At the beginning of this year, I chose a word: whimsy. Which felt very personal and original for approximately five minutes. Then whimsy became a trend. Suddenly everyone was romanticizing their lives, buying charm necklaces and putting tiny lamps in places tiny lamps absolutely did not need to be (guilty as charged). Normally, discovering that something I like has become a trend makes me want to pretend I never liked it. But I’m keeping this one. Partly because I chose it first, obviously, and partly because I don’t think it’s a coincidence that so many people are craving the same thing.
The last few years have been so bleak it’s almost boring to point it out. We went through a pandemic and then mostly just went back to work. Politics are exhausting. The current administration has added its own special layer of hell. Everything costs too much. Climate collapse is looming. AI is coming for everyone’s job, apparently including mine. We are tired. And somewhere in the middle of all that, we started putting bows on things. Honestly, I get it. Because whimsy isn’t happiness exactly. Happiness feels like a lot to ask right now. Whimsy is more like: Look at this weird little thing I enjoy.
This summer, I started following the weird little things. One led me to a giant warehouse in Pennsylvania. The American Treasure Tour is almost impossible to explain without sounding like I made it up. Antique cars, mechanical music machines, miniature circuses, animatronic dolls, model airplanes, old advertisements and somehow even more stuff behind all of that. It’s basically an IRL I Spy book. You ride through part of it on a tram. Turns out, this is my idea of a very good day. I love places that exist because somebody got way too interested in something and refused to stop. There is no restraint here. No tasteful edit. Nobody saying, “Maybe we don’t need seventeen more player pianos.” Wrong. We did.
Another random Pennsylvania side quest took me to the Mercer Museum in Doylestown, Henry Chapman Mercer’s collection housed in a concrete building that feels like it was designed by a victorian in a fever dream. It’s full of winding staircases, handmade tiles and thousands of tools, furniture and everyday objects, including enormous things hanging from the ceiling because apparently putting them on the floor would have been too predictable. It looks a little like if Hogwarts had a hoarder move in. I loved it immediately.
We spend so much time looking at the same boring white kitchens, neutral interiors and trendy objects styled three different ways by three different influencers. Then you walk into a maze packed with one eccentric man’s collection and remember that you are, technically, allowed to make your life weird.
Another side quest took us to the Catskills for one of Foxfire Mountain House’s In the Wild dinners. Dinner is something I participate in almost every day. I am very experienced. But dinner at a long mossy table in the woods, under chandeliers hanging from the trees, while strangers pass plates back and forth is different. It’s dinner with unnecessary production value. As someone who has spent most of her career adding unnecessary production value to things, I respect that.
Maybe that’s part of what I like about whimsy. It’s inefficient. We optimize everything now. Sleep. Workouts. Vacations. Morning routines. Meanwhile, there is absolutely no practical reason to drive two hours to see the world’s largest Gumby. Dinner does not need to happen in a magical forest amongst the birds and chipmunks. And yet.
There were louder side quests too. I saw Robyn, surrounded by thousands of people screaming “Dancing on My Own” back at her, which is a religious experience in its own right. And I saw Hilary Duff, an important tween cultural event for a very specific demographic of elder millennial women and gay men. At some point you realize you’re allowed to like the things you loved when you were younger without pretending it’s ironic. I went. I sang. I was thrilled. Teenage me would be very pleased.
Admittedly, most of these examples involve tickets, gas, hotels and the DINK couple’s uncanny ability to say, “Do you want to drive several hours this weekend and look at something peculiar?” But whimsy doesn’t have to cost anything. I grew zinnias in my backyard this summer. They are ridiculous flowers. They’re bright, cheerful and aggressively flower-shaped, like a child’s drawing of what a flower should look like. Every few days another one bloomed, and every few days I took fourteen pictures of it like I had personally discovered zinnias. I started doing that with other things too. Weird signs. Old objects. Good light. A color combination I liked. Things nobody standing next to me would necessarily think twice about. And maybe that’s actually the point.
When I chose whimsy as my word for the year, I thought I needed to add more interesting things to my life. Get your cat a tiny top hat. Start restoring antique doll houses. And yes, do those things. But whimsy isn’t always something you have to go find. Sometimes it’s just noticing something you normally wouldn’t.
Maybe all this sudden interest in whimsy is escapism. Probably. But I’m not convinced that’s such a bad thing. The serious stuff will still be there after you go to the strange roadside attraction or stop for a second because the light looks nice coming through the trees. It doesn’t always need the whole day. So when life offers me a side quest, I’m taking it.