We're used to thinking of fun as a sort of synonym for light pleasure.

Wouldn't we all rather have the possibility of finding pleasure and delight in literally anything we might encounter? Instead of assuming that actually there are only these three things where pleasure and delight are possible. Like oh, it's television and socialization and work, and then everything else is the smoke I have to somehow choke my way through in order to get to the good parts.

The whole idea of play is in finding, acknowledging, and then working with the natural constraints and limitations that you find in the world.

You allow yourself to discover the things that are already there when you play.

When we think about play and games and the situations in which having fun is seen as an outcome, they often have to do with repetition. You're returning to something again, and even despite that similarity, you squeeze something new out of it.

Once you get yourself on that path where you're willing to find something delightful in laundry and in dishwashers, it means that you train yourself to be able to find it almost anywhere in almost anything.

My wife, there's certain kinds of housework that she just doesn't see as necessary to do in the way that I do. Things like the state of our closet or where things are in the kitchen. I have this almost unhealthily obsessive desire to have things in their place and she just totally doesn't. And this is a potential point of conflict, of course.