Adult coloring books are such a beautiful concept. I say that as someone who doesn’t care much for crafts, but cares a lot about having fidgeting alternatives to mutilating my nails. I have precisely one adult coloring book — the Harry Potter one — that I pull out maybe three times a year. I’m a pretty focused TV watcher (coloring would be not looking at the screen and I yelled at my mom too many times to stop knitting because she might miss something to ever consider multitasking there) and I would never really just sit and color out of nowhere.
Tonight though I pulled up the Facebook live video for my new running course and saw that it was over an hour long. I could immediately tell I’d be scrolling through Instagram while half listening if I didn’t find something else to do with my hands. I remembered my coloring book and took a few minutes to select a page: Fawkes the phoenix on his perch. Color pencils and sharpener in hand, I played the video and started clumsily filling in Fawkes’s feather coat with oranges, yellows, browns, and reds.
Importantly, I could listen and watch the video while I did this (it was mostly talking, introductory and Q&A info that was useful and engaging — I’m glad I didn’t opt out or try to fast forward). By the end, Fawkes was mostly filled in and I had started in on his perch. I admit my nails are little beat up too but that’s mostly due to stress picking at them earlier in the day — they’ll survive.
So this is a reminder that adult coloring books exist, which you all know, but more-so to actually pull them out once and a while. If nothing else it’s a break in routine from my norm and the brain likes some variety.
I know there will be more of these videos in the future that don’t require my frame-by-frame attention (not like Voltron might, for example), so I’ll leave finishing Fawkes’s page for future me.
With Love,
Natalie