Blank page anxiety

“Wandering Jew,” alcohol markers on paper.

Sometimes I feel the urge to simply draw, but then I find myself staring at the blank page with a pencil in my hand and my mind completely empty.

“Blank page anxiety”

The fear of starting something new from scratch is actually a fear of the result.Will it be beautiful enough?

Good enough?

Interesting?

Will it have a message?

Or maybe it will just be nothing?

This anxiety creates a kind of paralysis in front of an unclear, unknown future potential, and so we find ourselves staring at the empty page.

There are many ways to cope with this feeling, and today I want to share one that I personally really love.

Fill the page.

But with what? How?

You can start with a simple shape like a circle, a triangle, or a square.You can also choose a more complex shape, like a star, or as in my example here, a trio of leaves.

Scatter the chosen shape randomly across the page. You can also switch colors as you go.

When it feels like enough, you can begin filling the space.The shapes can surround the previous ones, wrap around them, or peek out from underneath.And you keep going until you run out of space.

And there you have it. A drawing.

The goal of this exercise is to release the anxiety, the stuckness that makes it hard for us to simply begin.

You can repeat the exercise, come back to it, and add details.

I suggest playing with it. Enjoying it. Surrendering to the meditative repetition.

What matters here is not the final result, but the process itself.

Want to try?

You are welcome to share your drawings here in the comments too 😊

And greetings from Georgia 😉