doodling in the blank spaces

I’ve taken to doodling in my journal. First thing in the morning I get up and have some quite time, read my bible, read from a personal development book, and then write in my journal. And in that journal I’ve taken to doodling in the blank spaces. 


My art used to be totally and completely comprised of my desperate attempt to understand myself. It was all born of my need to communicate and having no other way to do so. All my art up until about 4 years ago was me trying to communicate and process that which was not logical or tangible. I was just trying to understand myself and the world around me. 


Now a days my art feels a little less intense but no less deep. And I’ve come back to letting my process be a part of my art, letting my internal and external circumstance not get in the way but rather join in the creating. I’ve spent the last few years trying to create around what I was feeling, rather than let it become a part of the process I let my ‘feelings’ be the thing that got in my way. 


But this last mouth I started doodling in my journal, and it has felt like coming home. Coming home at night in the middle of a snow storm, it feels like a reprieve, like a resting place for my heart. No one has to or ever will see these doodle and that spells out freedom to me. It has to look like absolutely nothing and the only job it has is to help me communicate. 


My art used to feel so raw and strung out and manic and like a tearing in my soul, it was vulnerable on top of vulnerable, and it had its place. For my art to be like that, it had its place and time, but when something changed, something I still don’t know how to put to words, my art felt broken. It felt like any and everything I had leaned about art and creativity went out the window. It took me years to be okay with the fact that things had changed, I had changed, and my art no longer looked like that anymore. There was an awful lot more flowers involved. And I didn’t feel all that much when I created, only this peaceful silence. But if all you’ve ever lived with was nothing but everliving noise, silence feels like madness. 


It took me years to figure out and be okay with the fact that things had changed and that it meant my art did too. And now I starting to find the middle ground. I had to swing wildly from one extreme to the other to try and course correct, and now I get to live in the middle space. Because I finally went to the furthest concussion of what each extreme meant and decided the middle ground is where I’d like to live. 


I started to doodle in my journal because they are helpful companions to my words. There is something about the flower I drew besides the words from August 15th that for some reason looks a lot like how I felt that day. 


Go find that blank spaces and add some doodles, you never know how much freedom it may have the power to bring. Happy creating. 

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