5 Unexpected Ways to Have Fun Writing Again
Scratch your own itch, write about what excites you
When I was eight, my friends and I would lower the rim on our neighbor’s basketball hoop and dunk. Shooting wasn’t cool yet, and we couldn’t make a free throw without hurling our entire body at the target like a shotput. We would spend hours pretending we were LeBron James, throwing alley-oops to each other, and come home each night with bruised forearms.
Our neighbor was furious, not that we might break the backboard, but because he felt we didn’t appreciate the game of basketball. I’m sure some of you can relate to what happened next.
One day, the basket was elevated to ten feet, and the crank was missing. “I threw away the crank!” Our neighbor said from his porch, “The next time you dunk will be post-puberty.”
We lost interest in basketball, and my friends and I went our separate ways in terms of athletic pursuits. That was probably for the best. Mike became an all-American freestyle swimmer, Colin played rugby in college, and I played golf for Ohio Wesleyan.
But I often wondered what might’ve happened if our neighbor had never raised the basket. Would we not appreciate the game? Would we never learn proper shooting techniques? Would we have lost interest in the game anyway?
