really good films. And one more that's left to do. I'm going to Arkansas for thanksgiving because that's where my family's from.

My dad's from there and all my aunts and uncles and cousins on that side of the family are all in Arkansas. So I'm gonna go there. My husband and I are gonna go there for thanksgiving. We're going to Little Rock. So here's a good. Ooh, there's another font. Look at you speak wonder with all your fonts. Serif. I like a good serif font. They're easier to read because your eyes slides through the serif to the next level. So it's. That's one of the reasons so many books are in serif prints. It's just easier on the eyes.

Fun fact. So, well, this has been energizing talking to all of you about fun this week. I hope you all go do something very fun this week. If you do, come back next week and tell me what it was. And until then, it has been great spending time with you, Cadre, and I look forward to more.