Doodle(d) & Release(d)

I lost my doodle sketchbook last week.

You know how I love to doodle — I create sketchnotes of various presentations I attend, and sometimes share those via either this Back Porch blog here, or Twitter.

When I finally found a perfect pocket-sized sketchbook I could work with, I carried that to all my meetings, conferences and gatherings.

So it was that I had it with at mLearn Expo last week. I’d been sketchnoting a few presentations, but as I started to leave the hosting hotel, I noticed my sketchbook was missing from my pocket. Panicked, I backtracked everywhere I’d just been since the last session I sketched. I notified the Expo folks and the hotel folks as well, hoping that it might find its way home, since it included all my contact info inside.

It’s a week later — and no such luck.

So, I have reframed the loss in my mind as an exercise in letting go. Maybe I just inadvertently “realeased it into the wild.” Maybe someone else found it — maybe not. That’s really no longer of concern to me. Of course, I’d like it back, as it was only half-filled so far — but that seems unlikely, and that’s okay.

I do take a cautionary lesson from the loss: always snap a photo of any new sketchnote.

There were some mLearn Expo sessions I doodled — but now those notes are gone. It’s better to snap a picture right away, so the ideas behind the doodles can be recovered without the physical artifact of the sketchbook.

Sometimes, I tweet pictures of my doodles out as well, again ensuring a digital replica of the ephemeral doodles exists.

So, when I fired up a newer (blue) sketchbook, I made sure to go ahead and tweet out the Creative Mornings Austin meeting sketchnote I created from Carl Hooker’s talk on “Revolution.” So, that one now exists physically, in my blue sketchbook, but also digitally — here and on Twitter.

Maybe I should doodle up a whole little notebook, with clues and rewards and prizes for those who find it, and send it out into the world as a “self-published” piece to help spread the Doodle Revolution.

“Doodle & release” — yeah, I like the sound of that.