Backstory: Fun! I love game nights! It’s friendly competition and improv and creativity and laughing till you feel you’re about to burst. Also a great excuse to get friends together for an easy, inexpensive meal.

For inspiration, I cracked open our games cabinet. Monopoly? Trivial Pursuit? Charades? Definitely Charades. So many possibilities!

What Happened: When did I stop having fun? When did I cease being fun? Despite my initial enthusiasm, I wrestled with this nudge all week. I looked at possible dates, I considered possible players. I was tempted to “cheat” and pull out a deck of cards for a game of Gin Rummy with just me and my guy. I followed through on nothing. It all felt like too much effort.

The Ah-Hahs: I’m sitting here feeling disappointed in myself and incredibly discouraged. It’s been ages (years?) since we have hosted a full-blown game night. At previous gatherings, we and our playmates had a fabulous time together and wondered out loud why we didn’t do this more often.

Why? I still don’t have an answer. Except that life is busy, and I’m tired. I know having a game night could have been exactly the pick-me-up I need, but I just couldn’t get it done.

I want to brush myself off and start fresh, and maybe I’ll do that. The holidays are just around — oh, geez, they’re here! — so maybe I won’t need to coordinate anything. Maybe when we’re sitting around with family and friends we’ll break out a game and dive in. Maybe the “lesson” with this nudge is to not worry so much about the planning and simply remind myself to stay open when inspiration strikes.

That being said, I do hope you had more success with the nudge than I did.