Doodling, Slippers and A Writing Practice
My eyes open. The clock on my bedside table glows 4:54 a.m.
The house is absolutely still. I hear Jim breathing softly beside me.
As quietly as I can, I feel through the darkness for the sweatshirt resting on the floor beside me and slip it over my head.
I reach around blindly for my slippers–first one, then the next. I slip them on as quietly as I can so as to not wake the others, then shuffle down the hallway toward the kitchen.
The red light of the coffeemaker shines brightly and I press it, listening for the gurgle as it starts brewing the pot prepared by Jim the night before.
I head to the couch, my favorite spot, the chaise in front of the fireplace. I climb under the furry blanket and get comfortable. Then I reach for the white binder, filled with blank 3-hole punch paper, pen tucked into the vinyl pocket inside.
I start writing. No plan. No editing. Just start. Let it flow, whatever has been brewing through the night.
Often while still in bed, before I even open my eyes, a phrase hovers, beckoning me, waiting to be plunked down as soon as I can get it on paper. Like today, it was about slippers, the feeling of slipping them on my feet, so comforting, especially now as the first hint of fall has started.
My mornings didn’t use to be like this. They were varied, each day different. Dog barking. Kids asking. Phone ringing.
My 28-Day Flow Challenge gave me all of this. Five minutes felt so doable, so reachable. It was such a relief to have to do something just for the fun of it. Little did I know, month after month of trying this or that, just showing up, determined to reach a state of flow with paper and pen, a habit would form.
This time around with the Flow Challenge, I’m trying doodling.
I used to doodle on the edge of my college notebooks in that fat, open white part at the top of the lined pages that teases us (okay, maybe just me) like an open canvas, asking for artwork. I’d take the bait as professors would drone on in the background, and start.
It was always the same. A curvy line up, down and all around, never overlapping, no lines could ever cross and I couldn’t pick up my pen and start again–my own rules, a flow challenge without even knowing it.
Somehow playing this game helped boring lectures pass more easily. I actually found it easier to focus and stay awake while doodling. It was as if doodling drew the professor’s words deeper into my psyche, the way we draw a kitten to us when we pull a string.
I’d doodle, never picking up my pen until a point would be too juicy, too compelling and I’d take a break and jot down a note or two in the lines beneath. Then I would pick up with my doodling again, trying to make it look as if I had never left.
The other students around me, chewing gum, shifting in creaking seats would all fall away. It was as if I was on adventure, alone with the professor and we were riding a roller coaster or biking hills together, up and down the curves of my doodles rather than me just sitting on a hard wooden chair.
The beauty of doodling is that by its very nature, it knows it will never be framed or shared so it exists merely to amuse us, the creators, in the moment. Doodling, by definition, is almost always about process, never a product.
I read a study recently that showed that 250 teenagers who frequently got into the state of flow as a result of playing sports, creative hobbies or studying were happier on every count than 250 teenagers who rarely experienced flow, spending their time watching TV or hanging out at the mall, except for one thing–the kids who experienced flow thought the kids who rarely did were having more fun, which as it turned out, wasn’t true at all.
Finding creative ways to experience flow in our lives, I think, is about finding meaning. When we wake up thinking about our creative projects with a sense of passion, whether they are fragments of a sentence that needs completing, a pleasure that hovers waiting for us, or a piece of art, garden or project that’s been pestering us because we need to solve the problem, figure out what’s missing, or blend the perfect color to meet some need bigger than ourselves–we find purpose.
We find ourselves in the losing of ourselves. In focusing on my pen and nothing more, the rest falls away and only my soul remains.
Yesterday, I started a new 28-Day Flow Challenge. You can join too, if you want. You really can start anytime, but I find it’s especially powerful when those of us who really want to do this, to find ourselves within our creativity, do it as a journey, an adventure together.
The idea is super simple. Just 5 to ten minutes a day of claimed time for you to experiment, practice and play with this idea of flow in your own life. If you want to join me this time around, email me back and let me know what activity you choose (you can always change it up as you go along).
Today’s photo is my first doodle in a long, long time–a whole lot of nothing and something all at once. That’s what flow is to me.
How To Get Out Of A Funk
Here’s also another one of my articles recently published by www.LifeHack.org. It’s about something so many of us are dealing with lately–feeling stressed out, and occasionally getting in a funk. If you know anyone who may benefit from this, please pass it on.
