Coloring Inside The Lines
By Polly O'Neal
Image from Lindsay Love
I’ve been thinking a lot about hobbies lately. And how most (all) of mine are performance based. I like my hobbies to fall into at least one of three categories; physically taxing, mentally challenging, or spiritually stimulating. In addition to this criteria, I also typically drop a hobby the moment I find out I’m not good at it. If you’re wondering if this hyper-individualized, inked-in design of hobby guidelines I’ve created is limiting, you’d be correct. And it is something I am looking to change.
This self-actualization was not hard to come by. My roommates have recently taken on a new nightly pastime to wind down; coloring. They have collected tons of coloring books on tons of topics. They even bought a nice little collection of markers to share between the three of them. And it is so sweet to watch. We will put on whatever docu-series the four of us are into at the time and the three of them will go silent as they fill in the shapes with blues, greens, pinks, and yellows. Except there is an odd one out in this scenario, and she’s me. While this wholesome activity seems so appealing to me, each time I try to sit and color in the lines of a mermaid, I get incredibly bored? Or frustrated? I have not yet quite identified the feeling. All I know is that I give up on the coloring page before it’s even really started. Seriously, two colors in and I’m audibly groaning, and not even because I’m not enjoying what I’m doing. I’m really just annoyed with the discomfort I feel sitting with this activity. Because to me, the objective of simply filling in an entire page with color is not an exciting enough pursuit to progress towards. How stupid is that? I guess I could blame society, or starting competitive sports at a young age, or anxiety, or having an older brother, or a multitude of other things. But when it really comes down to it, it’s a me problem. There is work to be done in allowing myself to enjoy something simply for the purpose of enjoyment. To remain present in the process of an activity without the completion of it in mind. Maybe rewiring the goal to simply be enjoying a shared activity with the people I love. Scrapping the idea of only pursuing the hobbies I think I’ll be good at, and instead just trying them all! Because maybe my mermaid doesn’t look as good as my roommate’s mermaid, and maybe that’s okay. And maybe that’s not even the point. I am starting to believe, and know, that there is a lot of good we miss out on when we avoid the things we could be bad at. And if I know one thing about myself, it’s that I don’t want to miss out on anything good in this life!
So my challenge this week is to sit with myself in the quiet of an early Spring evening and color. Simply because I can. With no other objective in mind. And I challenge you, reader, to do something just for the pleasure of it. Not because there is anything more to gain. And maybe within that space, we will both gain a lot more than we ever anticipated.
