Kirkepiscatoid

What's your "Default Doodle?"

When you are bored and in a meeting, or on the phone, and just doodling in the margins of your paper, what do you most commonly doodle?

I am curious. I have a feeling our "default doodle" has the potential to see what is in our minds when the cognitive parts of us are disengaged.

I will tell you mine.

From the time of childhood, I have doodled geometric shapes, consisting mostly of combinations of triangles and spirals. The triangles, I will start with one triangle and then put new triangles on the three sides of the triangle, then connect the points of the triangles to each other into basically square, rectangle, and rhomboidal shapes, and keep making this ever-expanding outwardly growing network of triangles and connect them to each other. Then I will color in the triangles or hash mark them in in different patterns, etc.

The spirals, I do sort of the same thing. I start making the “middle” of the spiral and draw the spiral going outward. Then I go back in and do things like fill the rows of the spiral in with different hash marks, colors or patterns, or try to draw a 2nd spiral parallel to the first one and fill them in between the two lines of the spiral. Sometimes I make the spiral the middle of the doodle and put a square around it and put triangles on top of the sides of the square, and there we go again with the triangles.

When I get to hatching and shading things, they take on somewhat of a three-dimensional look to them...but not totally. There are areas that appear more 3-D and other areas that are not so 3-D.

I usually make my patterns to a certain size, then start a new one, and if I am doodling long enough, I start to connect the big doodles to each other.

Now, there have been lots of people who have looked at doodles in Jungian sort of way. A couple of good references are here and here.

Ok, in the general sense, after reading those pages, I realize that the geometric intricacies of my doodles show I am a thinking, purposeful planning kind of individual, somewhat into complexity. The three-dimensional side to it speaks to my need of structure and logic. The spirals are representative of self-protectiveness. It's even more interesting that I often place my spirals within these intricate geometric shapes that I doodle--as if I am even "protecting" them more with my planning, structure, and sense of purpose. I almost never put the spirals on the outside of the doodle.

But two things come to mind about my doodling. One is the pattern of "how" I make them. The other is I realized there was a doodle I did in childhood and young adulthood I don't hardly ever do anymore which I used to do almost obsessively.

I have come to realize in recent years that perhaps the "outward and back inward to fill in the details" aspect of my doodles speak to something that is deep within me that is “ever moving outward and ever desiring to be connected and patterned.” It is significant, I think, that my doodles always “grow outward” to a point and then I go back and “fill in the patterns.” In the light of all the interesting spiritual discoveries I have made in recent times, does it perhaps in some way also speak to my spiritual journey? I move outward till I'm satisfied with the size, then start another, and then connect them. What is interesting is those spirals are always in the CENTER of the doodles...as if this soft, round entity is the core of me but I cover it with structure and logic. "Locked up" in a way.

Well, gee whiz, that is similar to how I take Scripture and push myself outward with it, then go back and fill it in with my own unique pattern. It is a form of “creating stability.” The "locked up" parts of me become the center of my spiritual core.

As I was reading and thinking about this, it dawned on me that there is a doodle I don't do so much anymore. When I was a child and young adult, sometimes I would get on runs of "doodling stars." Mostly they were the five pointed kind that you draw with a single stroke of the pen; sometimes they were six-sided "Jewish" stars. But I would make rows and rows of them and crowd them together very tightly.

Stars can sometimes represent "a need to be noticed"-- A need to "prove myself." I imagine that was a stronger dynamic when I felt a lot of the difficult parts of my growing up, and a stronger dynamic in my years of "schooling," and my years of trying to find my place in an achievement-oriented atmosphere.

I haven't done that doodle in any great quantities for years. Oh, I might throw an occasional star in here or there, but not that row upon row of intensely crowded stars like I used to draw. Maybe I have reached a point in my life where I don't have to "prove myself" so much any more, or so intensely. That is a thought for me to ponder.