This Page Intentionally Left Blank

In the course of being a business owner, bootstrapped and just strapped in general, I had to learn how to be my own accountant. This means, in the simplest of times, that after a month has ended I’ll painstakingly go through the General Journal and compare it to printed accounts statements, receipts, invoices etc. before transferring the items to their individual accounts in the General Ledger, and finally the Balance Sheet and Income statements.

All that is to say: I sometimes hit the “Print Statement” button when viewing my business checking account online, so that I can manually go line by line and check things off.

The other bit of information that informs about the precipitating force behind this particular piece of writing is this: As a rather chronically undisciplined, self-employed procrastinator with a penchant for introspection and inner monologues*, I’ve recently added a block of “Writing” to the only thing that keeps me on target - my Time Block Schedule.

*Let’s be real, they’re actually inner dialogues, but for some reason it’s not okay to admit that you talk to yourself and hear voices (even when they’re your own). What gives?

“Writing” is varied in format. Sometimes it’s like this- a sort of free-form journaling inspired by tiniest mote of nonsense that has interjected itself into my day. Yesterday, it was sales and advertising copy for my line of cannabis-infused Skin, Muscle, and Bone Salves.

The nonsense to which I refer is what is displayed in the accompanying image. “This page intentionally left blank”. This is page 5, and page 6 of my bank statement; an otherwise empty page with my identifying information in the header, page number in the footer, and this bizarre message.

Intentionally left blank.

I have so many questions.

Why have the page at all? Why feel the need to tell me it was on purpose? Why include blank useless pages with peoples account numbers casually scrawled across the top knowing full well they’re just going to print them and then immediately discard them? Why have you now created this impetus for me to stop what I’m doing and go find a secure disposal solution for these pages? (Read as: use them for scratch paper then feed them to my worms). WHAT DID YOU INTEND FOR ME TO DO WITH THIS PAGE?

This page that was intentionally left blank.

In the absence of any logical reason for this page to exist, I decided to just riff on its manifestation from a philosophical perspective. What other pages in my life are intentionally left blank, and why? Who’s intention does leaving them blank serve? What is the core essence of a blank page, and why am I so bothered by this one?

There’s a lot of things a blank page can represent. In its purest form a blank page is like the beatified tabula rasa - the clean slate, representing a renewal or cleansing, the release from sin, a fresh start, a shedding of baggage. It’s spring cleaning and divorce and nudity and witness protection programs. It’s fresh Windows installations, that new car smell, and a Brazilian wax.

It’s all things made new.

More frighteningly, the blank page also represents the void, the pit, the unfathomable depths of ignorance, and absence of being. It is the infinite potential for good and evil, perpetually unexpressed by its very nature. It is chaos in its pure, raw, unadulterated form. It is the vacuum of space, and Schrodinger’s Box, and Uncollapsed Waveforms.

Somewhere in-between the void and tabula rasa is the the associated implication of intention. The blank page doesn’t merely exist to be blank, it exists to be filled. It cries out for completion (like your mom). It inspires action, and serves purpose. It precipitates the big bang, business plans, orgasm, and babies.

The blank page encompasses all of these things.

So why? Why has this page been so adulterated and robbed of its purpose?

What other unexpressed or mutilated potential exists in the dusky corners of my life, thusly bereft of its purpose so as to resemble this deplorable blank page? I’m not sure I have an answer, but I do know I’m going to be a lot more aware of it moving forward. Perhaps in so doing I’ll one day comprehend what it is to be “fulfilled”, if such a state can ever exist for an always-grasping human.