The Stories Within My Doodles

The Stories Within My Doodles

The corners of my textbooks were always filled with doodles. Where math formulas should have been, there were spaceships. Where English vocabulary should have filled the margins, winged dragons took their place. I got scolded by teachers and often missed what was being taught, but the pen in my hand never stopped moving.

Those doodles weren't just idle scribbles to pass time. The universe born from the tip of my pen was the world I dreamed of, and the horses galloping across the paper represented the freedom I craved. Drawing wizards from fantasy novels, I imagined myself doing something amazing someday. Sketching myself running across vast meadows, I poured my longing to escape the suffocating classroom and live freely.

Even when my friends chatted during breaks, I quietly created little worlds in the corner of my notebook. Sometimes I drew my future self, sometimes places I wanted to visit, sometimes things I wished to have. My drawing skills weren't exceptional, but those doodles were entirely mine, filled with sparkling hope.

When Doodles Lost Their Light

Before I knew it, I had graduated and stepped into the vast world called society. I still held a pen, and doodles still appeared in the corners of my notebook. But those doodles had changed.

In the margins during meetings, I scribbled "I want to go home." Next to work memos, sighs reading "I'm so tired" appeared. Where I once drew the universe, now there were clocks. Instead of winged dragons, I sketched beds. The doodles remained, but the feelings they contained had completely transformed.

Sparkling eyes had turned to exhaustion, excited anticipation had become fatigue. The infinite possibilities I once imagined were now trapped behind the walls of reality, and even my doodles had shifted from being an escape to expressing the weight of the present.

Every week repeated itself identically. Monday's heaviness, Wednesday's tedium, Friday's relief. In between, my notebook filled only with words like "when will this end," "why is it like this," "this is too hard." Where had all that rich imagination from my school days gone? When did I start drawing sighs instead of dreams?

A Treasure Found in a Box

One day while preparing to move, I was sorting through old boxes. Opening a dusty box, I found notebooks and textbooks from my school days. I casually opened one, and in that moment, time seemed to stop.

Every page was filled with doodles. Within them lay everything I had forgotten. Ships sailing across vast oceans, a person standing atop a high mountain, a tent under a night sky pouring with stars, myself on stage with a guitar slung over my shoulder. Each one was a future I had dreamed of, a version of myself I had wanted to become.

The artistic skill was terrible. The proportions were wrong, the perspective was a mess. Yet I couldn't take my eyes off them—more captivating than any museum masterpiece. In each clumsy line, I felt the passion of that time. Through the rough coloring, pure wishes were conveyed.

I sat there for a long while, turning through the pages. Time slipped away unnoticed, the moving preparations forgotten. With each page, dreams I had buried resurfaced. The desire to travel the world, the wish to learn an instrument, the hope to write. Everything I had set aside at some point as "unrealistic" was alive and breathing within those pages.

Picking Up Colored Pencils Again

The next day, while shopping for groceries, my feet naturally carried me to the stationery section. Under the fluorescent lights, neatly displayed colored pencils caught my eye. They were something I hadn't properly used since elementary school.

I picked up a 24-color set. The rainbow of colors visible through the transparent case stirred something strangely exciting within me. Did I need them? Were they practical? Such questions didn't matter. There was only the simple desire to draw again.

Arriving home, I opened a new notebook. The blank white page offered infinite possibilities, and I hesitated for a moment. What should I draw? Could I draw as freely as I once did?

But the hand holding the colored pencils remembered. After a brief hesitation, it began to move on its own. Awkward at first, it gradually grew familiar, and soon a small world was forming on the paper.

Doodles Begin Again

I drew. Not "I want to go home," but places I wanted to visit. Not "I'm tired," but things I wanted to do. Instead of expressing exhaustion, I captured exciting futures. Rather than sketching the weight of reality, I drew light dreams.

The sky colored with pencils was as blue as those I drew in my school days, and the ocean was just as vast. Clumsy but warm, imperfect but sincere. Something sparkling began to fill the pages once more.

Every day, I make a little time to open my notebook. Ten minutes before leaving for work, a moment after lunch, leisurely time before sleep. These brief moments give me strength to endure the day. The world within my doodles remains my refuge, my comfort, my hope.

What Doodles Taught Me

Looking back, doodles were always mirrors of my heart. My school-day doodles were filled with hope because that's how my heart felt then. My work-life doodles were filled with exhaustion because my heart had changed that way.

But now I know. Doodles—no, my heart—can change again. Reality is still heavy and tiring, but within it, I can still draw dreams. Just because I've become an adult doesn't mean I must lose my imagination.

One small drawing in the corner of a notebook changes the day. Drawing spaceships, I still believe in infinite possibilities. Sketching wings, I dream of freedom. It's not about forgetting reality, but a commitment to not lose hope even within reality.

Today, too, a small notebook and colored pencils rest in my bag. When my heart grows heavy, I pause, open the notebook, and draw. What I truly want, who I want to become, where I want to go.

One at a time, doodles bring me back to life. It's okay to be clumsy. It's fine to be imperfect. What matters is the sincerity within them, the small flame that won't go out.

Someday, when I move again and discover today's notebook, what will I feel? I think I'll smile. Finding myself refusing to let go of hope even during difficult times, sensing the courage in each small doodle.

Until then, I draw today. The world my heart desires, the future I dream of. In the small doodles created with pens and colored pencils, I continue living as someone who still dreams.