Are you “acting your age”? Please realize that you cannot win at this question if you’re over the age of 25 and you answered “yes.” Acting your age might be a euphemism for “waiting to die,” and I know we’re not getting off on the right foot here, you and me, but I challenge you to look me in the eye and tell me I’m not kind of sort of (if not entirely) right.

If you are over 25 and not acting like you’re under 25 at least 25% of the time, then isn’t it true that you’ve already thrown in the towel? Of life? That your life is maybe feeling a tad bit drab? Feeling responsible at the expense of aliveness? Feeling like your best years are behind you? Feeling like fun is being had out there, but certainly not by you? Feeling… like an adult?

I need help with this topic, too. I’m not living with as much vitality as I yearn for, because as much as I value zest, I also value productivity and routines and conscientiousness and duty and NONE OF THOSE WORDS ARE SUPER COMPATIBLE WITH FUN, LET ALONE TOMFOOLERY.

I read a supremely cool thing by Stephanie Vozza (who writes the “Wow Moments” blog of which I am a fangirl) that inspired me beyond reason: “The thing about participating in shenanigans is that it gives you courage to do even more shenanigans. Crazy stuff you hadn’t even thought of a few years ago.”

I don’t even need to add to that. The point was just so eloquently made. The moral of this story/ blog is that we need to participate in way more shenanigans if we want a shot at living a life that could even remotely described as “wow…” as decidedly alive.

There’s a great book called The Power of Play: Optimize Your Joy Potential and the authors prove, with the help of serious science, that if we aren’t experiencing enough fun, joy, and play, we’re pretty much wrecking our lives. (They didn’t use those words at all; that’s my crass, hyperbolic interpretation.) The point is clear though and you know it: well-being is positively correlated with amusement. Having fun leads to greater subjective life satisfaction.

Tomfoolery-ish ways to not act your age:

Pay attention to ridiculous days and celebrate them. When I’m looking for silly inspiration (so, always), I look up the most asinine national holiday I can find and do something about it.

• Today is National Tortilla Chip Day (Feb 24) so this girl is feeding her face accordingly (hello, chilaquiles).
• Here’s another hot tip: earmark March 28 for Eat Something on a Stick Day… and actually EAT SOMETHING ON A STICK. Wait a minute: I dare you to eat everything on a stick that day.
• National Scrabble Day is on April 13 so why not arrange a Scrabble Party where the person with the highest score wins this ginormous Scrabble board… and every time you draw a vowel you have to take a sip of a Scrabble-themed cocktail called the Triple Word Score? Or whoever draws the X tile has to strip down to their Scrabble-themed undies? Or maybe you start the day watching Word Wars (the documentary that likens competitive Scrabble conventions to “bloodsport”), or maybe you attend a REAL-LIFE SCRABBLE TOURNAMENT (maybe for the after party)? (These are early-stage ideas; we’re just riffing here.)
• September 9 is National Teddy Bear Day. How cool would it be to buy the most loveable teddy bear you can find and donate it to a shelter on that day? Use the day as an excuse to do be a good person for once. And you can be nice again on June 6—yes, National Doughnut Day—by sending surprise dozen-donut deliveries to unsuspecting friends and colleagues. (You can do this on most food delivery apps, even from afar, and it’s a cheap, deep-fried way to make someone’s day.)
• Download my free, hand-doodled Un-Dead Your Life Calendar here! I doodle things like waffles because I care about your vitality.

Look up an event that’s remotely interesting to you and make a trip out of it.

• Follow a band you like to a random city (in a totally un-weird, not-necessarily-a-groupie way). Right now, look up the tour schedule of a band you like. Is there a city that’s INCONVENIENT and therefore ALLURING to visit, with the “excuse” of attending the concert? (Def Leppard, Foreigner, and Joan Jett and The Blackhearts are playing at the same show this summer in Winnipeg, Manitoba. You know you’ve always been curious about Winnipeg. Maybe it’s finally time to see Engelbert Humperdinck? You can catch the balladeer in Niagara Falls this April… see a show, see the falls, shenanigans will surely ensue.)
• Ballet fan? See a matinee of the Nutcracker in Düsseldorf this December, then pop over for dinner at The Duchy (because I just asked the smartest friend I’ve ever had, Chat GPT, for a recommendation, and that’s what its robot brain spat out).
• If you’re into “culture,” you could make a road trip to see the upcoming Banksy exhibit in Vancouver, or trek out to the Frist Art Museum in Nashville for the Farm to Table: Art, Food, and Identity in the Age of Impressionism exhibit (and then go to Tootsie’s honky-tonk, if anything just to use the word “honky-tonk”). Come to Palm Springs for Modernism Week already! Maybe going to The Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum in Maryland might float your boat (get it?). I once traveled to Wisconsin to go to a vintage postcard show (we lived in Chicago then so it wasn’t much of a trip, but I still felt like I did something cool). My friend Tessa traveled to Albuquerque (twice) to do the Breaking Bad tour (apparently you can drive by the carwash they did all that money laundering at?). And why aren’t we all quenching our thirst for life at the Minnesota State Fair’s All You Can Drink Milk Stand?
• Sports fans have been doing this for years… they not only make trips out of sporting events, but they party in the parking lot when they get there. Once in my life I need to tailgate… can I really get to the end and feel like I’ve lived successfully without eating a hot dog out of the back of someone’s hatchback? Maybe I’ll go see the Lions in Detroit and drink out of a red plastic cup. (Who am I kidding? I’d do the hot dog but can I skip the game?)
• Maybe a trip isn’t in the cards. How about a local adventure? Attend a performance in your town (even if it’s at your local high school) (as long as you don’t come across as pervy) (okay so maybe stick to the adult ensembles).

Food: it’s useful for more than just eating your feelings. You don’t have to be a fouche-bag (you know: a foodie douchebag) to make food the centerpiece of an excursion.

• • Look up one of those farm-to-table dinner organizations that set up impossibly cool tables of a hundred people in the middle of absurdly stunning sites. For years The Husband and I went to Outstanding in the Field dinners as excuses to visit states we’d normally have no plausible reason to go to (like Virginia: we needed a reason to visit, we ate a great meal, and now we love you!).
  • Traveling to restaurants that’ve earned Michelin stars is a fabulous (if not obvious) culinary adventure, and it can be just as delicious to visit the best food trucks and dive bars and diners in random, remote counties.
  • What about visiting every burger joint in your city with your family and rating each one according to an elaborate system (fry texture… burger juiciness… bun yieldingness… you be the judge). Or maybe instigate a Taco Tour of your town.
  • You don’t need to leave home. What about hosting a soup party, where everyone brings their favorite batch and tells the story behind the recipe? Or a dessert night where it’s all sweets and cakes and candies and (*oh! I’m swooning*) pies? Or forget hosting people and just make your favorite holiday meal in the middle of summer (because why does stuffing have to wait until winter? I am tired of the way we’ve been treating stuffing. It deserves to shine on the fourth of July under the fireworks.).
  • Screw the usual holiday meal. Look up a recipe for a traditional holiday meal from another nationality, and make it! We made doro wat—the Ethiopian holiday chicken stew—a couple of Christmases ago, and while we will never make it again (it was a spicy little mofo), it was fun.
  • Go into a bookstore, flip through a cookbook, and randomly stop at a page. That’s what you’re making tonight, Chef!
  • Ask a friend to pick a country, without saying why (it will get weird for a second but it’ll be okay), and when they answer, that’s what kind of cuisine you are going to either make them or treat them to out at dinner this weekend.
  • Hand the menu back to the server at a restaurant and ask them to surprise you. (Yes, I meant that.)

Don’t even get me started on travel sojourns. (Okay but I’m going to get started, because it’s a whole section in the article and I can’t not.)

• What about playing travel pin the tail on the donkey? Get a map of the world/ your country, blindfold yourself, take a shot of tequila, spin around a few times, stagger over to the map, and put a pin in the next place you’re going to now have to visit. This would be equally dramatic with a spinning globe that you stop with your finger at the place you’re going to travel to next. (The tequila part is optional.)
• It’s my fantasy to pack a suitcase and go to the airport without a planned destination. I want The Husband and I to look up at the departures board and pick a flight leaving that morning. (The fantasy usually involves a return trip, but sometimes it’s one-way and that’s a whole other blog post—the desire to move and start a New and Improved Life in a whole new place, from scratch. I can talk more about that at therapy I guess.)
• Map out a road trip that connects visits to friends you haven’t seen in a while. Call it the Relationship Reunion Tour… going from one city to the next, making new memories with old friends.
• Go on a solo vacation, even if it’s just a train trip to a different town for the day (you can leave in the morning, walk around a totally different town all day, and be home in time for bed that night. Can I join you on that adventure?).
• Revisit somewhere memorable, like the first place you fell in love/ tried pesto for the first time/ sold your first big account/ went with your parents every summer as a kid/ woke up on the beach in St. Maarten after a crazy night in 1994, grateful to not have been murdered/ drowned/ abducted/ bit by sand fleas/ any of the other things my mother suggested I avoid.

Try a class or activity in something completely new to you—the more off-beat the better.

• • Many of us take classes in things we’re already good at because we want to get better at them. You take a painting class because you used to love to paint in high school. You proceed to the blue belt because you got your purple belt. I took rock climbing lessons because I loved it and I wasn’t awful at it. Makes sense. And yet… I want to live a life where I ~also~ take classes in things I am bad at, maybe even terrible at… things I know zilcho about… just to see what’s it’s like because I’m curious (and willing to laugh at myself).
  • Go try the race car track experience… attend a book reading at the library from an author you’ve never heard of… try the sushi rolling class… take the online course in cat behavioral psychology… learn how to fly an airplane… go do the candle making class at the community center… sign up for a conversational Italian class just because you think it might be interesting.
  • Make your silly activities social; it’s way more fun to share experiences like the Acro-Cats (cat circus) than to just keep these kinds of winning events to yourself. (YES OF COURSE WE WENT TO A CAT CIRCUS… YOU DOUBTED ME?)
  • I am jonesing to go to the Modern Elder Academy for a week of mind-blowing inspiration… I bet you’d love it too. Booking time away for a class/ meditation retreat/ hiking thing is a great way to commit to learning/ health/ travel all at once.

Get to know the Atlas Obscura website where there are an almost-overwhelming number of cool things to do in almost every city, for all budgets. (I just looked up 237 Cool, Hidden, and Unusual Things to do in Los Angeles, and now I can’t die before going to The Echo Park Time Travel Mart—a time travel-themed store with this most excellent slogan: “Whenever you are, we’re already then.” Meet me there? Some time in the future?)

Write a bucket list and ACTUALLY CROSS THINGS OFF IT. I am deeply suspicious of bucket lists because they run the risk of becoming repositories of Dreams We Just Delay and Then Die Without Doing Them. What if you looked at your list and committed to doing something on it? What if you said, “I am tired of talking about (insert the thing that quickens your pulse with alivealicious excitement), and I am going to darned well do it, gosh golly!” (I recently wrote about this idea of living an “all talk, no action” kind of life and it still stings.)

Embrace spontaneity, especially if it scares you. The Power of Play authors also wrote about being “funtaneous” (fun + spontaneous) and I love that cocktail so much I’m tipsy at the idea of it already. Are you willing to execute Operation: Last Minute Plan Switcheroo in service of spicing things up and embracing tomfoolery? Read more of my diatribe on Healthy Impulsivity here if this stirs something in your soul.

So now what?

Living a vitality-and-fun-filled life doesn’t mean you have to become a buffoonish clown that no one takes seriously. But maybe you do need to dial down the seriousness and dial up the silliness, the irreverentness, the funtaneousness in your life. Maybe even by 6%. You can engage in shenanigans and still pay your mortgage. You can be an exuberant leader and still earn the respect of your team. You can embrace the hedonic side of life and not go straight to hell.

Life is like a giant smorgasbord that begs to be sampled. Who goes to the all-you-can-eat buffet and just gets an iceberg lettuce salad? Try the cornichons. Grab a barbequed rib. Try the mutton. And for god’s sake, don’t skip the dessert. Hey: when’s that dessert party you agreed to throw?

Let’s let George Bernard Shaw take this one home: “We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.” Play on!