The Safety of Starting Over

There's a particular kind of person who collects beginnings like other people collect stamps. They have seventeen books with bookmarks lodged hopefully at page 47. Three Netflix series paused mid-season two. A graveyard of abandoned projects, each one launched with the kind of confidence that makes you wonder how they could possibly fail.

I know this person intimately. She might be you. She's definitely me.

Here's what nobody tells you about serial starters: we're not flaky. We're not uncommitted. We're not even particularly distractible. We're something much more human than that.

We're terrified.

The Legacy You Didn't Ask For

Sometimes the pattern runs deeper than simple fear of failure. Sometimes it's woven into the fabric of who you were raised to be.

Imagine growing up as the designated vessel for someone else's unrealised potential. Your father—brilliant, the son of a lawyer to one of your country's founding fathers—should have been a lawyer himself. But migration intervened. Life intervened. And all that intelligence, all that promise, got poured into you instead.

You wanted to understand why people do what they do. You were drawn to psychology, to the mysteries of human behaviour. But when it came time to choose, you chose law. Not because it was your dream, but because you were born—or raised—to please. To perform. To carry the weight of potential that wasn't originally yours.

This is how perfectionism gets installed in a person. Not as a character flaw, but as a survival strategy. When you're the repository of someone else's unfulfilled dreams, you can't afford to make mistakes. Every failure isn't just yours—it's a betrayal of the legacy you're meant to fullfill.

So you become very, very good at starting things. Because starting is when you're still perfect. Starting is when anything is possible. Starting is when you haven't failed yet.

The Seduction of the Blank Page

There's a reason why the first episode of a series feels so much more alive than the middle seasons. In the beginning, anything is possible. The characters could go anywhere. The plot could become anything. You're not watching a show—you're watching pure potential.

The same thing happens with books. Page one promises transformation. A new business name promises reinvention. A fresh start promises that this time will be different.

And here's the thing that makes it so seductive: in the beginning, you can't fail yet.

You haven't failed until you've finished and discovered it wasn't what you hoped. So the smartest move—the safest move—is to never finish. Keep yourself suspended in that golden moment where everything still might work out perfectly.

For a perfectionist raised to perform, this makes even more sense. If you never finish, you never have to face the possibility that you're not as brilliant as you were supposed to be. You never have to discover that you're just... human.

When Your Brain Works Against You

And then there's the other layer. The one you didn't understand for most of your life.

For years, you knew something was wrong but you didn't have the language for it. The highs that felt too high. The lows that swallowed you whole. The patterns that didn't make sense until finally, almost four years ago, you got the diagnosis: bipolar.

Suddenly, the lifetime of confusion had a name. The medication gave you stability you'd never known. And with that stability came something both relieving and devastating: clarity.

You could finally see the pattern. The endless starting and stopping. The guilt that follows you like a shadow every time you abandon a project, reschedule a meeting, break a promise you made to yourself or someone else. The way you find yourself whispering "you're a good person" like a mantra, trying to soothe the shame of being someone who starts things but never finishes them.

Understanding yourself doesn't erase the pattern. But it does help you see it for what it is: not a moral failing, but a complex web of inherited expectations, perfectionist conditioning, and brain chemistry that wasn't your fault.

The Procrastination of Progress

Someone smarter than me once said that starting new projects is just procrastination in disguise, and I've never forgiven them for being so right.

Because that's exactly what it is, isn't it? Every time you start something new, you get to feel productive without actually producing anything. You get the hit of "I'm doing something about my life!" without the vulnerability of seeing it through.

It's the same reason why people love buying gym memberships in January but hate going to the gym in February. The signup is the fantasy. The showing up is the work.

The fantasy feels like progress. It gives you the same sense of forward motion. Your brain releases the same little burst of dopamine whether you're starting something or finishing it. So why would you choose the hard one?

Especially when finishing might prove that you're not carrying that legacy of brilliance as well as you're supposed to. Especially when your brain chemistry already makes sustained effort harder than it should be. Especially when you've been conditioned to believe that anything less than perfect is failure.

The Messy Middle (Or: The Plateau Nobody Warns You About)

There's a part of every book, every show, every project where it gets boring. The newness wears off. The excitement fades. You start noticing the flaws. The characters aren't as interesting as you thought. The plot isn't moving fast enough. The business strategy has real problems you didn't anticipate.

Researchers call this the plateau. Studies from the University of Vermont found that interest levels consistently drop at the midpoint of tasks—any tasks, regardless of their nature. It's not personal. It's not a sign you picked the wrong thing. It's neuroscience.

Your brain releases dopamine when you encounter something new. Starting a project? Dopamine rush. Starting episode one? Dopamine. Opening a fresh book? More dopamine. But by the middle, that novelty has worn off, and your brain stops rewarding you just for showing up.

This is where most people quit. This is where you quit.

But here's what you don't know because you never stay long enough to find out: this is also where it gets good.

The messy middle is where real transformation happens. It's where characters develop depth. It's where ideas get tested and refined. It's where you learn whether you're actually committed or just interested.

Interested people quit when it gets hard. Committed people keep going because they decided the ending matters more than the discomfort.

For someone carrying the weight of inherited expectations and untreated bipolar disorder, the middle feels even harder. The guilt compounds. The fear intensifies. The voice that says "you're failing again" gets louder.

But what if the middle isn't where you fail? What if it's where you finally learn that you're allowed to be imperfect?

The Permission to Finish Badly

Maybe what you need isn't a better project. Maybe what you need is permission to finish something badly.

This is revolutionary for a perfectionist. The idea that you could complete something—actually see it through to the end—even if it's messy, even if it's flawed, even if it doesn't live up to the potential it seemed to hold at the beginning.

Pick one book. Any book. Finish it even if it's boring. Even if you hate it by the end. Even if you skim the last hundred pages just to say you did it.

Pick one show. Watch it all the way through even when season three gets weird and you're not sure why you're still watching.

Finish one project—even if it fails, even if it's not perfect, even if it doesn't transform your life the way you hoped.

Because here's what finishing badly will teach you that starting perfectly never can: You're capable of commitment. You can do hard things. You can survive disappointment and still be okay.

You can fail at something and still be a good person.

That last part—that's the one that matters most. The guilt you carry isn't about the unfinished books or abandoned projects. It's about the belief that not finishing makes you fundamentally flawed. That breaking promises to yourself means you're bad. That you've somehow betrayed not just yourself, but everyone who believed in your potential.

But you're not bad. You're human. And humans are allowed to finish things imperfectly.

The Weight of Potential

When you carry someone else's unrealised dreams, every choice becomes heavy with meaning. You're not just choosing for yourself—you're choosing for the father who couldn't become a lawyer, for the grandfather who advised founding fathers, for the lineage of brilliance that somehow landed on your shoulders.

No wonder you're drawn to psychology. You've spent your whole life trying to understand why people do what they do—including yourself. Why you say yes when you mean no. Why you choose to please instead of to pursue. Why you start with such confidence and abandon with such guilt.

The answer isn't complicated: You were taught that your value comes from achievement, not from being. That love is earned through performance, not given freely. That you exist to fulfil potential, not to simply exist.

And then your brain chemistry made it even harder to sustain the performance. The bipolar disorder you didn't know you had created additional barriers to finishing what you started. The highs gave you false confidence. The lows made everything feel impossible. The cycling between them meant you could never quite maintain momentum.

For years, you thought this was a character flaw. Now you know it's a combination of conditioning and chemistry. That's not an excuse—it's an explanation. And understanding the why gives you power to change the what.

What Starting Over Really Means

Every time you start something new, you're making a promise to Future You. You're saying "This time will be different. This time I'll see it through. This time I'll become the person I want to be."

And every time you abandon it halfway through, you're breaking that promise.

You're teaching yourself that you're not trustworthy. That your commitments don't mean anything. That you're the kind of person who starts things but never finishes them.

And then you wonder why you feel anxious and flawed and stuck.

But here's the truth beneath the guilt: You're not flawed. You're just caught in a pattern that made sense—starting feels safer than finishing. New feels more promising than follow-through. Potential feels less risky than reality.

The pattern protected you when you needed protection. When you didn't have medication to stabilise your brain chemistry. When you didn't have language for what you were experiencing. When the weight of inherited expectations felt too heavy to bear.

But now? Now you have clarity. Now you have medication that helps. Now you have words for what's happening. Now you can see the pattern for what it is.

And that means you have a choice.

The Thing You're Avoiding

Here's the truth you're not willing to hear: You already know what you need to do.

You don't need a new name for your law firm. You don't need to read another self-help book. You don't need to start another project that promises to finally make you into the person you want to be.

You need to finish something. Anything. Even if it's messy. Even if it's imperfect. Even if it doesn't change your life.

Not because finishing will make you good enough to carry the legacy you were given. Not because it will prove you're as brilliant as you're supposed to be. Not because it will finally make you into the person your father dreamed you'd become.

But because finishing will prove something much more important: that you can keep a promise to yourself. That you can be imperfect and still be worthy. That you can fail and still be a good person.

The only way to stop being a person who abandons things is to become a person who finishes them.

And the only way to become a person who finishes them is to actually finish one.

Just one.

Then do it again.

That's it. That's the whole secret. It's not complicated. It's just hard.

And maybe that's why you keep starting over—because hard things are scary, and starting over feels like courage when really it's just another way of staying safe.

An Invitation (And a Challenge)

So here's my invitation to you: Pick the thing you're most tempted to abandon right now. The book you're halfway through. The project that's lost its shine. The commitment that feels harder than you thought it would be.

Don't start something new. Don't look for the next shiny thing. Don't convince yourself that this wasn't the right one anyway.

Just finish it.

Finish it badly if you have to. Finish it resentfully. Finish it while doubting every choice you made. Finish it while already planning the next thing.

Just finish it.

And when the guilt comes—because it will come—try something different. Instead of using it as evidence that you're bad, use it as information. The guilt isn't telling you you're a bad person. It's telling you that you care. That you have integrity. That you want to be someone who keeps their word.

That's not a flaw. That's beautiful.

The next time you find yourself whispering "you're a good person," believe it. Not because you finished something perfectly, but because you're trying. Because you're showing up. Because you're working to understand yourself instead of just judging yourself.

You're carrying a lot—inherited expectations, brain chemistry that works differently, a lifetime of conditioning to perform and please. But you're also carrying something else: the capacity to choose differently.

You can choose to finish. Not perfectly. Just... finish.

And then notice what happens.

Not because finishing will magically solve all your problems or transform you into a different person or finally make you worthy of the legacy you carry.

But because you'll have proven something to yourself that you desperately need to believe: that you're capable of keeping a promise to yourself even when it's hard. Even when it's imperfect. Even when it doesn't earn anyone's approval.

That's not a small thing.

That might actually be everything.

The safety of starting over is an illusion. The only real safety is knowing you can trust yourself to finish what you start—not perfectly, but truly. Everything else is just a very convincing form of hiding.

And to the woman who's spent her life carrying other people's potential: you're already enough. The question isn't whether you're good enough to finish. The question is whether you're brave enough to be imperfect.

(Guilt is a different essay. But it's coming. Because understanding the weight you carry is the first step to putting some of it down.)