I recently started working at a store which sells all sorts of good supplies for creating stuff – mixed media pieces, planner decorating, scrapbook pages, cards, and a myriad of other things. I am surrounded by creativity 12-15 hours a week.

I also follow people on Instagram, read blogs, and see Facebook posts containing massive amounts of creativity. I love seeing all the creativity. And I love to create things.

Last night, my coworker asked me what my style was and what kind of things do I make.

I realized that I pretty much make nothing. No. Thing. Ever.

I have sewn. I sometimes dabble in doodling and hand lettering. I photograph. I’ve learned mixed media techniques. I’ve scrapbooked. I’ve journaled a few pages in a Bible. I’ve stamped. I’ve attempted watercolor. There’s probably more, though they escape me now.

But right now? Not a darned thing. I create nothing. I have no style to describe what I don’t do.

Whoa.

I even scrolled through a ton of photos on two phones to see if perhaps I had created something which I forgot.

Nope.

So apparently my style right now is blankness.

And sadness.

I need to start making things.

Something.

Anything

Daily.

But God help us, born to this canvas and paint, if we do nothing with it, sign our name on its empty off-white surface and hang it on the wall, after a long succession of lookalike days leads us to our graves, content merely not to have made a mess of the canvas. Who will gaze on that unmarked rectangle on the wall, next to the million others, all of them differentiated only by the names scribbled in the corners, and do anything but sigh? Perfectly safe. Tragically wasted.

~from David DuChemin’s post Fill Your Canvas