My Doodles

One of the things I like to do in my free time, when I’m feeling inspired, or when I don’t know how to express a recent emotion or thought that I have been dealing with, is doodle. (Sorry that sentence was so drawn out, but as of right now after re-reading it, I still think it’s necessary). 

Anyway, I doodle. I’ve never really thought of myself as an artist or being good at drawing, painting, etc., but I’ve never been bad at it. So, sometimes I like to doodle just to see what I can randomly create. Sometimes they turn out good and sometimes they don’t. 

But let me tell you why I got into doodling in the first place:

Yes, I did learn something in college… and that is that I won’t read something that is boring. Boring is the equivalent of basically any educational text book, math, science, and all of the other subjects that I just feel bad calling out because I do truly love education and I’m thankful for it, but I just CANNOT READ AN ASSIGNED TEXT BOOK FOR THE LIFE OF ME.

Luckily, I found doodling… which made going to class so much more fun. (Mother, this is why my second two years were WAY better than my first two, haha). Anyway – my friend (Hi Meredith! If you read my blogs, thanks for the pens!) bought me colored pens for my birthday and I was SO EXCITED because this was something I had been wanting to do but I’m too cheap to buy colored pens because I think it’s extra. (It’s still extra but I appreciate it). I started doodling my notes. I would make them look cool and then I would actually want to go look at them to study because I’d have fun looking at what I drew. 

So I’ve started doing this with my journals. Anytime I want to write, or I’m feeling inspired, or even when I need to make a grocery list, I’ll do it with a creative mindset so it makes it exciting to look at. And each time I do it, I feel refreshed. I feel like I just had a moment with myself and taught myself a lesson and just watched myself grow. (I don’t really know how to explain the feeling to give it justice).

I’ve been wanting to share some of my recent doodles, but first I feel it’s appropriate to stare the first one that made me realize this was therapeutic for me. 

With this doodle I started at the top of the page with, “Note to self: LIVE,” and the rest just came to me. Sometimes we just need a little reminder to take a step back, appreciate what we have, who is in our lives, and most importantly the NOW. 

Sometimes we are so quick to let something small affect our days because we portray it to be so big in that moment. And in that moment, yes, it might affect you. But let it affect you and move on. We spend so much time being upset about something that won’t even matter in 2 days. Or even in 5 years. I recently decided to be upset about experiences that happened YEARS AGO. LIKE WHAT? Why did I just now decide to feel a grudge over stuff that I let go of a long time ago? I had to snap myself out of that REAL QUICK and let me tell you… when I finally just let stuff go, WOW. You feel like a brand new person. Stop letting negative experiences affect your experiences now and for the future. Take those negative experiences, acknowledge them, learn from them, and let it go. 

I also wrote a few negative thoughts I had about myself. Not feeling bad about myself. But sometimes we have thoughts about ourselves that simply are self-conscious thoughts implicated into our brains because of past experiences. When in reality, we aren’t all of these negative things that we constantly think, but we decide to dwell on the negative experiences way more than the positive, and we start to see ourselves that way. Decide to look at the positives more than the negatives. You have the choice to look at things in a positive or negative way, why not pick the happy route? 

Doodling helps me learn my insecurities, and helps me crush them. So maybe me sharing some of my outlets to let things go, love, explore, and grow myself – can help you. Doodling is so simple, don’t overthink it. The only person that needs to love it is you. 

Thank you for reading, you already know I appreciate you ❤

-Mallory-