How do you start anything new? AWKWARDLY!
The story of a mini clipboard, an index card, a book launch, and finally acting on a creative desire.
Everything starts somewhere...
Sometimes people ask me if I've always drawn or just assume I've been drawing since I was a kid.
I have not.
I started drawing regularly less than three years ago. During the pandemic, I revived the zine-making hobby of my early 20s. Slowly, my zines had fewer words and more little drawings.
Around the same time, I was starting to realize how much my management job was destroying my brain.
That is maybe a bit dramatic.
I had spent several years doing (mostly) solitary research-focused work where my days were spent reading long, complicated things and then trying to write my own long, complicated things.
Sometimes people emailed me, but not often.
When I started managing a research centre in Fall 2021, there was quite a lot of email. And meetings. And teams messages. And multiple email boxes to check. And I was falling behind, all of the time.
Of course, there are things called "boundaries" and normal people maybe don't feel the need to check their email every 15 minutes. As an eldest daughter, capricorn, and generally very-good-girl who was trying to do a very good job, I felt the need to respond to everything right away.
This was not the happiest time.
Um, isn't this is a newsletter about drawing...?
I was both desperate for more creativity in my life and had been working on little projects here and there. And I was desperate to bring some more focused attention back to my frazzled brain.
And in this swirl of desire, I learned about sketchnotes.
(Cue a cool light from stage left)
I started looking at the sketchnotes other people were drawing and sharing online, like Alejo Porras and the amazing Fuselight team.
Because I am a forever student, I didn't feel like I could start without a lesson. I eventually found myself where so many visual journeys begin: Mike Rohde's Sketchnote Handbook.
I read it from cover to cover. I imagined all kinds of amazing sketchnotes in my mind. With the Big Capricorn Energy that I bring to so much of what I do, I was very excited!
...about the idea of sketchnoting.
Eventually you have to do the thing
It took me weeks of thinking about sketchnoting before I would summon the courage to actually try.
And when I did try, I hadn't been planning to.
A friend (Hi Nat!) invited me to Kerry Clare's book launch for her novel, Asking For A Friend. We filed into the auditorium at the beautiful Lillian H. Smith branch of Toronto Public Library and waited for the program to start.
I don't remember how I decided that this would be the moment, but I pulled out a tiny clipboard and an index card and decided to go for it.
There was a lively introduction and a reading. A nice q+a. A gameshow!
I was hunched over in my seat, little clipboard on my knees and teal le pen flying.
When it was over, I realized I'd been holding my breath for nearly and hour and I was PUMPED.
Making friends with drawings
I was a bit sheepish about the messy (and in parts, illegible) writing and the awkward little faces I'd drawn.
But I was also very excited about finally trying to put some of my sketchnote studies into practice.
So I made a little instagram story.
I was hoping a few of my friends would feed my dopamine desires with a few little hearts.
But I honestly didn't expect the author to be so excited about my messy first attempts.
(Thank you for the enthusiasm, Kerry!)
That very messy, imperfect-but-excited first sketchnote now lives on Kerry's bookshelf.
In a frame, no less!
A permission slip, if you are looking for one
If you are wondering if starting a new creative hobby will make your life better: it will.
If you have been reading about something or taking a class or doing some other learning-as-procrastination thing: just start.
If you are wondering if the first thing you've been yearning to make will be kind wonky, a little messy, and maybe kind of shitty: it will.
If you are making the wonky, messy, kind of shitty first efforts at the things you've been yearning to create: please share them.
Life is already too short. Make stuff and share the stuff you make and invite people to make stuff with you. It's a way to make these short lives bigger, livelier, and more fun.
Plus, once you start, you will have something to look back at and mark how far you've come.
Here's to nearly two years of sketchnoting and to the journey that first little index card drawing opened up.
P.S. Do you know someone who might appreciate a little permission-giving nudge to step into a creative project (or step back into a creative world they’ve been leaving fallow)? I’d love if you shared this with them as a little vote of confidence.
