Play as Work and Organized Fun

This is borderline whether it belongs here, since it's about play, but it's about how I've come to the view that play should be work, in the sense that you should use your leisure time (or part of it) to pursue projects, that have end results.

The reason why is not particularly for the end results. In fact I'm not sure the goal even matters. The real reason is that any sufficiently ambitious project will inevitably take you to new and interesting locations, reveal fascinating new sides of the people in your vicinity and bring you closer to them, and pay off in extraordinary events and deep personal satisfaction. I feel like a constant message of mass culture is that you should sit back and consume instead of trying to do things, make things happen, when from my observations I now think that's the main thing in life. Here's a group of people who think that way, and look what they made happen: Improve Everywhere's Mp3 Experiment 2.0

Their phrase, "organized fun", is something I have been pondering on - I really think they have the right idea. It ties in with a wonderful book I just read, Son of Interflux by Gordon Korman, where a student at a fine arts high school appropriates the student social budget to form a group to fight Interflux, the overbearing corporation that wants to build on the school's beloved creek. The student president is outraged at all the dances and parties they won't be able to have, but then it turns out that the activities required for opposing the development - such as running a worm farm, and having a cultural festival - are more fun and better social events than what they replaced - and inspire the students to new heights of creativity.

As another example, to show as I said that it almost doesn't matter what the actual project is, here's part of a list of things my friend Jim Davies was challenged to see if he could do by his improv troupe:

• (Figure) Skate
  
• Speak with a Jamaican Accent
  
• Bake Bread from Scratch
  
• Play the trumpet
  
• Cut a woman's hair
  
• Win a game of pool/darts
  
• Sew a garment using a pattern
  
• Win at blackjack
  
• Speak french
  
• Double dutch
  
• Grow an herb garden
  
• Take his underwear off without removing his pants

(you can follow how he's doing on the list on his blog)

I think the only thing better than committing to a list like this designed specifically for you, would be to take on one specifically designed for someone else. Maybe I should take on Jim's. Where wouldn't it take me?