Blank Page

Turns out I'm deathly afraid of a blank page.

Weird, really, considering I'm well known for them.

I always knew that one of the most powerful parts of my moving-on and moving-somewhere-else rush - and I promise you it is always a rush - was the lure of a blank page. A new start. A place where nobody had seen me doing anything less than perfect. Yet.

I like to think that I stretch for different reasons now. I like to think I've sent my father the "Yeh, you told me so" I've long owed him for his last, wise words as the first of many moving vans pulled up to move me 2000 miles away:

-Wherever you go, there you are. You know that, right?

But I went, and I went again, and in no time I'd won a name as the queen of new pages.

Then a few weeks ago I tried to play a game.

Cool game, really. Poetry Slam, Laura calls it. You tell somebody what word you want out of a magazine - blindly naming the page, paragraph, line, etc. til you lead them to your surprise word, then you track down their chosen word. Back and forth til everybody gets a word, then you all start writing. Anything. With your word. It's a blast, really. People are funny and creative and this game lets them be. I like the addition of Beat Poet clicking after each read, personally, but any way you play it, it makes for a cool evening. And an even cooler collection of stunning 5 or 10 minute creations. Silly, some. And poignant.

So why could I absolutely, positively not write anything on my shiny new Poetry Slam legal pad? The blogger box coaxes something out of me every time I show up, for God's sake, and I am one of those annoying coworkers who just keeps running back at you all day with one more idea for whatever we're working on. I email people at midnight with stuff. Honest.

But Poetry Slam? With people in the room? People who are done, ready, and waiting for me to finish so we can all read our creations? Nothing. Frozen solid.

Then came the realization that I was coming back here to Spain, alone, about to leave the job that brought me here so nicely and neatly and legally. About to leave behind all the tempting "but, wait, if you come back here" offers I met in the States, and the stubborn last minute tries by the old and new owners of the company I work for here in Spain. About to leave what little security I have.

I visited a web I never visit the day I landed in Madrid and read this:

-Your life is up to you. Life provides the canvas; you do the painting.

And it hit me. I've never really just wholeheartedly all-out DIVED into a blank canvas. I always started with a sketch provided by work. Or something. Or someone. My move to Spain was magic. I said I wanted to move, and a job hit me on the head on its way down from a bright blue sky.

So I came to Salamanca, with that visa, for that job. Nice little template, eh? Not quite a blank page.

So, Nomadita, because I think this is me still trying to explain to both of us why I am so sure I am headed good places with this new page, this time, this time the canvas is blank. Nobody else's idea, like my corporate moves. Nothing all set up and ready for my signature, like this job in Salamanca. This time I am starting with a blank page.

And all of sudden I don't care who else is in the room.