The Day of Unfinished Things

Invent a holiday! Explain how and why everyone should celebrate.

---

There’s a quiet drawer in every home — you know the one. The drawer filled with half-written letters, tangled headphones, old keys, and a mysterious sense of “I’ll finish that later.”

I propose a new holiday: The Day of Unfinished Things.

Celebrated every year on the first Sunday of October, it’s the one day when the world collectively decides to pause — not for grand resolutions, but for the tiny undone things that hum in the background of our lives.

On this day, alarms are set late. No work emails. No deadlines. People bring out abandoned sketchbooks, dusty guitars, or those novels that stopped at chapter five. Children might finish their Lego castles. Gardeners finally plant those seeds sitting in the packet since spring. And maybe, just maybe, someone calls a friend they never replied to.

It’s not a day about productivity — it’s about closure and care. We live so fast that unfinished things often become silent weights, small reminders of what we once loved or meant to do. The Day of Unfinished Things gives us permission to breathe, to return, and to mend — without guilt or hurry.

Imagine the world slowing down together — balconies filled with laughter as paintbrushes return to canvases, kitchens smelling of long-promised recipes, and journals finally receiving their last page.

By evening, people would share their “finished” stories — not on social media for likes, but around dinner tables, in parks, or through letters sent at last.

Because finishing is not about perfection — it’s about remembering who we were when we began.

---