A lifetime of projects started and abandoned

How everything you've done ends up intertwining and making sense on reflection

I designed this ring in wax, had it casted, and designed the ring boxes.

I’ll tell you the story. At the beginning of lockdown I started a jewellery business. I sourced rings wholesale, launched my Instagram, started to get traction and even orders and when I say I FREAKED OUT - I ended up deactivating the account.

Over those few years and after I shut it down, I was practicing wax carving, drawing my ideas, and started going to 1 on 1 classes to learn silversmithing. I didn’t like sourcing the rings and reselling them - there isn’t anything wrong with doing that - but I craved making and creating my own pieces and something was missing in the process for me. Turns out though, I was slow as hell at silversmithing. Doing something with my hands while someone watched caused me to spiral every time and I couldn’t let go. Aaaand then my teacher suggested that maybe I shouldn’t do it as a career, and in that moment every negative thought I had of myself was confirmed. Honestly - she meant no harm and was super supportive, she could see I was putting way too much pressure on myself (recurring theme) and it caused me to seize up. Creating from that space is super fucking hard. Can you see where this is going?

My limiting beliefs bled out into everything I did. Being seen (literally, in person, by my teacher AND online by customers) terrified me and I couldn’t move. In fact I retreated completely. The second my negative thoughts were affirmed by someone else, I clung onto them even tighter, wearing them as my identity. Running away from projects I’d started further affirmed my belief that I could never stick to anything, and my self-trust dissolved at an increasingly rapid pace. I never shared the ring as I thought it was too similar to other rings out there, I was crap, and I’d be judged. I was in perpetual survival mode and a lot of pain.

I started therapy around this time, and it got me to a point of relational safety and growing self trust, but I didn’t realise how deeply engrained these beliefs and programmes were until a couple of years later, when everything in life culminated and I knew I had to start my own business (……again)

This time felt different (Saturn return maybe 🥲) - I’d wanted to do something creative since I was a little girl, since I was a teenager on MySpace, designing my friends themes and following Sophia Amoruso, since I graduated high school (college) and never attempted uni cause I knew I wanted to do my own thing. It had just taken me 10 years of retail, admin and abandoned projects (add in many books on entrepreneurship gathering dust on my bookcase) to be willing enough and uncomfortable enough to start building a life for myself.

It makes me feel like laughing now (this is a sweet spot in the process to be in) - because as soon as I started, the same feelings rose up - this time from an even deeper space. Posting on Instagram and selling myself, creating a brand around ME, not being able to hide any more? I retreated again. Fear of being seen ate me alive. Old feelings were activated. Self trust questioned. Creating from that space is super fucking hard. And so began a year of purging and feeling like I died and was reborn a million times over.

I didn’t see how it all connected then, but I can now. I can also see how a handful of blogs started and abandoned have led do this one. How designing that ring, never posting it, and being catapulted onto this journey has led me to talking about it and posting it now, here, without fear. How I had to be so uncomfortable in my own life that I couldn’t do anything other than something different, knowing this time I had no choice but to commit, even if committing looked like posting on my business Instagram 11 times in one year and crying more than I’ve ever cried in my life.

I only hope that reading this alleviates even the tiniest bit of shame for someone. Abandoned projects are never a waste. You either learn a new skill or unearth parts of yourself hidden away, even if you don’t realise it at the time. You fine tune what you like and what you don’t. You use these experiences to shape what it is you truly desire, consciously or not. You come home to yourself more each time. It might not make sense now, but the webs we weave in our lives end up building a supporting structure, even if it feels like we’re falling and failing and lost. It’s the messy, creative process of life. Too much has proven this to me, time and time again. So, I have faith that what doesn’t make sense now, will at some point. And maybe there are experiences that won’t ever make sense - but they make us kinder, more understanding, more open, or they illuminate in us what needs to be loved. I haven’t lived a full life yet, so I can’t confirm, but what I have experienced so far only ever supports this theory and it keeps me going so I’m sticking to it.

I view this ring with admiration now. It’s the first thing I really brought to life from my own mind in a tangible sense, and I see it as a reminder that I am capable. Before, I looked to it to confirm that I was a failure.

That’s on growth baby.