Category: stress

doodling, doodles, and calm…

Life still feels anxious, and I’m still spending time with creativity as a calming distraction. I’m painting and art journaling and writing and doodling and crocheting.

Even outside of how these activities help me when it comes to anxiety and stress, they help me because they bring me joy – they keep me connected with creativity and they light me up. And I can spend time with them even on days I don’t feel up to venturing out.

Doodling is one of those calming and meditative activities that can be done for a minute or an hour, on a big piece of paper or a tiny receipt. I can listen to something in the background or half-watch a show while I use a pen to play.

I’ve been especially enjoying making doodles on small pieces of paper, and I’ll sometimes simply grab an index card from a nearby stack…

Or open up my little moleskin journal and play around there.

It’s fun. It’s relaxing. It’s distracting.

And it’s calming.

Try some doodling (if you haven’t already). It doesn’t matter how it looks, because that’s not the point.

The point is the calming, the play, the letting your fingers move the pen or pencil or marker as you relax into the moment.

The point is simply the doing of it.

♥

creativity as calming distraction…

As I continue my journey of life having way more anxiety than I wish it would, I’ve been spending even more time immersed in creativity. I’m still (very gradually) working on a sequel to my novel, New Life in New Melody, and doing other writerly-type things.

Mostly, though, my creative time has been related to painting and art journaling and doodling.

Writing (as I’ve mentioned before) seems to need a certain amount of feeling settled inside myself for me to make the jump from not-writing to writing on any given day… and when the anxiety is too high, I can’t seem to reach that state.

But painting is different for me. I can pick up a paintbrush and start painting even in the midst of high anxiety.

And then the settled feeling comes, at least while I’m painting. And it’s calming. And it’s distracting.

Even just painting squares of color does this for me. Recently, I spent some time going through some of my acrylic paints and I simply painted swatches of color.

Which is just what I need to get past the anxiety and reach a place of peace.

Even just doing this made such a difference in the anxiety!

Whenever I had a bit of paint leftover on my palette, I added it to a canvas I had recently covered with white gesso. Not trying to make it into anything, just painting and making marks to use up the extra bits of paint left when I squeezed out or poured too much.

Simply playing with the paint.

Just being in the creativity with the paint and the brushes.

But the calming of it, and the distraction of it, help so much.

When you’re feeling anxious, find what can help you distract from the feelings (unless distraction isn’t what’s needed at the time). Find what can help you calm. It might take some experimenting – and what helps can shift and change, which is why it’s good to have a variety of things to turn to and try. But when you do find what helps, take the time to do it.

And may it make a positive difference in your day.

That’s my wish for you.

♥