Life is messy by design

Creation, it seems, is messy. Probably, any kind of creation.

We like to think we have control; we plan, because planning feels safe, it promises predictability. But in truth, the best we can do is choose a direction and just roughly shape the flow. Life—the whole universe in fact—is too complex, full of invisible interactions. Things take on their own life cycle, no matter how carefully we try to arrange them.

It feels like a ball of tumbleweed rolling across the desert—aimless, tangled, out of control.

And this is exactly what I’ve been learning while building this site. Writing posts, choosing images, rearranging layouts, refining notes in my Obsidian vault, pushing updates through pipelines. It feels like a ball of tumbleweed rolling across the desert—aimless, tangled, out of control.

I strongly dislike that feeling. I crave linearity: blueprint > build > complete. That’s how houses go up, furniture gets made, that’s how you know you’re done. But here, in this creative space, there’s no blueprint; just drafts, re-drafts, rewrites. A constant folding back on itself.

And yet — maybe that’s the point.

The best metaphor I’ve found is bread. Real bread, made from scratch, like Chad Robertson’s Tartine bread. At the start it’s chaos: flour, water, salt, yeast, all sticking to your hands, clinging to the bowl, making you want to throw the whole thing over the balcony. It’s frustration incarnate!

But then, something shifts. With time and effort, as you knead and fold, a shape begins to appear. The gluten strands align. The sticky mess transforms into a ball of dough with skin pulled tight. Out of nowhere, you have something solid, something alive. That’s stage one, that’s your “Minimum Viable Product“.

From there, you let it rest. You proof, shape, and bake. Finally, there comes the oven spring! The loaf rises, crust forms, and the kitchen fills with that familiar smell—freshly baked sourdough, golden and crackling, soft and spongy inside. There’s nothing like it. The smell of home, the smell of family, the smell of life.

Maybe the mess is the process.

This is what creation is like: you start with chaos, you wrestle with it, you hate it. Then suddenly—not through magic, but through persistence—it takes form. And once it does, you know you’re onto something.

So maybe I need to stop fighting the mess. Maybe the mess is the process. Maybe the dissatisfaction, the friction, the anxiety of not knowing—that’s not failure. That’s just the kneading, the folding, the proofing, the work before the bread.

Creation is messy. But maybe it’s supposed to be.