Coloring Turned Patriotic Passtime

Reading stories isn’t the only thing that I’ve picked up again this year. Partly because I’ve always loved coloring, and partly because I now have a child who colors through a coloring book almost every single week, I decided to take a second glance at the trendy adult coloring book world.

And I was pretty sure after going through half a dozen coloring books all made up of abstract shapes or circles that I wasn’t really that interested. I found circles and shapes to be the opposite of the soothing, mind relaxing activity I had wanted to experience again. Instead, I felt like I had a sensory overload and it was more stressful to figure out how to make the colors look good together than it was relaxing.

I think in my perfect coloring book world, I was looking for word art and nature-inspired pictures to color. Apparently, I just had looked in all the wrong places. When I pulled God Bless America out of the box the day before the 4th of July, I was tickled. It might not have been everything I hoped for in a coloring book, but it wasn’t too far away.

With some of my favorite quotes on life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness surrounded by nostalgic scenes from my country’s history and culture, it was such a fun thing to work through and to color in over the course of my country’s birthday. Not only did it appeal to my love of history, but it appealed to my love of great quotes. I had fun adding color to the pages and making them come alive.

While I am still looking for that perfect coloring book, I really enjoyed taking a moment to pick up yet another thing from my childhood that I haven’t done for a while. I can understand why so many therapists are recommending coloring. Like a good rocking chair, there’s something about it that sort of fades out the little petty cares and makes everything come back into perspective.

Since trying out this coloring book, I was lucky enough to grab a couple more (spoiler alert: I got something I absolutely fell in love with just a couple days ago. I’ll be sharing about it soon!) and am experimenting with coloring pencils and pens to see which suits me best. I’m leaning towards the pencils myself.