There is a man I know well. Let's call him Fred.

Fred is a writer and a professor and also a full-time doodler.

Let's start with his doodles. Whenever Fred finds himself sitting still, listening to others, he will, invariably, find himself a scrap of paper, one of his fine felt-tipped markers, and begin winding and twisting his way through one of his whimsical doodles.

He times himself in his head. Tries to finish these little playing-card-sized pieces of art before the end of a presentation, or a lecture, or a sermon. Sometimes he has enough time to add a second color to the mix. Often times he colors them in later when he finds another spare moment.

What do these doodles amount to? Not much in the waking world. They sit in his briefcase, on his office desk, scattered around his home computer. He doesn't like to show them and only rarely likes to talk about them. I think he's secretly proud of his little artworks and publicly ashamed of his pride.

Fred is a thousand things and more and capable of endless potential.

Sometimes I feel unsure as a creative person...then I think of Fred and his doodles and how they are just a tidbit of who and what he is. That's when I keep going.