I didn’t realise that the reason I couldn’t finish my project was because I didn’t actually want to.
In 2023, I started developing the Winter Garden project, which grew from a simple idea so much that I got lost in all the countless mediums I wanted to use to tell that story. Because I kept expanding the project, my objective, aka reaching the end of the project, also kept moving to some undefined day in the future. The project grew so much and so out of control that I lost will to continue.
The reality was that I wasn’t quite sure what I was working on. My objective was to finish the project, which I couldn’t finish because I kept adding mediums to an already multidisciplinary project.
After pondering and wondering, I came to the conclusion that I didn’t really want to finish “Winter Garden” as I wasn’t quite sure what to do with it once it was finished. Postponing reaching my objective allowed me to be in my neurodiverse comfort zone, where fear, anxiety, and perfectionism dominate.
To reconnect with the project’s soul, I needed to step away from it and give myself enough brain space to re-discover my connection to it and why I wanted to make it in the first place.
Since everyone of us is different, regardless of whether we identify as neurodiverse or neurotypical, the inability to reach objectives can be emotionally painful and have real-life consequences on our abilities to make our dreams come true, our self-esteem and our mental health.
What helped me to overcome my “objective stuckness” as I call it and assisted me in finishing the “Winter Garden” project were:
- Taking time to understand why I wanted to do this project in the first place.
- Slowing down and getting in touch with my creative self. For me, learning and understanding my own creative process has been immensely helpful. During that project, I started truly appreciating slow creativity.
- Working with a mentor helped me see how much work I’ve already done in my creative art practice, which boosted my creative confidence, which in turn allowed me to trust my own judgement and the decisions I make.
- Learning how to cultivate trust between myself and my creativity has allowed me to see the project in a different light, more as a process than a finished “product”.
- Scaling down the concept of the project and working on and finishing elements of the project before moving on.
What helps you reconnect when a project starts to feel out of control?
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