When adult coloring books became all the rage, I just shook my head. When adults I know started plastering Facebook with pictures of all the pages they’d proudly colored, I added pity and eye rolls to the head shakes.
It’s just paint-by-number, thought I – with the trendy freedom to choose your own hues. That’s almost too much pressure, on top of having to stay in the lines and everything.
Who has time to sit for hours coloring? And for what? You need more crap to stick on the refrigerator?
I recently came across a long To-Do list in a forgotten notebook that hadn’t seen the light of day for years. It was elaborate and comprehensive, color-coded and ordered by priority, difficulty, and category. I’d used my best handwriting. I’d drawn little boxes before each entry for check marks upon completion. I must have spent hours on it. It was a thing of terrible beauty, doubtlessly designed per the standards of some overpriced self-help book .
Everything on that old list is still valid! Little projects that have been done once or twice in the interim need doing again. Big projects still loom. Middle-sized projects continue to languish in various stages of undress, like tired hookers.
Perhaps productivity just isn’t my thing.
With that in mind, I try my hand at coloring. I am recovering from dental trauma; I can’t focus on anything vaguely useful. I put prejudice aside and dig out my nice oil crayons and turn to a free garden-company coloring book that came in the mail.
After all, coloring is said to be very therapeutic. It’s an unplugged activity. It’s calming and meditative. I approach the page with serenity and mindfulness.
That lasts about 4 minutes. It is a hopeless project, a ridiculously complicated design that takes forever to complete. I go outside the lines. I choose bad colors. I am not consistent. My hand rubs across the work and makes smudges. The page gets crumpled what with with all my serenity. I’m so mindful I get a headache. I am green with envy over all those smugly successful Facebook color-ers — that weird chartreuse that’s only ever pretty in springtime.
So apparently I’m not productive, and I’m not mindful. Better work all the harder at being mirthful.
Stick to knitting. You have a comparable range of complexities, colors, and consistencies, but you end up with something useful. It can be relaxing or not, depending on the pattern you choose. And you don’t have to put the resulting product on your refrigerator (unless you’re making a refrigerator cozy).
Ha! A refrigerator cozy sounds like fun! Mine has been making loud clunking noises now that it’s (just barely) past its one-year warranty. Isn’t that the sign of a sick compressor? Perhaps a cozy would make it feel better. Plus, you could consider it an art installation.
Whoever has the shortest To-Do list wins.
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You are indeed mirthful, and that’s something we all can enjoy more than your coloring. Thanks!