Lately I’ve returned to an old past-time: doodling. It’s something I did a lot as a child and a young adult but I never knew back then that this absentminded past-time was actually good for me.
What is doodling? It’s a simple drawing, often created whilst our mind is elsewhere. A doodle can be something concrete e.g. flowers, faces, a cartoon of your teacher or a sketch of your cat; or they can be just random and abstract lines and shapes; or a combination of the two. The classic example of a doodle is one done down the margin of your school book or on the back of a till receipt. I certainly spent hours doing that kind of doodle at school and in my diary as a teenager.
I’ve started doodling again as a way of taking a break from my studies (I’m in the throes of an MSc in Creative Writing for Therapeutic Purposes). I put a timer on for 25 minutes and study, then when I’ve completed that I let myself have a five minute break where I just doodle. I let my mind and my pen wander, sometimes I’m purposeful and sometimes I just see what happens when I move the pen around, often I combine the two approaches. I find doing this gives me a break from my studies, or whatever else is on my mind, and it helps me recover my energy to get back to the next 25 minute block I need to attend to. It helps calm me, it helps focus me and it gets my creativity going. I often come back from this break with a different idea or angle that I might not otherwise have had.
Everyone needs to find ways to calm down, relax or focus. What kinds of things help you relax? Why not try a doodle…?
On coming home from that trip, I felt this strong sense of CWTP acting in a similar way – the idea of feelings and experiences being raw and elemental forces acting on and within us and words both bearing witness to that but also having the potential to shape and change those feelings and experiences. It inspired me to write this poem in which I’m connecting the two:
I love Autumn, it’s a beautiful time of year. And its a time when I find myself turning inward and reflecting on things more as the days and nights begin to get colder. I’ve been particularly aware of the changes going on around me this month, which is made physically manifest as the leaves begin to change colour and fall in the natural world outside. The seasons move on and we cannot change that but we can decide how we want to be with that change.