The First Stroke

I spent this morning cleaning out my desk drawer, the kind of task I usually put off until it feels like a chore. I found a box of old crayons, their tips worn down to flat, rounded nubs. I picked up a bright blue one and just held it for a moment, remembering the feeling of a fresh sheet of paper. There is something intimidating about a blank surface, isn’t there? It demands something of you. It asks you to be brave enough to make the first mark, to commit to a shape or a color before you even know what the final picture will look like. We spend so much of our lives waiting for the right moment to start, waiting for the perfect plan to form in our heads. But maybe the point isn’t to have the masterpiece finished in your mind. Maybe the point is just to leave a mark, to add a little bit of yourself to the emptiness, and see what happens next. Do you remember the last time you started something without knowing how it would end?

Nazmul Shanji has captured this exact feeling of potential in the image titled Let’s Color your World. It reminds me that every great journey begins with the simplest of tools. What are you planning to create today?