Replacing Doomscrolling with “Bloomstrolling”
Cherry blossoms at Washington Park Arboretum in Seattle, WA. Photo: Katharine Canning
This week it finally feels like spring has arrived. We’ve been blessed with a few glorious sunny spring days here in Seattle and I am itching to get outside and explore! Being outside in nature is one of the places I personally find best for “woolgathering.” It truly fills my inner child with delight to see a flower bud getting ready to bloom or to hear the birds singing the arrival of spring. If I’m feeling stuck or at a loss for inspiration, I find that going for a quick walk outside can help me renew and reset. It’s simple, but sometimes the simple things are the ones we take for granted when we most need them.
Free Printable
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So, this spring I am setting a little challenge for myself, and I invite you to join me! I am going to challenge myself to replace some of the time I spend doomscrolling on my phone with “bloomstrolling.” I like puns, so “bloomstrolling” is my silly way of motivating myself to go for a walk every day in my neighborhood or at a local park. And as I take these walks, I want to slow down and notice what’s around me.
In my previous blog post, I talked about the importance of slowing down as a way to counteract reactivity and the pitfalls of urgency. I struggle with how I perceive the passage of time, and I find I struggle more with this when I am feeling urgent about something. In these moments time feels most scarce and inevitably this leads to overwhelm. My default is to just jump into doing without stopping to consider my own capacity. This is something that contributed to my burnout at my previous job. Long story short, the burnout led to me quitting that job without any idea of what I was going to do next. That’s how I found myself here - taking steps to start making art again, reconnect with my creativity, and start my own business.
Over the past three months, as I have taken more deliberate steps to start an illustration business online, I have noticed myself falling back into old patterns that I recognize from my burnout. The necessity of using social media to try and grow this business is something I’ve been struggling with. On the one hand, I feel like I am connecting with other artists and exploring new facets of my creativity through content creation. On the other hand, I have also found myself falling into the comparison trap which leads to feeling like I need to somehow “catch up.” And before I know it, I’m stuck in an endless doom scroll of consuming content from others, rather than creating something of my own.
Back in November of last year, I started The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron and in Week 4 of the book, you are asked to do a week of “reading deprivation.” This book was written in the 1990’s, so extrapolating a bit for our modern world, this means no reading books or newspapers, watching TV or movies, reading emails or the internet, or spending time on social media apps. This was one of the hardest weeks of the program for me, and I definitely broke my deprivation a few times, but I found myself so surprised with the variety of ways I ended up spending my time outside of work that week. I made art and just played with my art supplies, I cooked and baked, I listened to records while knitting, I tidied and organized, I made progress on some long-neglected house projects, I went for walks, and I went to bed early because I realized I was tired. Maybe this list seems pretty mundane, but to me it felt like I was more in touch with the time I had in the day and what I could choose to do with it. It taught me that I had more choice over where I spent my attention than I previously felt like I had.
So, I’m leaning back into that lesson and am seeking ways to build routines and practices that support me feeling more in control of my attention and my time. And that starts with less doomscrolling and more whimsy, wonder and “personal puttering time” (a phrase I’m borrowing from my friend Andrea). I am going to intentionally build time into my morning routine by taking a short walk (20-30 minutes) around my neighborhood. To motivate myself, I made a Bloomstrolling BINGO board that I have pasted into my sketchbook. Everyday before I head out, I am going to pick a prompt from the board at random, and that’s what I am going to look for on my morning walk. I’ll also be bringing my sketchbook along to capture what I find, but some days (depending on weather or location), I may choose to snap a photo of what I found and then sketch it when I get back to my studio. These feel like low stakes, achievable parameters for this challenge, and I can’t wait to get started! I plan to share my progress each week on Instagram (follow me there if you’d like to see how it goes), and I will probably write another blog post at the end reflecting on what I learned.
Please join me if you can! I turned the BINGO board into a free printable. You can use the BINGO board however works for you. You could take it on a longer hike, or take it with you on a quick walk on your lunch break. There are no rules. Just play and explore!
If you have kids in your life, I also think this would be a perfect activity to do with them (I was an educator for many years). Kids are great at noticing things and are masters of whimsy and wonder. Somehow, as adults, we inevitably lose some of that. No, not lose, just bury it somewhere where it is harder to access. But, it’s still there and it’s a source of creativity. That’s the source I’m trying to get back in touch with. Will you join me?
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