Latest / The Beauty Conversation: Beauty, Wellness & Self-Confidence / Why Your Unfinished Projects Are Actually a Good Thing | The Beauty Conversation
Transcript
- You know that box of half-knitted scarves sitting on your closet shelf? Or the sketchbook filled with three perfect pages and then just... nothing? I need you to put down whatever you’re doing, take a deep breath, and realize it’s not a failure. It’s actually proof that you have a life. Let’s keep it real for a second. We live in a culture that is obsessed with the finish line. You see it everywhere, don’t you? On social media, in magazines, even in our own heads. There’s this relentless pressure to launch the business, publish the book, finish the novel, or master the sourdough starter by Tuesday. If you haven’t crossed the tape, did you even run the race? But here is the truth that no one tells you in those glossy editorials: most of us are living in the middle of the messy, confusing, beautiful process. And that is okay. In fact, it might be the only place where any magic happens at all. I used to torture myself over unfinished things. When I was working as an editor, if a project wasn’t polished, it didn’t exist. I treated my creative output like a performance review. Every draft had to be flawless before anyone else saw it. If it wasn’t perfect, I hid it. I stopped writing. I stopped trying new recipes. I became so afraid of leaving something half-finished that I ended up finishing nothing at all. I traded my joy for perfection, and let me tell you, perfection is a lonely, dry, and utterly unappealing place to live. It has no texture. No warmth. Just cold, hard expectations. We are taught that progress is linear. Step one, step two, step three, finish. But life? Life is circular. It’s spiral. You start something, you get excited, you hit a wall, you drop it for six months, you come back to it with fresh eyes, you realize it’s not what you thought, and you change direction entirely. That isn’t quitting. That is listening to yourself. That is intuition at work. Think about your skincare routine. Do you wake up every single morning and follow the exact same ten-step regimen without variation? Probably not. Some days your skin feels tight, so you skip the exfoliant. Some days you’re tired, so you just wash your face and put on moisturizer. You adapt. You respond to what your body needs in that moment. Why do we treat our creative lives with such rigidity? Why do we demand that we build a house when we really just wanted to paint a room? Because we’re allowed to change our minds. Because interests evolve. Because we are human beings, not machines programmed to complete tasks. Embracing the messiness means accepting that you are allowed to pivot. You are allowed to leave a painting blank in the corner because you were feeling blue that day. You are allowed to stop learning French after chapter four because you realized you’d rather learn how to bake bread. Both are valid. Both are beautiful. Neither requires an apology. I want to share something with you that I’ve never really said out loud before. I have a drawer in my kitchen. It’s the junk drawer, technically, but mostly it holds my abandoned dreams. There’s a watercolor set that I bought because I saw someone on Instagram painting these incredible landscapes. I painted one leaf. One leaf! And then I never touched it again. There’s a journal from two years ago where I started writing a memoir about my twenties. I got through the first three chapters and then I realized I didn’t actually like the person I was writing about anymore. So I closed the book. For years, I looked at that drawer with shame. I felt like I was cluttering my space with evidence of my lack of discipline. But recently, I opened it just to find a rubber band, and I pulled out that watercolor set. I held it in my hands, and instead of guilt, I felt gratitude. I remember that afternoon. I remember the smell of the paint. I remember how calm I felt while I was watching that video of the landscape painter. I didn’t need to become a professional artist to honor that moment of peace. The value wasn’t in the finished product. The value was in the experience. The messiness was the point. I got what I needed out of it, even if it looks like a failure on paper. This connects directly to everything we talk about regarding self-care. You know I’m always talking about consistency, right? But consistency doesn’t mean obsession. Consistency means showing up for yourself in small, manageable ways. Sometimes showing up means finishing the task. Sometimes showing up means stopping when you’re exhausted and giving yourself permission to rest. When we force ourselves to finish projects we’ve lost interest in, we’re often punishing ourselves. We’re saying, "If I don’t finish this, I’m not good enough." But skin deep, soul deep, you are enough right now. Not when you finish the blog post. Not when you lose five pounds. Not when you organize the garage. Right now. In this moment. With your hair in a messy bun and your to-do list still half-empty. Your worth is not tied to your productivity. Your beauty is not defined by your completion rate. Let’s dismantle that lie together. You can be a whole, worthy, beautiful woman who leaves things unfinished. In fact, some of the most interesting people I know are the ones who embrace their half-finished states. They’re curious. They’re open. They’re not rigidly attached to a specific outcome. There is a freedom in being a perpetual beginner. When you accept that you might leave things unfinished, you take the pressure off the beginning. You can try new things without the burden of mastery. You can experiment without fear. Think about cooking. Do you only eat meals that you have mastered completely? Or do you sometimes throw ingredients together and see what happens? The best meals I’ve ever made were accidents. A pinch too much salt, a splash of wine I didn’t plan on using. Those mistakes created flavor profiles I never intended. Your creative life is the same. The unfinished projects are not failures; they are experiments. They are data points. They tell you what you love and what you don’t. They help you refine your taste. They make you more discerning. So the next time you pick up a guitar and play three chords before putting it away, don’t call it quitting. Call it exploring. Don’t say, "I failed to learn guitar." Say, "I tried guitar, and I learned that I prefer singing." Or maybe you’ll come back to it next month. Maybe you won’t. Either way, you win. You lived. You engaged. You created a moment of connection with something new. Here is the practical side of this. When you stop beating yourself up for leaving things unfinished, you create mental and physical space for the things that truly light you up. You stop carrying around the weight of a dozen abandoned hobbies. You clear the deck. You make room for the one thing that matters right now. Maybe it’s your career. Maybe it’s your relationship. Maybe it’s just sleeping eight hours a night. I noticed this shift happening in my own life. Once I stopped judging my unfinished knitting, I had more energy for my writing. Once I stopped forcing myself to read books I hated just to finish them, I started reading books that actually moved me. I began curating my life based on joy, not obligation. And that is when things started to flow. When you release the grip on control, you allow life to happen. You trust that you will know what to do next. You trust that you are capable of adapting. You trust that you are enough, right now, exactly as you are, with all your half-finished projects and messy edges and beautiful imperfections. So, go ahead. Put down the phone. Look at that half-finished thing in the corner. Smile at it. Thank it for teaching you something. Then walk away. You have better things to do anyway. Like breathing. Like existing. Like being beautifully, messily human. I’ll see you in the next one. Take care of yourselves.