The Haunting Beauty of Unfinished Work: Halloween Reflections on Embracing the Process

It's Halloween morning in LA, just after 9 AM, and I'm sitting by my window watching people in costumes hurrying to campus parties and morning classes. There's something beautifully ironic about a holiday that celebrates disguises making me feel more authentic than ever.

Last night, while most of my friends were finalizing their costumes, I was having this intense conversation with my design mentor about my senior collection. She looked through my portfolio and said something that's been echoing in my head ever since: "Mandy, you've been so focused on what your work will become that you're missing what it already is."

I literally didn't sleep thinking about this.

For years, I've been chasing this perfect final form—the flawless collection, the definitive style, the fully-evolved designer I'm "supposed" to be. But after all my recent realizations about patterns and interconnectedness, I'm seeing that maybe the unfinished nature of everything is actually the point?

This morning, I spread all my sketches across my bedroom floor—the good ones, the "failures," the half-formed ideas—and for the first time, I saw them not as steps toward some future perfect work, but as a complete expression of my evolving consciousness. The incomplete parts aren't flaws; they're openings. They're invitations for what's next.

It's like I've been treating my growth as this costume I need to perfect before I can "reveal" myself to the world. But there is no final reveal. The becoming IS the being.

Professor Garcia's words from yesterday about my web-like portfolio timeline keep coming back to me: real creative evolution isn't linear. It's this constantly shifting conversation between what we create and who we are.

So today, while everyone else is pretending to be something they're not for Halloween, I'm embracing what I actually am: unfinished. In progress. A collection of beautiful fragments still finding new ways to connect with each other.

And honestly? That feels like the most authentic version of mastery I've discovered yet—not perfection, but presence with the process itself.

Anyone else finding unexpected freedom in embracing your unfinished edges? Or am I just having a Halloween-morning existential breakthrough over here? 🎃