rip it up and start again.

and maybe even enjoy doing it.

In the past few days I’ve made three things that I’m really quite proud of. One was a potholder, woven on an old potholder loom from linen scraps, immediately loved and put to work. One was a skillet-sized chocolate chip cookie, promptly devoured by the entire family. And one was a potholder knit on chopsticks and ripped apart unceremoniously when three quarters of the way through the job. To review, that’s one potholder, one enormous cookie, and one pile of scraps.

Deconstructing something I’ve made is not something that I’ve really been conditioned to value, let alone revel in. Valuing product over process, the idea of scrapping work has often felt like a waste of time and energy and resources. So much time and nothing to show for it is absolutely something I’ve sniveled while licking my thwarted-project wounds.

But while often brutal, there’s something incredibly freeing in dismantling projects I’ve made myself. For one thing, the work is quick. Like watching a snaking trail of dominoes topple across a floor, there’s delicious satisfaction in pulling a thread and watching loop after loop of knitting untuck themselves. A row of stitches that took multiple choreographed steps of fingers and needles and no small amount of time is disappeared with a simple tug. Are you familiar with the satisfaction of a seam ripper? Bdrrrrrp. Out come the stitches. It’s a cliché because it’s true: every bit of failure and every project deconstructed leave more room and more readiness for something else. And often something better. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten worse at something the more times I’ve attempted it.

When I began my ill-fated potholder, I knew that I was using a palette of colors that I wouldn’t normally have been drawn to, but I tamped down the voice in my head that advised caution and I started anyway, color-blocking my scraps as I worked. Scraps that I didn’t particularly love were becoming a potholder that I actively disliked. If I begin that potholder again, I’ll know to leave out the purples. I’ll know I want to cast on two more stitches. I’ll probably end up with something I actually like.

I’m talking about an extremely low-stakes craft project, of course, but in potholders and in marriages and in systems of governance alike, there’s value in deconstructing what doesn’t serve us. There’s value in hitting pause and reconsidering what’s working and what’s not. There’s value in making a mess and just sitting with it for awhile. In the end, it’s the forging recklessly ahead in order to reach some kind of imaginary finish line or final product that leaves me—and maybe all of us—feeling unsatisfied. Or worse.

So, in case it’s not something you typically grant yourself, here’s my permission to let some projects go. Maybe more so, here’s my permission to positively delight in undoing them. In the immortal words of Orange Juice, rip it up and start again.