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It’s been quite the week between MLK Day, the Inauguration, and continuing classes for many college students. I hope everyone has had a good one and found something good out of it because today, I’m bringing you something from my week to talk about.

For me, on top of the holiday and historical Inauguration, it was also my first week of classes at the local CC and as usual, I went through the usual syllabus lectures and introduction discussion posts. I’ve been out of classes since June but it feels like just yesterday, so jumping back in will be fun, right? With everything online now, it’ll be interesting to see how professors have adapted over time to keep classes adaptive, interactive, and productive as learning spaces since things have really changed this year for both themselves and for us.

One of the classes I’m taking is social psychology and for once, I was surprised by what turned out to be an unusual set of questions for our introductions. Instead of the usual who are you, what’s your favorite color, and tell me a fun fact about you kinds of questions, the ones on our discussion board assignment were different.

After introducing ourselves with our names and our pronouns, we were asked what our favorite thing was about psychology, what we do for enjoyment in these tumultuous times, whether pineapple belongs on pizza, and if a hotdog is a sandwich.

So first things first, I have to now ask you: what do you think, is a hotdog a sandwich or not?

Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section, lively conversation welcome.

The question I wanted to really talk about today though was the one asking what we do for enjoyment. If you think about it, it’s been a very long year and everyone needs something to appreciate outside of the obligatory. The students in my class had countless answers, from the ones I’m used to seeing like yoga, playing with pets, time with family, and watching television.

Some of the answers I’m not so used to seeing were ones like creating a business, model making, contest entering, and even Reddit thread moderating. I can’t say I have ever seen contest entering as something someone does for enjoyment or fun so that one was really interesting to me. Whether these things are for the short term, long term, just for fun, or more of a commitment, sometimes I forget the number of different ways people spend their time.

As for my answer, I’ve been lucky enough to have a job with full-time hours so I know what I’m doing for a lot of my days. Beyond those hours, I’m about to learn what it’s like to find a whole new balance now that I’m taking classes. When it comes to what I do for enjoyment though, my last roommate is the one who introduced me to something new earlier last year, and now I finally understand why it was so fun to watch her play. You’ve probably heard of the game before too:

Animal Crossing.

Now, I’m not about to start acting like an ad for the Switch game, quite the opposite actually. It’s kind of silly, there are no serious objectives, and every time I try to explain to someone what I do in the game, it sounds a bit funnier than the time before. I’ve only been playing it for about three weeks now and I’m still not completely sure why I keep coming back to it, yet I do anyway. 

Think of it like this: You ask a friend what they do for fun or what they’ve been working on, and they give you this look like, “do you really want to know?” You nod and urge them on, hoping it’s encouragement enough and they pause, looking down and back up again. 

Then finally, they smile before starting in with an “okay, so…” As their face lights up, you know that they’re off on a story that doesn’t even need to have a meaning for you to see the excitement and appreciation on their face, no matter how silly or small the thing they’re talking about is. That’s the kind of thing where you simply smile because you know someone is truly getting a kick out of whatever they’re talking about, whether or not you understand any of it.

Between my work and some other professional things I’ve been working on, I haven’t been putting as much time into the hobby and enjoyment area of my life. So when someone asks me what I’ve been up to, I kind of become that friend with the lit-up face. It’s not because my new game is the best thing ever, but because it’s something that brings me a little bit of joy even for an hour (that always seems to turn into longer) of play every day or so.

My posts tend to talk about what’s going on in the news or the world and how we can all keep ourselves going, but today I wanted to share what I’ve been up to so I could do something a bit different. Now I get to turn the question around and ask you what I was asked this week because I would love to hear the answers:

What do you do for enjoyment?

Even if you can’t go on and on about it for hours or feel as if all your worries are gone just because of that enjoyment, what is one thing you do that brings you joy anyway? Talk about it on Facebook, Twitter, or in the comments and see if you can find someone who may relate to you.

And hey, don’t forget to answer that first question I asked earlier of whether or not a hotdog is a sandwich too! So with a little bit of question homework I’m hoping you’ll participate in—or a lot for me now that I’m back in school—I’ll see you next week. 

Until then, have a wonderful weekend.