The Ghosts in My Apartment

on unfinished things

I used to think leaving things unfinished was a character flaw. Like if discipline was a muscle, mine never made it past the warmup.

If you need proof, visit my art room. It’s less of a workspace, more a museum of “almost”. Half-used sketchbooks, canvases stuck mid-thought. Sewing machines that work perfectly but haven’t been touched in months years (more on this eventually). Drafts saved under increasingly desperate file names—final, final_final, okay_this_one_for_real—none of which were in fact, for real.

These are the ghosts in my apartment. Not the scary kind—just the lingering presence of versions of myself that I tried on but didn’t keep. For a long time, I treated this as evidence or proof that I couldn't follow through. Or that I couldn’t be trusted with my own ideas. Starting was my jam, but finishing? That belonged to better, more disciplined people.

Lately I’ve been noticing something different though.

Ive been thinking about how we talk about completion. And how “finish what you start” became the standard we measure ourselves against. How ideas only seem to count once it’s wrapped up and ready to show the world. But what if some things aren’t meant to last forever?

When I first had the idea of starting a Substack back in September, I went back and forth for weeks on whether or not I would actually go through with it. Or if it would become yet another nearly to add to the collection. I pushed the launch date back an entire month before I quit being hard on myself and realized that some ideas are seasonal. They show up, do what they came to do and leave. Some are just passing through—here to stretch you, wake you up and remind you that you’re still capable of wanting things.

Those unused sewing machines? Maybe they weren’t a waste. Perhaps they were proof of curiosity. Of a version of me who could see herself making clothes, learning patterns and working with her hands. That version mattered, even if she only stuck around for a chapter.

Same with the unfinished writing. Some drafts didn’t need endings because they simply weren’t going anywhere. They were processing. Thinking out loud. They were me circling a feeling until I understood it well enough to move on. Maybe that’s not failure. Perhaps that’s just how it works.

I realize how much I want everything to “go somewhere”. To be useful or justify itself. But creativity, I find, doesn’t always want to be efficient. What if sometimes it just wants to rearrange the furniture in your brain and leave before you ask about its five-year-plan?

Not everything needs to be monetized.

Not everything needs to be mastered.

Not everything needs to cross a finish line.

There might be intelligence in stopping. Or recognizing when continuing would turn something you loved into a chore. In choosing not to force an idea into a shape it’s resisting just because you think you should complete it. Maybe some projects exist to teach your hands something new. I’ve been trying to teach myself how to crochet for years and perhaps, one day, it won’t make me feel like my hands don’t belong to me. But if not, maybe it solely exists to show what doesn’t fit—so I can find what does.

I used to look at my unfinished things like broken promises. Now I see them as breadcrumbs. Markers of movement. They’re evidence that I've been paying attention to my own curiosity, even when it didn’t lead anywhere neat or sellable. Completion implies closure. But maybe not everything deserves to be closed. Maybe some things are meant to stay open-ended, a little unresolved, like memories you don’t revisit often but that still shape how you move.

We romanticize the finished masterpiece. But I’m learning to appreciate the half-formed ideas that quietly changed me. The sketches that taught my hand something. The home project that failed but rerouted me entirely. The abandoned path that clarified where I was never supposed to go. Maybe leaving things unfinished isn’t about quitting. Maybe it's about listening. For when the energy shifts and when the season ends. Or listening for when holding on would cost more than letting go.

I’m learning to stop treating unfinished projects like evidence against me and start seeing them as a record of becoming. Proof that I tried, that I explored and that I trusted myself enough to change my mind.

The ghosts in my apartment aren’t haunting me. They’re just keeping me company. Reminders of all the versions of myself I’ve been, all the curiosities I’ve followed and all the paths I've walked down just to see where they led.

And maybe that’s the real completion—not a finished product, but the fact that I didn’t abandon myself along the way. Some things are meant to be completed. And some are meant to be left unfinished, gently, because they’ve already done exactly what they came to do.

— TANISHA