Having fun is a serious matter.

Admiring Van Gogh’s most famous painting in a different country.

Hello, friend.

I promised myself to send you short messages, like postcards, every week but this one will be longer. I even went to get my computer to write it. I found out something about me these last few days and I want to share it with you. I know that this might not be an universal theory and it’s okay, but this body is the only mobile that God gave me to navigate and experience this world so everything I can understand through it is a little bit of knowledge that I didn’t have before.

A few days ago, I did a location study of my house. You grade how well connected is your land to everything a family needs: schools, supermarket, services: water, phone, electricity, church, hospital, etc. The goal is to understand if that specific location is the best location for a family before building a project in it. Well, my house is built but did the study anyways.

I found out something incredible. My house is well connected to every service we need. Literally, all of our needs are met. However, there is one thing that is not a need that is not that available.

I went to an Architecture event where I met Carlos Moreno and he share that availability for him was that everything is in a 15-minute-walk reach.

That thing that is not a need that I have not available in that 15-minute-walk reach is entertainment. I noticed that I don’t have any theater, cinema, museum, playground, stadium, concerts, nothing like that.

That blew my mind. In that instant I did the study, I just graded more the availability of a private transport and gas station to be able to access entertainment, and called it a day.

But as days went by, I noticed how that unavailability actually conditioned me to become the person that I am today.

Every human being needs that small percentage of entertainment and creativity filled, otherwise, you start doing only the things you need to do like work, study, collecting medals, accomplish goals, and life starts to become heavier and heavier. Professionals say that if you only dedicate your life to do what you have to do, your life stays at survival mode only.

I didn’t know all that with those words when I was little, so instead of doing only the things that I needed to do, I started to add indoor activities to have that entertainment/creativity percentage, I started sewing, knitting, reading, writing, singing, dancing in the house, creating stories, videos, having pets, painting, growing plants, you name it. I felt comfortable doing home activities because that was my entertainment available.

I was conditioned to have a creative space of my own and maybe my social skills didn’t have the opportunity to develop how they needed to.

This is why I’m taking having fun seriously in my 30s. I’m giving myself the opportunity to get to know me better and access places I didn’t have available in a 15-minute-walk reach when I was little. Let’s see what happens!

Best wishes from San Salvador.

K.

Before you go:

Having fun is a serious matter.

Discover more from Katherine Montero