Every project has to come to an end one day

It’s ok to let go of things you have created.

I’m closing down my Facebook group this week.

It was one of those things were I began to realise it was probably the right step a few months ago, but half way through weeding on Saturday afternoon I decided now was the time to make the move.

One thing I’ve noticed is how very difficult it is for sensitive people to let go of the things they have created.

Each project represents an investment of time, energy, sometimes money. Each project represents an investment of hope.

It becomes especially complicated if other people are involved, which in this age of small creative business entrepreneurship they inevitably are…

The audience who love the work you are making, even if you don’t anymore.

The Instagram page where every follower represents your commitment to showing up again and again for years to connect with ( and many of whom you don’t want to leave behind.)

The group where people have shared their time and energy with you and participated in this thing you created but don’t really ‘own’, because it was always meant to be theirs too.

Stepping back from these things feels selfish in some part.

Who am I to create this thing and then take it away?

Did I waste their time?

Do I seem like I don’t care?

Am I letting them down?

(And of course the quiet and malicious voice of the inner critic who whispers ‘No one cares, no one cares…it was all your own vanity and ego anyway’.)

Highly sensitive creatives don’t like letting people down.

They don’t like letting their projects down.

And they don’t like being seen to let themselves down in public either.

But of course, every project has to end one day.

Otherwise we will find ourselves being stretched and fragmented across a thousand projects.

We will feel depleted, each unresolved project a tiny puncture through which our energy drains.

The projects will be weaker, because they aren’t fed with our enthusiasm, excitement, joy and curiosity.

They exist on a diet of guilt, mild resentment and the shame of endings.

I’m practicing letting go of the projects that need to come to an end.

And letting go of the part of me that feels like a failure for letting go.

Every project has to come to an end one day.

That’s how you make space for the new projects to grow.