On my birthday, I asked for and received a goldmine of goodies, and some that I didn’t ask for, like a graph-lined book.

I had never really understood the point of graph-lined notebooks and books. If you wanted to write something, you could hardly squeeze a letter into a tiny box. What was the use?

When one day a foundation inspector came to our house and began doodling a map of our house onto a graph-lined paper, I thought to myself, “I see the meaning of graph-lined notebooks. They are for people who make foundations.”

A few days later, I saw an art student copying a picture onto another. She had laid a transparent piece of graph paper on the original, and was drawing the new one on a piece of graph paper itself. I thought, “I see the meaning of graph-lined notebooks. They are for people who draw art and foundations.”

But then one day I flipped through a magazine and came across an article about creativity; about inventing new uses for old things. The article was actually on how to recycle, but it got me thinking; I loved mazes. Why couldn’t I draw them in my notebook?

And so a drawing notebook it was. I carried it around and doodled mazes whenever I had some time. It is now filled with mind-boggling mazes, some looking incredibly easy but actually being very hard.

I had found a use for my notebook.