In which I paint a wall, confront a blank space, and remember who I’ve always been.

I’ve never been afraid of a blank space.

Many people see a white wall or a blank page and feel pressure to fill it. I see it and feel invited. Excited. Hopeful. No expectations, just potential. There’s a metaphor for life in there, probably.

This morning, I was standing in the bathroom of a local coffee shop, paintbrush in hand. I’ve been hired to turn these empty walls into a mural. No theme. No guidelines. Just me, the space, and whatever wants to show up.

What the wall looks like today is not what it will look like by the end of the week. Which feels like a lesson. Or a warning. Or both.

We shouldn’t be surprised that transformation takes time, or that it happens at all.
We’re all kind of like white walls: scuffed, blank, waiting.
What we become is what we allow, formed by all that’s been there all along.

I’m a pretty scared brave person.
I’m a pretty brave scared person.

I’m an anxious high-achieving scholar still carrying her little girl complex like an overstuffed bag. I don’t like not knowing what comes next, and there are reasons for that. But I still approach what’s next. Bravery, for me, is more about continuing than anything else.

This week I climbed to the top of a lil airport tower. The place where the guy sits and directs planes. It felt safer when I could see the final steps, not just hope there was a top. However, I couldn’t see how many steps there were or when we would arrive. What a silly thing to be anxious about, but I was nervous nonetheless. Plot twist: the view was beautiful. Even without knowing the way, it was worth it.

When I was a kid, I was always at the library. Books on books on books. I checked out the max allowed each week. I also made art constantly with whatever was close. Napkins, scrap paper, chalk, anything. No one asked me to. I just did.

I thought my dream was to be an art teacher. I still habitually make art with kids, but now I’m a rhetoric scholar, teaching public speaking, chasing a PhD, writing papers about big ideas with small deadlines.

And still I read books. And I still make art. Continuing.

We are as much of every version of ourselves as we’re willing to carry forward.
Little Tiff is still right here, still making art with whatever she’s got, still reading too many books at once. Nothing’s changed, except now she paints coffee shop walls and the reading list comes with footnotes and papers.

So now, I’m painting a bathroom mural.
And also, somehow painting a part of myself back into the room.

Making art is elbow room for my brain, providing space to think more clearly through the ideas I’m studying, the shifts I’m feeling, the questions I’m asking.

Reading, writing, painting, ruminating. None of it is new.
But I’m seeing it differently now.

This bathroom mural is whatever I want it to be.
It doesn’t look like the wall it was yesterday, and by the end of the week, it won’t look like it does today.
Neither will I.

Blank spaces aren’t scary, they’re spacious.
They’re where you meet the you that doesn’t exist yet.
We’re all white walls — might as well make a mess that means something.