Where I Am Now, and Why I'm Not Done

I don't know exactly how to describe where things stand right now. Not finished. Not abandoned. Somewhere in the long, unglamorous middle.

I don't know exactly how to describe where things stand right now. Not finished. Not abandoned. Somewhere in the long, unglamorous middle that doesn't get written about nearly as often as the beginning or the eventual end, whatever that end turns out to be.

What I can say honestly is that the version of this I'm working on now looks different from the version I first imagined, in ways that feel like progress rather than compromise. Some of the early assumptions didn't survive contact with actually trying to build them. Some of what's replaced those assumptions is better than what I started with, learned the only way I think it could have been learned by being wrong first, and paying enough attention to notice.

I'm tired, some days, in a way that's honest to admit rather than something to perform strength through. I'm also more certain than I was at the beginning that this is worth finishing, not because the doubts have gone away, but because I've gotten better at working alongside them instead of waiting for them to leave.

I don't have a clean announcement to make yet. I'm still not ready to explain this fully, and I've stopped apologizing to myself for that timeline. Some things take as long as they take, and I've decided I'd rather take the time to get it right than rush toward a version I don't fully believe in yet.

What I know for certain is this: I'm not done. Not with the building, and not, it turns out, with figuring out who I am while I do it. Both of those things are still very much in progress, and for the first time in a while, I'm genuinely at peace with that.