Everyone has their little obsessions. Cooks like cookbooks. Aspiring actors love movies. Zoologists like animals. Cat ladies like cats. English professors like old books. The Brits love tea. Americans love coffee. Pubescent girls are obsessed with boys. Pubescent boys are obsessed with food.

I am a writer-wannabe. I have an obsession with blank paper. Hopefully this does not make me abnormal.

For as long as I can remember, I have been thrilled by blank paper. Blank pads of memo paper. Blank sheets of copy paper. Empty notebooks. Notebook paper, college or wide ruled. Blank journals. Planners. Sticky notes. The backs of test copies. Even a blank Word document has an exciting and addicting appeal.

As a result, I have an accumulation of empty journals in my desk. They’ve been given to me by relatives and friends as birthday, Christmas, or Valentine’s Day presents for as long as I can remember. It’s as if everyone was unwittingly preparing me for a time in my life when I would decide that God’s calling for me was to be a writer of…something.

My problem is not so much the quantity of blank journals, but a lack of the ability to completely fill them.

I have filled one journal. One. One bright blue, artistically decorated journal with little inspirational quotes and songs filling in the margins. It was given to me as a high school graduation present by my friend Mary Rose’s mom. I used it to record my journey through my first year in college that year, along with lists of things – you know, just adds and ends. I wrote in it a little every morning before classes, and by the end of the semester I had to write on the back flyleaf to get my last entry in.

But the rest are either unused, half-used, or only written on a few pages.

I’m not sure what this says about me. Maybe it’s a reflection on my inability to finish anything. Maybe it shows my unwillingness to commit. Maybe it means I’m A.D.D.

Or maybe it means I just love the idea of potential. Every blank page has the possibility of holding something grand, something marvelous, something new. I feel the way about blank paper the way most mothers feel about their newborn infants. There’s just so much potential in that little one that you’re almost (almost) afraid to touch it for fear you might mess it up.

But I feel the God-given responsibility to make that blank and potential-packed page the best page of writing I can possibly make it. Every page is like a day. You only get it once; make the most of it.

And with all that accumulated emotional pressure—none of the journals gets filled.