I have a confession to make.
This may shock you- it might make you fall over backwards in utter disbelief. Your eyes may catch on fire and burn out of your skull. Your brain may dissolve into bits of goo when it processes the words on this page. Your peers may shudder to look you in the eye; your family may sever all ties with you, because you had the unfortunate undertaking of reading the following confession. Here goes:
I doodle- a lot.
What's that? Your feet are still planted firmly on the ground? Your brain has maintained its position in your skull? You obviously don't understand the capacity to which I doodle.
I'm not talking flowers on spare pages of notebook paper, or a couple cubes sketched in the margins of my math homework. No, I'm talking full out Charles Shultz or Jim Davis up in my margins- and on my homework- and sometimes on tests, and all over my notebooks...
...But it's not like it's a nervous twitch or anything, like biting my nails or twirling my hair. It's not just a habit for when I'm bored. To be honest, I'm not sure what to call it- a hobby, a skill? Doodling is just something I do- whether I'm bored or nervous, or happy, sad, excited, disappointed. There's really no other way to describe it except to say it's just something I love to do.
I've tried to remember when I first started doodling like a maniac, but nothing comes to me. As far as I know, I've always been this way. My parents entertain me with stories of a little, two year old Me, sitting for hours in front of Sesame Street with my Magna Doodle- clinging to its flimsy plastic edges as if my life depended on it. I would scratch away at its magnetic surface for the entirety of an episode, creating scribbles of shapes and people.
I was a doodler then, even if I didn't realize it.
I've gotten mixed reactions from my fellow humans regarding this aspect of my life. My teachers tell me to "quit doodling all over [my] notes" (Actual quote). My friends have said it's "pretty cool looking" (Actual quote) to the point where one of them actually wanted me to draw all over her notebook. My parents think doodling is fine, as long as it doesn't interfere with my academic ability, and my sisters like my doodles, so long as they don't interfere with my social life.
The thing is-I don't really care what they think. Most of my teachers have become accustomed to my constant doodling, going so far as to labeling me the "Doodle Queen", and everyone else just asks "why aren't you in any art classes?" Everyone has come to realize that doodling (really drawing) is a central part of me- that for every sombrero I draw on my Spanish homework, every monster that lurks in the margins of my notebook, and every mountain, sea, volcano and tree that manifests on the back of my tests, a small part of my soul is being transported through pen to paper.
Doodling is for me what writing probably was for Charlotte Bronte, or philosophy was for Plato, or music was for the Beatles: necessary for survival. Like those famous figures of history, I would rather die an artist than live doing something I hate.
So I proudly declare that I love to draw, sketch, shade, illustrate, mold, sculpt, animate, design, edit, form, create, imagine- and doodle.
This may shock you- it might make you fall over backwards in utter disbelief. Your eyes may catch on fire and burn out of your skull. Your brain may dissolve into bits of goo when it processes the words on this page. Your peers may shudder to look you in the eye; your family may sever all ties with you, because you had the unfortunate undertaking of reading the following confession. Here goes:
I doodle- a lot.
What's that? Your feet are still planted firmly on the ground? Your brain has maintained its position in your skull? You obviously don't understand the capacity to which I doodle.
I'm not talking flowers on spare pages of notebook paper, or a couple cubes sketched in the margins of my math homework. No, I'm talking full out Charles Shultz or Jim Davis up in my margins- and on my homework- and sometimes on tests, and all over my notebooks...
...But it's not like it's a nervous twitch or anything, like biting my nails or twirling my hair. It's not just a habit for when I'm bored. To be honest, I'm not sure what to call it- a hobby, a skill? Doodling is just something I do- whether I'm bored or nervous, or happy, sad, excited, disappointed. There's really no other way to describe it except to say it's just something I love to do.
I've tried to remember when I first started doodling like a maniac, but nothing comes to me. As far as I know, I've always been this way. My parents entertain me with stories of a little, two year old Me, sitting for hours in front of Sesame Street with my Magna Doodle- clinging to its flimsy plastic edges as if my life depended on it. I would scratch away at its magnetic surface for the entirety of an episode, creating scribbles of shapes and people.
I was a doodler then, even if I didn't realize it.
I've gotten mixed reactions from my fellow humans regarding this aspect of my life. My teachers tell me to "quit doodling all over [my] notes" (Actual quote). My friends have said it's "pretty cool looking" (Actual quote) to the point where one of them actually wanted me to draw all over her notebook. My parents think doodling is fine, as long as it doesn't interfere with my academic ability, and my sisters like my doodles, so long as they don't interfere with my social life.
The thing is-I don't really care what they think. Most of my teachers have become accustomed to my constant doodling, going so far as to labeling me the "Doodle Queen", and everyone else just asks "why aren't you in any art classes?" Everyone has come to realize that doodling (really drawing) is a central part of me- that for every sombrero I draw on my Spanish homework, every monster that lurks in the margins of my notebook, and every mountain, sea, volcano and tree that manifests on the back of my tests, a small part of my soul is being transported through pen to paper.
Doodling is for me what writing probably was for Charlotte Bronte, or philosophy was for Plato, or music was for the Beatles: necessary for survival. Like those famous figures of history, I would rather die an artist than live doing something I hate.
So I proudly declare that I love to draw, sketch, shade, illustrate, mold, sculpt, animate, design, edit, form, create, imagine- and doodle.
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