Find your side quest
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I tried skipping the other day. I was at the – I was at a rest stop and I did some squats and I did some jumping jacks and I did some lunges to the door because I just wanted to move. I didn't know if I would remember how to skip. Have you all skipped recently? I do. I have.
I had skips in the past year, yeah.
Me too.
Yeah.
Yeah, I'm avid. I still knew how to do it. Yeah. We skip on here.
That makes me really happy. How did you, why, why are, why have y'all been skipping? Like what prompted this?
My niece is skipping age.
Okay.
And so I'll see her do something and I'll be like. Do I remember how that works? And I do.
Skip, because I am a big kid. It's why I study play. My partner and I, I have a little rubber ball in my backpack I take whenever I travel. And we were in the Poughkeepsie train station throwing it around like... And people were like, what are you guys doing?
I love that. Yeah. I'm a play advocate across the board. So if it's asking folks, like, when's the last time you skipped? Like, why aren't we skipping more? And then usually we'll end up skipping. So I've definitely done it recently, too.
This is NPR's Life Kit. I'm Mariel Segarra. When's the last time you skipped or even skipped out on your day-to-day routine to do something just for the fun of it? In other words, when's the last time you took a side quest? The term side quest comes from video games. It's a mission that deviates from the main storyline. You don't absolutely need a side quest to finish the game, but they add flavor. They add depth. They build the world. It's things like go to this other realm and collect a bunch of yellow flowers or have your player compete in a knife throwing game with a bunch of soldiers and wake up with a tattoo on his neck. This has been a trend on social media to share a side quest. Like I'm learning to crochet a hundred different types of granny squares or I will be walking the length of Manhattan this month.
or I'm going to be arranging flowers for myself every week. One of the people you heard earlier was Brittany Luce, host of NPR's It's Been a Minute, and intermediate Spanish speaker. Brittany's current side quest is learning Spanish.
I'm almost intermediate. I'm so close to B1.
Like, we're literally, we're just starting B1 right now. We teamed up because we wanted to know what makes for a good side quest. So we got a couple of experts on the horn. Sahara Monet, curator of Let's Play NYC, a community group that prioritizes play.
My side quest is just going to the park more, being outside. I definitely say two minimum times a week I have to be at the park.
And Kira Gaunt, associate professor of ethnomusicology at the University at Albany. One of her many side quests is writing poetry.
Writing a poem. without editing it and then recording it immediately. It's teaching me that it doesn't have to be overwrought, reworked 20 times, rewritten. You know, like we don't replay what we said to someone. No, I want to do that over. Take two.
On this episode of Life Kit, I sit down with Brittany, Sahara, and Kira to talk about all things side quests, how to find the right one for you, and how a good side quest can help bring you back to life.
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