How We Forgot to Finish Things

I've seemed to take quite the interest with 'Project Pan.'

If you're a scroller of BeautyTok, you'll know that Project Pan is a corner of the internet where beauty users celebrate and challenge themselves to using up all their skincare and beauty products until it's completely finished. Empty moisturisers. Scraped-out concealers. Lipsticks worn down to little stubs. Tiny silver circles peeking through powder compacts.

It's surprisingly satisfying. Which is funny, because somewhere along the way, finishing things stopped feeling exciting. Instead, we've become collectors.

We collect blushes we'll never finish, perfumes for different moods, lip oils that are almost identical and skincare routines with more steps than we have hours in the day.

Then TikTok Shop arrived, and wanting something became dangerously close to owning it. One swipe, one glowing review, one creator insisting, "I've never been influenced before, but this..." and suddenly there's another parcel on its way. Unhealthy habits and accumulation only grew from here. Shopping became entertainment, a never ending scroll and growing wishlist.

Around the same time, influencer PR unboxings became their own spectacle. Piles of boxes and entire collections gifted before the first product had even been opened.

And then, somehow, having one favourite bronzer didn't feel like enough anymore.

The goal quietly shifted from finding products you loved to building collections people admired. To own every trending, loved, and spoken about product.

Perhaps that's why Project Pan feels so... cosy. It's a little reminder that these beautiful things were made to be used, not preserved. That the nicest candle should eventually burn down. The expensive perfume deserves an ordinary Tuesday. The face cream doesn't need saving for a better version of you.

Maybe the real luxury isn't owning more. Maybe it's loving something enough to finish it.

And in a world constantly asking us to want the next thing, I think that's rather lovely.