I got a blank sheet, baby…
A blank sheet of paper can be a scary thing. It stares at you with daunting intimidation, vast and infinite; calling you, nay, daring you to write something that will be worthy of its creation. You could simply walk away without writing a word, and the void that is left will wait for you, infinitely if you let it, slipping past your years on earth, waiting for you to create something. One day, as someone is cleaning out your old desk after you have passed on, there may be a stack of blank pages that someone may discard as trash, or simply give to a child on which to color or draw. There will be nothing on these pages. No short story, no design sketch, no note to a loved one. And the sad thing it that the stack of blank pages tell no record of the hours that went into the hesitation to begin, so one will never know how much labor and anguish went into composing your stack of…nothing.
And the child who now has the pages, well, she doesn’t let her thoughts slow her. Without pressure she draws what her heart and head tell her, and the results are creatively spectacular. Or maybe they aren’t. But she tried, and that’s more than the previous owner of the paper can say.
Imagine a great composer or litterateur sitting at a blank page. Now, what happens if they write nothing. Well, nothing happens. In life, in their soul, in their evolution. Nothing. What if, after staring intently at this page they write something, anything? Even a single symbol or letter scribbled in the margins could have experts weighing in for years to come as to the meaning, Imagine a single page in Leonardo DaVinci’s collection with an odd symbol scribbled in the middle. People would try and use it as a treasure map, when, in fact, Leonardo was just trying to get his head moving in the right direction.
(Here comes the reflective portion of the journal). Do you have a blank page on your desk right now? How long has it sat there, waiting for you to make a move? If you’re anything like me, it’s been there a long time. Heck, I went out and bought a 6 pack of notebooks just to try and get myself motivated.
But the task that we think we need to conquer may be simpler than we perceive. We all want to write the hit song, the brilliant app, or the Great American Novel. But perhaps we start a little smaller? Is it time to rearrange the living room furniture? WHAT? What does this have to do with anything? Well, if pencil to paper is too daunting to create THE something, then let’s start with rearranging something you have and create A something.
It’s easy – draw the rectangle of the room, the windows and doors, etc, and make little drawings of the furniture. Now, move it all around in the next drawing. Get your mind thinking outside of the box with taking it all out of the room and building it up again in funky angles or silly ways. Before you know it, you’ll find something that works better than what you have now. Now you want a new light fixture, don’t you? And then you’ve created a better space for you and your family, right? And you were able to get creative, right?
Did you come up with a new room design app? An idea for a short story about a furniture mover who stumbles upon a fortune in an old couch? Or did you simply get something done that was long overdue, which can now subconsciously put your mind at rest? Whatever you just did, you did it. And you took the blank page and filled it with ideas that you didn’t know you had. Good for you.
Of course, it doesn’t have to be a room rearrange. It could be cataloguing your albums or writing a short note to the postman for years of great service. You decide. But just decide.
The blank page has haunted mankind for centuries, and will continue to challenge us to its simple design and become something amazing, or, even better, to simply be ourselves and be the creator of a doodle or a simple smiley face. The best part is that with a blank sheet of paper there is no wrong or right way to approach it. It just has to make sense to you. So don’t let the moment go away. Just write it down. Anything.
See you on the road!
