I. Had. Nothing.

I changed brush sizes. Stepped to the side to view my unfinished painting from another angle, praying to myself for inspiration.

Still. Nothing.

It had been a millennia since I was motivated to create something. Still not motivated. A millennia since I’d had the confidence to continue my work. Confidence, missing.

I took a breath.

Those seven days of creativity swelled my belly with painful nostalgia. And with regret.

Those seven days were something special.

I’d spent eternities trying to recapture that fire. That confidence to saturate that empty canvas with life. But all I’ve ever received was dry brimstone. Inspiration which presented themselves in the flesh, but crumbled through my fingers like ash in my arms each time I reached to embrace them.

“Day eight,” I whispered to myself. “On the eighth day, I resumed.”

I had intended to complete my work. To fill each part of the cosmic canvas with life and color. From corner to corner, the infinite blank space was to be overflowing with vibrant, abstract, unpredictable existence.

I drew my brush from the easel and stopped short of adding another stroke to the blank canvas. The incomprehensible void.

The first part of the creation took her a whole seven days. The story is after seven days I rested. Nothing could be further from the truth. The real story was more like…. On the seventh day… She got suffered a block On the seventh day she got frustrated and snapped her paintbrush in two.

The four dimensional paint I was to use to expand my universe was drying.

There was a can of oblivion-black can of paint in the corner.

I woke up at dawn, of the new millennia with so many fresh ideas. So many ways to enhance what I had already accomplished in those seven powerful, ambitious, creative, flowing days. What I thought was another bang, an explosion of inspiration, was no more than an aftershock of the original. It was false hope. My mind playing tricks on me.

I took a step back to view my incomplete painting in its infinite totality.

Was it imperfection? Was it truly unfinished, or was I just eternally dissatisfied with my work? Will I ever be satisfied?

I added a brush stroke along the empty corner of the canvas.

I added color to the empty space, but it only expanded the void within me.

“Ugh”, I threw my brush to the ground.

I was a failure. There was nothing to improve. The problem wasn’t the painting. It was me, the creator. The incomplete creation was a result of me, the incomplete creator.

Genesis was a fluke.

I picked up the can of oblivion-black paint, opened the lid, and aimed it at the canvas.

It was time to start over. To stop wasting any more time on that creation. It’s always easier to start over.

I tossed oblivion black paint on the canvas and ended my creation once and for all.