Are your joyful activities unavailable to you too?

Why are they not available to you?

The joy that is not available to me right now in my life is physical affection from loved ones.

My joys are pretty simple: reading comics, eating chocolate chip cookies, spending time with my wife and daughter. All are pretty easy to come by.

There is no snow where we live and my s/o can’t dance and said I can’t go dancing with strangers! If I did my daughter would freak out. It just isn’t something I’d do and I’d feel quite uncomfortable and just plain old.
I am so glad I asked this question. I get to vent and feel a kinship with the responders.

@janbb I forgot that one.

Alas, my pool of joyful activities has shrunk. Not because they’re not available to me but because out of sheer laziness I’ve made myself less available to them.

Maybe, but I can’t think of any right now because I have so many more joyful activities to make up for it.

@Aster One of the pleasures of my single life now is that I can go out dancing with women friends. MY Ex would never have stopped me from doing that before but I just didn’t think of it or have the right friends. Could you not find a way to do that?

I dance where ever and.when ever I get the chance. I danced in front of a huge crowd to entertain at a medieval festival, completely impromptu, with a group of four. I drink good wine, I make soap and laugh with my son. My love is far away, but will soon be near, so that will be a joyful reunion.

@cazzie good; so this q doesn’t apply to you.
@janbb no; I won’t dance anymore. It just isn’t something I’d do and I’d feel quite uncomfortable and just plain old. One of my married daughters goes very infrequently with her friends. She claims she doesn’t dance except with them but I don’t buy it. lol

I love to eat and I love my cooking. But I wouldn’t categorize eating as a joyful activity. Something that raises my heart rate is what I’d say is joyful.
When I go for a walk it’s an ok activity, raises my heart rate a little bit but it sure isn’t joyful. When I watch my favorite tv shows I really enjoy doing it but wouldn’t consider doing that as joyful. It isn’t a thrill.
Laughing on the phone with a friend is sort of fun but not joyful.

I enjoyed walking and hiking, but my chronic pain has limited my physical activities. It has also limited my ability to go into the city and walk around when friends are in town, or go on photo-walks.

I also experience a lot of fatigue, so there aren’t many things I have the focus or energy to do anymore, and I was a pretty low-energy person to begin with. Now I get scatterbrained and spent pretty quickly. I am fortunate that my fiancé is compassionate and can see on my face, even when I’m trying to suck it up and not complain.

Fluthering. I lost my computer a few weeks back, I’m posting this through my PlayStation 4. Typing takes years as you have to select all letters individually, so this has greatly reduced my participation. I can’t type long answers and Fluther how I usually do, and it pisses me off.

“But I wouldn’t categorize eating as a joyful activity.”

I sure as hell would.

Two things immediately come to mind…
1) Riding my motorcycle. There was nothing like the feel of the g forces or the thrill of being hunched down as low as I could and seeing the horizon fall away as the front end begins to lift toward the sky. The motorcycle now sits in my barn gathering dust .

2) Getting sweaty twixt the sheets on a lazy, rainy Sunday afternoon and falling asleep exhausted without a care in the world .

Bonus points for writing ’‘twixt’’ lol.

Seeing the twins regularly.

@Symbeline ‘Tis a euphemism for a euphemism.

I’d by lying if I said it didn’t miss it every day.

Oh. I thought it was old english for ’‘between’’.

Singing. I loved singing and was pretty good at it, before testosterone ruined my voice :(

@Symbeline ‘Tis.

@downtide – I guess that’s something that doesn’t occur to most people. Did the medical staff counsel you about this; or perhaps if you networked with others who’ve gone through it before you, were you warned? Do you think you’ll be able to retrain your changed voice to sing, albeit in a different range?

Your comment just reminded me that when we went to the baptism of a friend’s baby last weekend, I wasn’t able to sing the hymns the way I could when I was a regular churchgoer and school chorus member through childhood and my teenage years. I was taken aback by this, although it makes sense. I don’t sing anywhere near as much as I used to, and most of what I sing is contemporary stuff that isn’t as high as those soprano parts I used to be given.

The things I’ve enjoyed most in my life are expensive activities, so I’ve only had the chance to enjoy them the few times I’ve had the opportunity. Whitewater rafting, kneeboarding and tubing. These activities bring me the greatest pleasure, but they are too darn expensive.

Making music. I am a clarinetist who has not played in over three years because I got my two front teeth root-canaled and capped for a ridiculous amount of money. Playing the clarinet involves biting with those two front teeth on the mouthpiece, with a not insignificant amount of pressure. I’m terrified both of hurting my teeth again and, somewhat more irrationally, that I won’t be able to play like I used to because the teeth are differently shaped and will therefore change my embouchure entirely. I know I need to get over my fear and just jump into it again, but right now it feels pretty unavailable.

Philosophy. It’s just not fun or even all that interesting anymore. It makes me tired now to think about the very same things that used to intrigue me more deeply than anything. I have no idea why. Hopefully it’s a result of depression and my excitement for philosophy will return as that lifts.

@Aster My local bar has live music every weekend, and no matter who plays the floor is always monopolized by about a dozen delightfully, crazily dancing 50–70 year olds who all look really silly and don’t give a damn. I think it’s excellent.

@wildpotato – Like my singing voice, your embouchure (that’s my new word of the day!) has probably already changed simply from lack of exercise, yes? I played clarinet in elementary school, but because I have an underbite, a wind instrument was a terrible choice for me.

Driving is denied me in this stupid country I live in.

@hearkat I was warned, but it’s really a 50/50 thing. Some people can continue to sing after treatment and some can’t. I was also given conflicting advice from various people (all of whom were able to sing afterwards) – some said “Don’t try to sing at all until your voice settles at the end” and others said “Keep doing it as much as you can all the way through”. In the end I didn’t because I just couldn’t. Now my voice has stabilised and if I had enough range I’d be a nice baritone but my range is so narrow now that just about the only song I can still sing is Frere Jacques

ETA: If I’d known in advance that I would lose my ability to sing, I’d still do it anyway. The sacrifice has been more than worth it.

@downtide – I had no doubt that you’d have still gone ahead with it, I was just wondering whether you had been mentally prepared for it or had been blindsided by it. A former partner in our High School a Capella quartet lost her singing voice from being incubated after a bad car accident, and it affected her very deeply.

Ahh, fortunately it’s a very temporary situation right now, but I’m currently missing all of the things I love about college, especially living with three of my best friends. My roommates where I’m stuck right now are negligent at best and hostile at worst. I’m also without a piano at the moment, which has become one of my favorite hobbies over the past year or so.

Three more weeks left until all of that changes, although I’m having a hard time coping with the fact that I lose it all again – for good – in less than a year.