unfinished business

Have you ever noticed how we treat unfinished things as if they’re failures instead of the evidence that we were once alive and had the drive to start them in the first place?

I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately; mostly while ignoring the photography brand and website I started to build six months ago and still haven’t finished or clicked “publish” on. It’s there: the name, the logo, the portfolio, the bio, the reviews, the contact form, all of it. It just needs a few finishing touches and the click of a button, and yet I keep walking away from it like it’s a feral cat I’m not ready to bring indoors.

I do this with other things, too. A craft project that’s three-quarters done sits inside a bag inside a drawer, neatly folded but collecting dust. I started a series here, in this space, called Your Short Sunday Read. I made it a whole three weeks before abandoning it mid-stride. What would’ve been the fourth Sunday, the fourth episode, I was camping, unable to post, and just never regained the bandwidth to do it again. Every Sunday since, I think about how I could have kept going, how I can still keep going, but for some reason I just don’t.

For a long time I assumed this meant I was scattered, lazy, maybe even undisciplined. That I lacked the structural boundaries real adults are supposed to have. But when I finally looked closer, I realized it’s not about discipline at all: it’s about bandwidth. Sometimes I just don’t have the mental or emotional space to keep pushing, even for the things I love and truly want to accomplish. Am I being lazy and just plain avoidant sometimes? Yeah. But not all the time.

That’s hard to admit because we live in a culture that believes everything must be finished to count. Projects, relationships, conversations, even goodbyes: we’re taught that if we don’t tie every thread into a neat knot before we move on, we’ve wasted the yarn.

But I’m not so sure anymore.

I still take photos, often. I even shot an event yesterday: no website required. The work didn’t stop just because my site isn’t live. That realization surprised me. The thing I love is still moving forward, even if the container I imagined for it isn’t finished yet.

The same goes for friendships that fade without explanation or relationships that never got a final, cathartic conversation. For years I thought I needed closure to move on from people, whoever they may be. But sometimes moving on happens first, and the closure never comes, and that’s its own unique kind of ending. And if you pay enough attention, it ends up being all the closure you need.

When I circle back to an old project, it can go either way. Sometimes I pick it up and remember exactly why I set it down in the first place. Other times I see it with fresh eyes and it feels lighter, like it was waiting for me to grow into it. There’s something strangely comforting about that; that not everything we leave is truly gone. And on the same note, not everything that leaves us is truly gone either.

What I’m learning is that setting something down isn’t the same as throwing it away. Often, it’s just pressing pause when life asks us to. Sometimes we never un-pause, and that’s okay. Sometimes we do, and it feels like finding an old friend.

I want to say this, both to you and to myself: it’s okay not to finish everything. It’s okay to recognize that your brain, your heart, your body have limits, and that setting something aside can be an act of respect for those limits, not a sign of weakness.

Society will tell you that unfinished equals unproductive and unworthy. It’ll measure your success by your output. But joy and success are not factory goods; they’re not produced by sheer completion. Sometimes they live in the half-formed, the still-becoming, the brave decision to walk away.

So if you have a project half-built in your garage, a message you meant to send but never did, a goodbye you never got to say, a craft that’s missing the final coat of mod podge.. give yourself a little room to breathe. You’re not a machine, and you don’t have to manufacture closure and completion to be whole.

If one day you come back to it, wonderful. If you never do, that’s okay too. Life is not a series of completed checklists; it’s a series of moments where we dream, we reach, we try, and sometimes we stop. That, in itself, is enough.

Also a reminder that life is actually so unserious.. and you have free-will. Go start a million and a half projects and don’t finish any of them. I dare you.