Building Anyway: The Myth of Readiness

Foundations aren't what happen after everything settles. They're what we practice when nothing feels certain.

In honor of “building anyway,” I’ve decided to “publish anyway.”

In essence, I’m not going through my editing process the whole way through. You are getting a much more raw me. Less “perfection,” less “finish,” less “finesse.”

So, enjoy? Ha. You may get to know a little bit of the “spicier,” less tempered, less “zen,” side of Alex.

Let's be honest about moving: it's an existential crisis disguised as logistics.

My morning coffee ritual, muscle memory in my old place, suddenly requires conscious thought. I’m surrounded by the strange acoustics of rooms that haven't learned to hold my voice. The boxes mock me with their cardboard permanence.

They've outlasted their welcome but refuse to disappear.

The previous tenant's nail holes stare at me like constellations I haven't mapped yet. The coffee maker hums in the wrong corner. My footsteps echo differently here, as if my body is speaking a language the house just doesn't understand.

We lie to ourselves about this phase.

We call it "transitional," as if our real lives are on pause until everything finds its proper place. As if we're suspended in some cosmic waiting room until the picture hooks arrive from Amazon.

What a spectacular way to miss our own lives.

The Myth of Readiness

This morning, reaching for coffee in a cabinet that feels borrowed, I caught myself waiting. Waiting for that mythical moment when life would ring a bell and announce: "Congratulations! You've achieved sufficient settledness. Your actual living may now commence."

That bell never rings, by the way.

No one ever feels fully moved in. We just gradually forget we're still moving.

I placed my favorite mug on a shelf that hold no memory of me yet. The gesture was small but unexpectedly defiant. Something primitive and honest rose up in me as porcelain touched wood.

We've been sold the strangest cultural fiction: that proper life requires proper conditions. That foundations can only be built on solid ground. That meaningful beginnings require completed endings.

What beautiful, terrible nonsense.

The truth is far more wild and inconvenient: foundations aren't what happen after everything settles. Foundations are what we practice precisely when nothing feels certain.

The stuff we build in chaos has a particular magic to it.

I know people who've been "almost settled" for decades, their creativity and relationships suspended in a perpetual state of "after I get organized." Their homes are perfect. Their lives are on hold.

No thank you.

I'd rather cook a terrible first meal in an unfamiliar kitchen than wait for everything to feel right. (That meal wasn’t great by the way - I waited too long to find the olive oil and something got a little…er… crispy). I'd rather hang one defiant picture on an empty wall than pretend my life hasn't already started here.

Readiness isn't a state we achieve. It's a lie we tell ourselves to justify our hiding.

The people waiting for perfect conditions to begin their work, their love, their art? They're not being careful. They're being afraid.

I know because I've been them. I know, because I am them.

But not anymore. Dang it.

Small Acts of Beginning

I hung exactly one piece of art on my still-bare walls.

Just one.

A small print I've carried through three homes. It looks ridiculous there, this tiny square on a vast expanse. Comically inadequate.

Perfectly right.

I could have waited until I had a proper gallery arrangement planned. Until I'd measured and marked and created some Pinterest-worthy constellation of balanced frames.

I almost did.

Instead, I hammered a nail into uncertainty and called it home.

I also cooked a meal so awkward it deserves its own reality show.

The spatula was in the wrong drawer. The olive oil took three tries to find. The sea salt was still packed with some books, for reasons my brain will never justify.

The burners run hotter than I'm used to, a fact I discovered approximately four seconds after the smoke detector confirmed it.

The meal wasn't influencer-worthy. 😬

This will never be a food-stack.

But here's what was real: the nourishment. The beginning. The refusal to wait for better conditions to feed my actual hunger.

Before unpacking another box, I lit a candle. Not because the room is finished—it's gloriously, catastrophically not—but because I'm breathing here now, creating a home in real-time rather than waiting for some future perfect version of it.

These aren't grand gestures. They're tiny rebellions against the myth that life happens later, when everything's arranged more beautifully.

Have you noticed how many creativity books talk about "perfect conditions" for work?

The quiet morning hours. The clean desk. The proper tools.

What a spectacular way to make sure 98% of actual humans never create anything.

What We Build While Unsettled

Something I believe now about incomplete foundations? They're honest.

The bookshelf assembled at midnight becomes not just furniture but a testament to your stubbornness. The plant placed on a windowsill before the curtains exists becomes not decoration but a declaration of faith in your future here.

Our culture fetishizes finish lines. We're obsessed with completion as if life is a series of projects to check off rather than a continuous unfolding of messy wonder.

The truth about transitions: they're not the space between real-life moments. They are the real-life moments.

The foundations we build in transition have a special strength to them. Not the strength of perfection, but of adaptation. They're built not on the illusion of permanence but on the wisdom that everything changes, so this moment matters more.

When we build anyway—despite the uncertainty, despite the mess—we're not just arranging our physical space. We're arranging our relationship with time itself.

This moment counts. This unfinished chapter is still my life. This awkward beginning belongs in my story.

Most of us are waiting for emotional moving trucks that never arrive—the ones that deliver certainty, completion, and the feeling that everything is where it belongs.

Those trucks don't exist in the actual timeline of a human life.

They're as fictional as the idea that we'll someday feel completely ready to begin the work that matters to us.

Ask any parent if they felt ready. Ask any entrepreneur, artist, or person who's ever done anything worth doing.

Readiness is retroactive. We only recognize it after we've already begun.

The Question That Changes Everything

Writing this has forced me to ask myself a question I've been avoiding: What am I still waiting to feel "ready" for?

That manuscript sitting in my drafts folder? The conversation I keep rehearsing but never having? That wild idea I keep telling myself needs "more research"?

What small, imperfect stone could I lay today?

I’ve realized that the foundation you build amid chaos may be the strongest one you ever create. Not because it's perfect, but because it's real.

Not because it's finished, but because it's alive.

The things we build in uncertainty have a special kind of strength. They are like trees that grow on windswept coastlines, their roots reaching deeper precisely because nothing was easy.

We mistake comfort for strength all the time. They're not the same thing.

Comfort whispers "Wait until conditions improve."
Strength says "I'll begin with what I have."
Comfort promises "It'll be easier tomorrow."
But strength knows tomorrow brings its own uncertainties. And that’s okay.

The most beautiful lives I know weren't built in perfect conditions. They were built by people who stopped waiting for the right moment and realized this imperfect one would do. People who understood that the messy middle isn't a waiting room, it's where the actual living happens.

So here's my real question, the one that's been haunting me since I started unpacking: What are you pretending needs to be perfect before you can begin?

The foundation laid in uncertainty might be the strongest one you ever build. Not because it's flawless, but because it's real. Not because it's complete, but because it's alive.

We Are Not Finished Products

As I write this, I can see four unpacked boxes from where I sit. The bathroom still needs a shower curtain. I’m still missing a box of spices that is... somewhere.

But my laptop is open. Words are flowing. The dog has claimed his favorite sunny spot by the window as if he's lived here forever. The anxious one is barking at a delivery truck, defending territory she decided was hers approximately four minutes after arrival.

Life is happening. Messy and immediate… and real.

We are not finished products waiting to be unveiled when all conditions are perfect.

We keep waiting to be unveiled like museum pieces. As if we need to be complete before we're allowed to be valuable. This might be the most seductive lie our culture sells, and the most effective way to ensure we never create anything real.

We are not finished products. We're ongoing processes, building and rebuilding in real time.

Somewhere along the way, we confused completeness with worthiness. Started believing we needed to be "done" before we could matter.

The walls around me may be bare, but they're humming with possibility. The kitchen may be half-organized, but it already smells like garlic and olive oil. The bookshelves may be empty, but they're already collecting stories.

Nothing feels finished.

I'm building anyway.

What if you did too?

What foundation will you lay today, my friend, right in the beautiful midst of your unfinished life?

And if you're wondering what didn't make it into this written version - oh, there's so much.

• Like the 2 AM existential crisis on my kitchen floor, eating cereal from a measuring cup.

• Or what my therapist would definitely say about me intellectualizing my way through every emotion (spoiler: she'd be devastatingly accurate).

• And yes, the complete saga of that burnt dinner, including all three smoke alarm incidents and what it really means to eat your failures with pretend dignity.

These recordings are raw, unfiltered, and sometimes contradictory.

Kind of like life in transition.

They're available for paid subscribers, but really, they're for anyone who knows that sometimes the raw, unedited thoughts are where the real truth lives.

Come listen with me?

The Real Story Behind 'Building Anyway'

The Truth About That Crispy Meal

What My Therapist Would Say About All This