Showing posts with label fun. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fun. Show all posts

April 3 – Don't Go to Work Unless It's Fun Day

Posted on April 3, 2018

There is a book called Don't Go to Work Unless It's Fun, and author Frank Sanitate may have started the holiday as a way of publicizing his 1994 book.

I am not sure what points Sanitate makes in this book; if you are motivated to check it out, I cannot think of a better day to do so!!

But here is what I thought of, when I saw this holiday name:

A lot of jobs are really difficult, or exhausting, or dirty, or even boring - but also really important. So I do not want to urge people in difficult, exhausting, dirty, or boring jobs to quit or even to skip work today...

BUT, in any job, people can find a way to make the job at least somewhat fun. This might be a great day for bosses to try to brainstorm ways to do just that! And I would urge people who work in supposedly non-fun jobs to also brainstorm ways to make those jobs better and even, at moments, fun.


Of course, as important as some jobs are for all of society (like, we kind of need someone to collect trash!), jobs tend to be very important to the job holders, because doing those jobs is how they get money! So don't take today off just because it's Don't Go to Work Unless It's Fun Day, unless you know your boss is fine with that!

I often think how important it is for people to try to find work worth doing (to them), work they are good at (or can become good at), work they find fun. Young people should be exposed to eleven-ty thousand different sorts of subjects and activities and jobs and opportunities, and they should be encouraged to explore whatever makes their heart sing - because happiness with careers and work is an important part of happiness with life!


But I also think that, at least in modern "Western" society, the word "work" often gets a bad sort of rap, especially as it contrasts with the word "play." Here are some great quotes to make you think about the work / play dichotomy:






Also on this date:

October 6, 2012 - Mad Hatter Day

Do you remember the Mad Hatter from Alice in Wonderland? He wore a sign on his giant hat: “In this style 10/6.” Because of that sign, 10/6 (October 6) is the Mad Hatter's special day.

What do people do to celebrate Mad Hatter Day?

We celebrate silliness!

It's not a day for tricks or pranks, like April Fool's Day. This kinder, gentler “fool's day” is for being silly in a little-kid way. Listen to jokes, sing ridiculous songs, run around, do cartwheels and somersaults and silly dances! Or try to look at our world with your topsy-turvy “the whole world's crazy” eyeglasses:

  •  We park on driveways and drive on parkways. (Thank you, George Carlin, for pointing this out!)
  • Iceland is pretty green (in the summer), but Greenland is covered with ice.




  • A shrimp is a shelled animal, which means that it has a shell, until it is shelled by a chef—by which I mean the chef removes the shell. Now the shelled shrimp is ready to cook....So....”shelled” means having a shell and not having a shell!
  • When you dust a bookshelf, you remove the dust, but when you dust a cake with sugar, you add the “dust” (sugar crystals).
  • We get the power to travel around by “taking the juice from hundred-million-year-old rotten dinosaur food and exploding it in a metal can.” (Thanks, Ari Rapkin, for this fresh look at our world!) 
  • Planes landing on an aircraft carrier have to catch a heavy wire with a hook attached to the tail of the airplane in order to survive the landing. It's incredibly difficult and dangerous, and when I toured an aircraft carrier I wondered who would even come up with such a ridiculous concept! (I mean, it does work, but what made people think for a moment that it would?)
  • Rabbits can't digest enough of their food as it passes the first time through their digestive system, so they have to eat their own poop in order to get enough nutrients. (Well, technically speaking, they eat the softer, smellier cectropes, not their actual feces, which are small, round, and dry.)

If you look at the familiar world as if you were a stranger in a strange land, you will see some weird and wacky things. But remember that Mad Hatter Day is mostly about funny and silly fun!







Also on this date: