Friday 30 June 2006

Pic of the day: Love is boring if it is too simple... and so are journals, right? There have to be surprises. (This talking head is Kiri from Canvas 2, by the way. The series has a lot of these talking heads, great for LiveJournal emotion logos and such.)

Fun and other fun

Sometimes I have fun writing my journal. Yesterday was one of those, because I think pajamas are funny. Like ha-ha funny, except I rarely actually laugh anymore. When you live alone, laughing sounds kinda hollow. But usually it's not that funny. Nor is it the type of fun I have playing City of Heroes, flying through the virtual sky and setting fire to virtual bullies. I don't even really think of journaling as "fun". But I keep doing it, day after day, and obviously I must like it somehow. I am not famous for sticking to things, and now it is 8 years that I have done this pretty much daily. (The first months were not archived.) So there must be some reward, and it must be pretty immediate, since I don't consciously suffer for some future reward. What is it?

When we think of fun, we probably first think of comedy, jokes, laughing. But obviously this is only a small part of it. Many computer games have little humor but rely instead of drama or conflict (solvable conflict, mind you). People still have fun. In fact, a much cited Danish study showed that the levels of dopamine, usually artificially high in drug addicts when on a high, was even much higher in people playing violent computer games. It is probably not for nothing that the online role playing game EverQuest is often referred to as "EverCrack".

Another kind of fun is the creative expression. When I was younger, I would often program pretty intricate software, either big business solutions like the debt collection suite, or extremely detailed low- level programs like a small assember or my Norwegian COBOL-to-BASIC converter. The joy of creating some new algorithm or figuring out how to solve a problem was close to ecstasy. I also know a similar (but usually not so intense) joy when writing a story that I like. Writing the journal is sometimes like that too.

Then there is the fun of just hanging out with friends. Even if you don't tell jokes or anything, but just talk about shared interests and look at things from different angles. It is still fun, even if no one laughs. (Of course, it doesn't hurt if they do.) Perhaps we could call this the fun of communication.

All these fun things ... conflict, competition, creation and communication, and probably copulation as well (not that I would know), they all share the thing psychologists now call "flow". It is an altered state of mind where people get sucked into what they do. They don't observe with clinical detachment, but lose themselves in the task at hand. They don't just "do" something, they "are" something. It does not just involve their skills, but their soul. It is somewhat like meditation in that the inner monologue is silenced, at least mostly. Instead of telling yourself what you are doing, you have enough just doing it. Another old expression is to put your heart into something.

You may have heard it is said: "I don't drink to have a good time. I drink to silence the voices in my head." But I tell you: There is a lot of overlap between these two. Although most people probably only have 1 voice in their head, their own, it can still be a bother.

You cannot just appoint something to be fun. It has to fill some need, even if it is a need of the spirit rather than the body. Perhaps particularly if it is a need of the spirit, like creativity. Humans love to be challenged, in moderation and with a fair chance to overcome the challenge and grow better. Whether you play the guitar or beat up undead, the drive to improve and get better is a big part of the fun. This is why in many online games, people move on when they have reached the highest level. And I think the same happens in many relationships too. If there is no more growth, the stale taste comes really fast and the fun dies.

Hmm. I don't know, perhaps my journal is not as much fun to read as it is to write. I think this is much like the music program I wrote about two days ago. When I look at someone else's list of favorite music, I find some that are the same as my own, that I enjoy. And I find some that I did not know, but that I also enjoy. And then I find a lot that I would rather never hear again, and I just go fast forward again and again until I find something I like again. I am sure my journal must be like that too. There is no way the same people are interested in all the strange things that I write about. But that's OK, because I am, and I'm having fun. If not, I would stop, and then there wouldn't be anything, neither the things you don't like nor the things you do.