I liked that this explored the aspect of play. Too often people think of play as frivolous, but in reality it's an avenue to explore new ideas and to re-purpose old ones. I find that my technically minded friends in particular hold the idea of play as frivolity, which I find confusing since brainstorming and finding solutions often come out of the unconscious brain making associations that the cognitive mind might dismiss as silly. In the arts you can often find that the idea of play as a serious part of the craft or creative process is generally accepted as a norm.

Anyway, for me the last thing I really went out of my way to do for fun was to talk to some strangers in a bar in Chicago. Finding out about other people is a lot of fun and often leads to even more fun or at least interesting experiences. I ended up talking to an author of books on animals, the largest retailer of sphagnum moss in North America and one woman who was very keen on talking about relationships and in helping me to figure out if what I had going on at the moment was worth investing in.

I think it was fun because I was in a new context and so I was making a real effort to be more social than I am in my day-to-day life, where I'm told I can often be a little difficult to approach, partly because people don't know how to read me. By chatting up others in a different context with no (perceived) consequences I was able to see how changing my "default" bearing in various ways might play out. I dunno, I had a good time anyway.