Have you ever started something only to get too intimidated and too overwhelmed that you just put it off and said that you will finish it "later." Well now it is 9 months later and that project that you needed to do some research on has been starring at you from the corner of your garage or office and teasing you... Ya.... you know the one.
Last summer I started power carving two walnut side tables. I had no goals of selling them, no goals of scaling and batching out more. I just wanted to try something new and see what would happen if I pulled on that thread. I had been wanting to play around with bigger projects for awhile and thought this would be interesting.
There were a few hurdles to get started. I needed some new tools (yay), I needed to practice on some smaller pieces before going full send on fancy shmancy walnut, I needed to get better camera for photos, I needed to get better things for backdrop. Blah, blah, blah. So I felt intimidated and didn't have an answer to it all and this project sat dormant for months.
Wanna know something? It is still sitting in my garage right now. Here we are in almost February. I know I'll get to it eventually. Maybe writing about the process will help.
But here’s the thing I realized while staring at that walnut side table every week: perfection is the enemy of progress. I kept waiting until I had the perfect tools, the perfect lighting, the perfect space — and in the meantime, nothing happened.
Sometimes the hardest part isn’t the work itself, it’s just starting. Even showing up to your project and making a tiny bit of progress counts. Maybe that means testing a cut on scrap wood, taking a single photo, or even just sketching a plan. It’s all forward motion, and that momentum is what turns “later” into “now.”
So what am I going to do? I’m going to start small. Maybe I’ll carve for 15 minutes this weekend, just to see what happens. Maybe I’ll take a photo of that first rough cut, imperfect as it is. And you know what? That’s progress. That’s actually moving the needle instead of letting the project mock me from the corner.
The takeaway? Don’t let the list of reasons why something isn’t ready stop you from doing it at all. Show up, even if it’s messy. Even if it’s imperfect. Even if it’s 9 months late. You’ll be amazed at how much that tiny start can grow into something real.
And who knows — maybe by the end of the year, that walnut side table will finally be finished. And the best part? I’ll have learned more than I ever could have imagined just by finally starting.