In The Simplicity Lies Inherent Complexity

Wow! I haven’t participated in one of these for a while. This is my entry for the October 2026 edition of the IndieWeb Carnival, hosted by Marisabel on the theme of ‘pages.’

In her call for submissions, she asks three intriguing questions:

1. How do you see the blank page, the unseen page, the traced page, the colored page?
2. How does it influence what you share online?
3. Do you believe the illusion of infinity gives you more freedom, or does it make it harder?

Here, I attempt, at least, to answer them.

Before I begin, though:

• Many thanks to Marisabel for hosting, the wonderful theme, and the thoughtful questions.
• Many thanks to Sara, who started the IndieWeb Carnival over three years ago.
• Many thanks to the wonderful people who participate and provide me with interesting reading material.

If you don’t know what the IndieWeb Carnival is: every month, someone with a personal website decides on a prompt, and for that month, other people can write about said topic on their own personal websites.

At the month’s end, the person who decided on the topic creates a post with links to all the submissions.

While I don’t participate as often as I’d like, I always enjoy the process and the topics people come up with. I’ve written about things I never would’ve otherwise!

With that overly long preamble out of the way, here’s my submission.

Since I love all things books, it’s safe to say I love all things paper. And, extending that train of thought far enough, I love all things ‘pages’ too. I guess it makes sense. I adore collage, letter writing, notebooks, journaling, drawing, browsing books, making websites…they all contain pages!

Much of my professional life (if one can call it that) revolves around pages: client sites, socials, publishing, marketing…the list goes on! It’d be safe (if hyperbolic) to conclude I live and breathe pages.

What a privilege. A glorious canvas of infinite possibility!

A blank page in a lined notebook can become a poem about road signs, a space adventure novel involving sentient satellites, or a treatise on marine animals’ endurance. A blank page in a visual arts diary can become a ferns-and-forests collage, a portrait of a famous musician surrounded by flowers whose meanings echo themes from their songs, or an abstract riot of color inspired by landmarks in one’s hometown.

I could go on, but you get the idea. (Or several.)

(Apologies for the parenthetical stack, but if these ideas capture your attention, please steal them for your creative purposes! That’s what they’re here for. Bonus points if you contact me and tell me about them.)

Anyway! I’ve noticed the notion of ‘infinite possibility’ terrifies, perturbs, or at least mildly overwhelms most. With good reason! Barry Schwartz wrote a book about this, called The Paradox of Choice.

When I’m not feeling great, every little decision adds up. What most days seems like a glorious wellspring of human potential becomes an overwhelming agony. There’s a reason too many decisions are taxing on the mind, and when you’re sick or down in the dumps, the feeling is often multiplied, unfortunately.

When you get to ‘what to create next’…that’s a whole other can of fish. (The garbled saying is intentional.)

Underneath the normal decision fatigue that comes with the blank page is often what I can only describe as existential dread. Unnecessarily morbid, I know, but isn’t it one form of truth?

The world is alive with possibility, but the creative urge is just one of many demands on our time. There are only so many poems we can write or songs we can compose, even if we make more time for them.

(I encourage you to make as much time as you can for creative play. You’ll be all the better for it.)

The blank page reminds me of the great dichotomies of life. Every day, we have countless choices to make, and countless opportunities to make said choices. Please, if you find yourself with a spare pocket of time, rather than doing what you might usually do…consider using it to turn a blank page into a full one instead.