Is Your Creative Graveyard Filling Up?

Is Your Creative Graveyard Filling Up?
Yeah. Mine too.

I’ve got 139 unfinished music projects sitting in folders — demos, riffs, mixes, ideas I once swore were The One. I finish maybe a dozen a year. And I’ve got excuses out the ass.

But none of them are any good.

I’ve told other artists:

“If it’s not published, it’s just a hobby.”
“If you don’t finish it, you don’t want it badly enough.”

Turns out, those words hit me too.

The truth is: I love being the creative — the visionary.
I get high on the spark.
The blank canvas. The possibility.
But somewhere along the way, it stops being fun.
That moment?

I call it The Expiration Date.

Every project has one.
Once it passes, you don’t feel the pull — you feel the guilt.
And guilt doesn’t finish songs.

I’ve looked for a thousand hacks to beat the expiration date.
Most of them don’t work.
What I’m trying now is simpler:

I identify as a finisher. Not just a creative.

I admire people with grit.
The ones who ain’t got no quit.
Who slog through the shit until they come out with a hit.

I see producers dropping tracks every week.
Not all of it’s great — but that’s not the point.

Even Beethoven — maybe the greatest composer of all time —
had hundreds of pieces no one remembers.
We know Ode to Joy. Maybe Für Elise.
But he wrote over 700 works.

That’s not genius. That’s volume.
That’s what I call the Beethoven Fallacy:

We think the greats were great because of quality.
But really, they were great because they kept producing.

If 1 in 100 hits, then your job isn’t to be perfect.
Your job is to keep going.

So how do we turn the graveyard into a portfolio?

We finish.

Not everything. Not all at once. But one at a time.
With less fear. With more flow.
Let go of perfection. Let go of ego. Let go of the idea that it needs to “hit” today.

Just finish it.
Even if it’s not the one.
Even if only you ever hear it.

Because finished work stacks.
And stacks get stronger.

Start finishing.
Define your finish line.
Cross it once.
Then again.
Then again.

Let’s turn the graveyard into a gallery.
One body at a time.