May 9, 2025

A failure to plan fun is a plan to fail at being fun?

Fun and Plans

Today Andy and I are going to our local Mountain Bike Trail Center together.  I worked from 7:00 to 9:30pm last night to try and get "caught up" for my day off which is super against my working ethos. I don't really have anything against working at night - I just don't like doing it because I seem to then stay up too late, which is exactly what happened yesterday and I don't think I fell asleep until 10:30. 

For the first time ever, I planned what routes we are going to do and now I'm even more excited.  I don't mean to be a loser here, but planning my fun was fun, and I think I will have more fun doing my fun now that it's planned. 

In case you're curious and want to see what MTB trails are called, the plan I made is as follows

Pedal to top of mountain
Funnel down
Pedal up
Poppity Ping Sessions to Terrys Belly
Uplift (a truck drives me and my bike up, yay)
Melted Welly to Off Grid to Forrest Bump to Kermit
Coffee and cake stop
Pedal up
Sixtapod to Merthyr Rocks
Uplift
????

I don't know if I can actually ride that much but we will see.  Slightly constrained by school times - we have less childcare on a friday - but maybe it's possible?

We were supposed to do this trip on Thursday a few weeks ago but Ezra was ill and I had to stay at home with him.  Andy starts a new job in June where he works on Fridays so this feels like a last chance adventure.  To make this work our nanny is watching the twins, and then my mom taking Ezra to school, and then my mom taking Lily to nursery (which starts at 1, and is right over twin nap, which is why nanny can't do the nursery drop off), and then my mom picking up both kids from school so we can do nanny twin handover, make dinner, and then collect bigger kids. I know it will be fun but there's a lot of logistics involved in a 7 hour escape.

Plans and unfun

Recently I feel I've been missing things that could be planned better.  Small and mostly insignificant things, but I know they all add to the mental load.  

For instance, breakfast is annoying.  Why do we have to do it every day?  We don't usually eat cereal because it doesn't seem super nutritious as compared to pancakes or eggs, but also... toast and peanut butter is nutritions.  And then we run out of toast.  And then... plans.  Blarg.

Lily only has two school summer dresses because I waited until after Easter to buy them and then only bought two because I feel we have too many clothes.  This may be the case, but now I have to do laundry daily until I can buy more and the local shops are out because who waits until it's 20 degrees to buy kids summer uniform? Me.

Not having nursery means our house is basically a childcare setting.  For example, our garden & patio:


This is fine, but means I cannot come downstairs and grab food when twins are awake and home.  Which means, I can eat between 10 and 11:30, and 1:30 and 2:30.  I am trying not to eat breakfast first thing, so recently I have a big meal at 10:30, but usually I try and squeeze in exercise during my lunch break which leaves me very very hungry at 3:30 and also least able to come get more food.  

I am a hungry human and need/want more than an apple or a snackbar at 3:30.

Yesterday my meals were a bit less than optimal

I just feel vaguely unsatisfied with how I'm currently eating - not from a nutrition standpoint - but from an enjoyment of food standpoint.  This could be fixable by planning.  It's just... a lot of planning.

Do you plan your fun? Are you in a meal rut? Can you come make me lunches please?  Or, come mountain biking with me?

1 comment:

  1. Your mountain biking date sounds so fun! I hope you have a blast. And yes, I think sometimes the key to fun is the planning. Which can be arduous for the planner, so I guess it's good that you enjoy it!

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