I didn’t intend for this week to become a doodle gallery, but cleaning my desk(s) for the New Year yielded so many examples of what happens when I get a pen in my hand.

I’ve showcased some of the random faces I’ve found over the last couple of days, but I saved a few for Freaky Friday. For hopefully obvious reasons.

I’ve recently learned that there are some people—my firstborn among them—who seem to have to be doing some sort of physical activity while they listen in order to process the information they’re receiving. Fiddling with a pencil, for example, lights up part of the brain that in turn helps to hear and comprehend words coming in. I’m pretty sure that’s how it works.

While learning about this phenomenon, I realized—somewhat belatedly, I suppose, since I’m 35—that I have to be one of these people, too. I can’t keep still. I’m always either chewing on a pen, sticking one behind my ear, flipping it around my fingers, or—obviously—doodling.

Sometimes the doodles are repetitive. I found half a dozen variations on a rabbit done in orange highlighter.

But sometimes the doodles make me wonder what dark corners the lit-up parts of my brain were illuminating, and what else is hiding there in the shadows.