Hey Reader,

As I’m writing this, my husband and I are taking a last-minute road trip to Rosemary Beach.

Although I suppose “last-minute” isn’t completely accurate, because this trip was originally supposed to happen two weeks ago for my 36th birthday.

We had talked about it, looked at places to stay, and started imagining a long, restful weekend somewhere neither of us had visited before.

Then Florida did what Florida sometimes does and gave us rain.

And more rain.

And the kind of weather forecast that makes you question whether you want to spend several hours driving toward a beach you may only experience through a wet car window. 😂 (No, thank you!)

So, we postponed it.

We said we would go later, when the weather improved and the timing made more sense.

The only problem with “later” is that it sounds like a real date on the calendar even when it isn’t.

“Later” could mean next weekend…

It could mean next month…

It could also quietly (easily) become never…

A few days ago, we looked at the forecast again. The weather was finally better, but the trip would have to happen with very little planning.

And almost immediately, my brain started producing reasons to wait. We still have so many things to prepare before the baby arrives in December.

• Halloween is coming.
• Then, Thanksgiving.
• Then, the rest of the holidays.

Work isn’t going to suddenly become quieter. (PS. It actually feels like the opposite right now 😆).

Our weekends aren’t going to suddenly become empty either.

And right away, I knew there was not going to be a magical moment when everything is finished, the calendar is clear, the weather is perfect, and two adults feel 100% prepared to drive over 8 hours and leave town for a weekend away.

So, we decided this was as good a time as any. Like most things in life that you want to make happen, honestly.

We booked an Airbnb in the area yesterday, quickly packed our things this morning after finishing work, got in the car, and turned the postponed birthday trip into a late birthday trip and babymoon (we're almost at the 30-week mark and counting).

Neither of us has ever visited the Florida Panhandle, which feels a little ridiculous considering we live in Florida, but it also means we get to experience a completely new part of our own state together.

And honestly, the simple act of going somewhere different already feels energizing.

Sometimes you don’t realize how much you’ve been moving through the same routines, seeing the same places, and thinking the same thoughts until you give your brain something new to notice.

• A different road.
• A town you’ve never walked through.
• A restaurant you chose because neither of you knows what’s good yet.
• A weekend with an open calendar to wander around and no established routine to follow.

There’s something surprisingly refreshing about becoming a beginner in a place where you don’t already know what to expect.

And that had me thinking about fun.

More specifically, a question James Clear recently shared in his newsletter:

I love that question because “fun” doesn’t have to mean one particular thing.

It doesn’t have to be a beach vacation, a party, or doing something dramatic enough to post about afterward.

"Fun" can simply be whatever makes you feel curious, engaged, energized, or more awake inside your own life.

Last week, for example, fun looked like participating in an AI bootcamp with Callan Faulkner.

I was already using ChatGPT pretty consistently for work, so I didn’t expect the bootcamp to completely change the way I thought about these tools.

But it opened my mind to so many more possibilities.

So, for the past two weeks, I’ve been experimenting more with ChatGPT, Claude, and Claude’s Chrome browser extension, and other tools I didn't know about before, tweaking different systems, testing what I can automate, and occasionally leaving a tool open while it was working on its own, and I moved on to another task.

And over the last two weeks, I kept having these little moments of:

And apparently that is my current version of entertainment. 😂 #adulting

It’s helping me work differently, but it’s also giving me the feeling that comes from learning something new and realizing there are possibilities I couldn’t see before.

Other “fun” things in my mind

Another night, fun looked like watching the Netflix limited series about Mike Tyson.

I obviously knew who he was, but I didn’t know much about his story. I ended up finding it much more interesting and thought-provoking than I expected.

That didn’t require a plane ticket, a carefully planned experience, or a major life change.

It just required choosing something outside the things I normally watch and allowing myself to become interested in a life and subject I knew very little about.

And lately, I’ve been wondering whether fun might also be the thing that helps me change my complicated relationship with social media.

I genuinely love sharing things I’m learning, things I’m enjoying, and things that are helping me, especially when there’s a chance they might help someone else.

But the moment I announce to myself that I’m going to “get serious” and post consistently, something changes.

Sharing becomes "content creation".

Something I initially wanted to say becomes something I ‘should’ publish.

Then come the content pillars, the posting schedule, the strategy, the number of posts I’m supposed to create, and all the rules people on the internet insist we need to follow.

And suddenly, something I enjoy begins to feel like another responsibility.

So, naturally, I stop posting for several days or weeks, until I feel genuinely excited to share something again.

And then the cycle repeats. 😵‍💫

I don’t have the perfect solution to that yet.

But I’m going to try a small experiment:

For now, I’m going to share more of what I genuinely want to share.

• What I’m learning.
• What I’m trying.
• What is making my life better.
• What I find interesting, useful, funny, or worth talking about.

Not because it fits perfectly into a content calendar or because it satisfies a rule about what someone in my “niche” is supposed to post.

Instead, I will share it just because I want to share it.

My “strategy”, at least for now, is:

Have fun with it.

I’ll let you know how that goes.

Maybe that’s what all these seemingly unrelated things have in common.

• A last-minute road trip.
• Experimenting with AI.
• Learning about someone whose life is completely different from mine.
• Changing the way I approach Instagram.

The container keeps changing.

But the direction is the same:

We put so much pressure on ourselves to define the final version of things before we’ve experienced the first version.

We want to know what the project will become before we create it.

What the habit will look like forever before we try it for a week.

Whether the trip will be worth it before we leave home.

Whether a new interest is productive enough to deserve our time.

Whether the thing we want to share fits the identity we’ve already created.

But clarity can exist at two different levels.

• There’s the direction: What you want more of in your life, how you want to feel, or what keeps calling you back.
• Then there’s the container: The particular activity, plan, project, habit, place, or experiment through which you explore it.

The direction might be curiosity and enjoyment.

The container might be a road trip, a new tool, an unfamiliar story, a pottery class, a different walking route, or posting something simply because it made you think.

The direction can remain steady even while the container changes.

And sometimes the only way to discover whether a particular container fits is to try it.

So, if life has felt repetitive, heavy, overly serious, or a little too much like one long list of responsibilities lately, ask yourself:

It doesn’t have to become your new identity.

It doesn’t have to turn into a permanent habit.

It doesn’t need to be impressive, strategic, or worth documenting.

Let one version of it be enough.

• Visit somewhere you haven’t been.
• Try the class.
• Watch something about a subject you know nothing about.
• Test the tool.
• Order something different.
• Share the post you actually want to share (even if you think it doesn’t make ‘sense’).
• Say yes before you create twelve reasons to wait for a better weekend.

We only get one ride on this merry-go-round.

And I don't know about you, but I don’t want to spend mine turning every interest into a strategy or postponing every experience until life becomes less busy.

Because it probably won’t. Or better yet, I know it won’t.

But it can become more interesting, energizing, and alive when we allow ourselves to follow what feels fun now.

You don’t need to know the final form of your idea before you begin it.

You only need to understand what keeps calling you back… And give one version of it the chance to become real.

Love creating your mind one day at a time? Forward this to a friend so they can get in on the action and sign up below. Subscribe to The Created Mind Thank you for reading and sharing, Jenny ​​​​

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P.S. What’s the last thing you did for the first time? Hit reply and tell me. And if it has been a while, tell me one new thing you’d like to try next.