Back in February, I decided to make the Princess and the Pea diorama my big project for 2025. However, since finishing the nightgown in April, I have done absolutely nothing on this project. While I have done plenty of other things (from spinning yarn to attending conferences), the only step I’ve taken towards finishing this project is collect really big boxes for the tower I need to make.
Why I haven’t been working on this? I have lots of reasons, and but there’s really only one thing holding me back. Most of this massive project includes things I have never done before. Tackling the unknown means potential failure. Things rarely work the first time — it took me nine in the case of the nightgown! It’s not surprising that I am reluctant to work on this.
What I need to remember is how much fun I find the exploratory experimentation that goes with this process. I took a six-month break between the first and second attempt at the nightgown, reluctant to keep going when I realized that it wasn’t going to be as easy as I had imagined. But when I actually returned to it, I got obsessed. I kept tweaking things even after I finally got a pattern that worked because I was so excited by the results I was getting.
Many of the quotes I’ve posted lately have been reminders to myself that I need to keep showing up. I have to keep trying. I have to keep starting over again, or I will never ever finish.
But I’ve realized the reminder I really need: that you have to dive in even though you don’t know if it’s going to work. You have to put in the time and effort without being guaranteed a successful project. Or, as Leonard Cohen puts it:
The cutting of the gem has to be finished before you can see whether it shines.
Time to get cutting.
Does the fear of failure hold you back?
