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Eleven-year-old Leo had a strange habit.
Whenever he received a new sketchbook, he refused to draw on the first page.
The page was too clean.
Too perfect.
“What if I mess it up?” he would say.
So he skipped it.
Unfortunately, Leo treated many things in life exactly like that first page.
When his friends started playing basketball, Leo wanted to join.
Then he watched them shoot.
They were much better than him.
“I’ll just watch.”
When his class started learning guitar, Leo was excited.
Then another student played a song on the first day.
Leo immediately thought,
“I’ll never be that good.”
He gave up after two weeks.
Even when Leo had good ideas in class, he sometimes kept his hand down.
“What if my answer is wrong?”
One afternoon, his teacher announced a school talent exhibition.
Students could display almost anything.
Paintings.
Models.
Poems.
Science projects.
Leo immediately thought about his drawings.
He loved drawing strange little cities filled with flying cars, enormous bridges, secret tunnels, and unusual buildings.
His best friend, Max, leaned over.
“You should enter your drawings.”
Leo shook his head.
“They’re not good enough.”
“Good enough for what?”
Leo didn’t have an answer.
That afternoon, Leo visited his grandmother.
She noticed the sketchbook under his arm.
“Show me what you’ve been drawing.”
Leo handed it to her.
Grandma opened the cover.
The first page was completely blank.
She turned to the second page.
A small drawing of a robot.
Then another.
Then a city.
As the pages continued, something became obvious.
The drawings near the back were much better than the drawings near the front.
Grandma smiled.
“Look at this.”
Leo compared them.
His first robot looked crooked and awkward.
His latest one looked almost three-dimensional.
“You’ve improved.”
Leo shrugged.
“I suppose.”
Grandma turned back to the empty first page.
“Why is this one blank?”
“I didn’t want to ruin it.”
Grandma laughed.
“That’s the only page you actually wasted.”
Leo frowned.
“What do you mean?”
“A bad drawing wouldn’t have wasted this page. You could have learned something from a bad drawing.”
She tapped the empty paper.
“But you can’t learn anything from something you never tried.”
Leo stared at the page.
Grandma handed him a pencil.
“Draw something.”
“Right now?”
“Right now.”
“What?”
“The worst dragon you possibly can.”
Leo burst out laughing.
“What?”
“You heard me. Make it terrible.”
Leo reluctantly began drawing.
He gave the dragon ridiculously short legs, enormous eyes, tiny wings, and smoke coming from its ears.
Grandma laughed.
“That’s wonderfully awful.”
Leo started laughing too.
Then something strange happened.
Because he wasn’t trying to make the drawing perfect, he began having fun.
He added roller skates to the dragon.
Then a hat.
Then a tiny knight chasing it with a spoon.
By the time he finished, the page was a complete mess.
And Leo loved it.
A week later, he entered the school exhibition.
He didn’t submit his best drawing.
Instead, he displayed several drawings side by side.
His earliest attempts.
His mistakes.
His newer work.
And right in the middle was the ridiculous dragon.
Above them, Leo wrote:
THIS IS WHAT PRACTICE LOOKS LIKE.
Students stopped to look.
Some laughed at the dragon.
Others were surprised by how much his drawings had improved.
Then something happened Leo hadn’t expected.
A younger boy approached him.
“I like drawing too,” the boy said, “but mine aren’t very good.”
Leo smiled.
He pointed toward his first robot.
“Neither were mine.”
That afternoon, Leo didn’t win first prize.
He didn’t even win second.
But his teacher gave him a special recognition for creativity.
More importantly, Leo went home excited to draw again.
Over the next few years, he tried more things.
Basketball.
Cooking.
Photography.
Chess.
Some he enjoyed.
Some he didn’t.
Some he was terrible at.
But he stopped expecting himself to be impressive immediately.
Whenever embarrassment tried to stop him, he remembered the blank page.
Because childhood and life is full of empty pages.
The first day at a new school.
The first time you try a sport.
The first friend you introduce yourself to.
The first difficult question you answer in class.
The first time you stand on a stage.
You can protect yourself from mistakes by never trying.
You can keep every page perfectly clean.
But eventually, you’ll end up with a beautiful empty book.
So make the bad drawing.
Miss the basketball shot.
Sing the wrong note.
Ask the question.
Raise your hand.
Be awkward.
Be new.
Be a beginner.
Because mistakes don’t ruin your story.
They’re often how the best parts of it finally get written. 💛
