The Stickers I Never Used

Somewhere in the bottom of my desk drawer, wedged between tangled charger cables and nail polish, is a pack of stickers I bought when I was about seven. They’re shiny, glittery, rainbow-bordered things that probably cost me about two dollars and a whole afternoon of excitement. They’ve survived a house move, a desk re-organization, and eleven years of me telling myself, “No, no, save them for the perfect moment.”

The pack is still sealed, still crisp, still waiting for an event grand enough to deserve a glittery dolphin sticker.

That little sheet of stickers is basically a metaphor for my entire life. I keep waiting for the ideal moment to finally use the things I’ve been hoarding, whether it’s literal stickers, hobbies I abandoned or life goals that just sit in my brain like unpaid rent.

a desk drawer full of unopened stickers

Sometimes it’s the small things. Like books. I have a shelf full of classics and non-fiction that I ambitiously bought, then instantly chickened out of reading. Jane Eyre stares at me from the corner, daring me to finally open it, while a copy of War with Russia collects dust like a doomsday prophecy. I tell myself I’ll start them when I’m in the mood, but if I keep waiting for that mood, I’ll be seventy and still reading thrillers and literary fiction.

It shows up in fashion too. As a self-proclaimed fashion girl, I’ve spent years buying statement pieces that I’m “saving” for a grand debut. That one dress I thought I’d wear to the perfect party that never happened, the shoes that were too special for a regular day, the result is they sit there with the tags still on, silently mocking me while I rotate the same three pairs of jeans. 

And then there are the bigger things. I learned Kathak as a kid, telling a story only my ankles could understand. But by high school, life got busy and I told myself I’d go back to it someday. Someday when exams ended, someday when I had more time, someday when I was older. Except “someday” has a way of turning into never and now my ghungroos are just relics in a box, waiting for my comeback moment.

The same hesitation follows me into life goals like getting into stocks. I keep saying I’ll start once I understand it better, once I have researched enough, once I know the timing is right. But even when the conditions were perfect like during the long months I sat at home with more free time than I will probably ever have again, I still didn’t begin. Because even when the perfect moment comes, it rarely feels perfect from the inside.

This habit of waiting is why it took me so long to even write this blog. For weeks I put it off because I was waiting for the right idea, the right burst of creativity, the right mood. It never arrived. Then one afternoon I came across a quote on my phone: “Every time you wait for the perfect moment to do something, just remember the stickers you never used as a child.” Suddenly I sat down, not with the right mood or the right plan but with enough stubbornness to start. And from there the words appeared.

Waiting for the perfect moment is the fastest way to lose it. The perfect moment does not exist. There is only now, with its interruptions and its incomplete readiness. I don’t need to understand everything to read Jane Eyre. I don’t need a grand occasion to wear a new dress. I don’t need a clear calendar to start dancing again. And maybe those stickers, still stuck to their glossy sheet, deserve to finally decorate something ordinary.

So I’ve decided to make it a little challenge. By the end of 2025, I want to have read War with Russia and Jane Eyre. I want to wear the clothes I’ve been saving and maybe even dance again. These small goals feel like a way of unlearning the habit of waiting and finally teaching myself that moments become special because we live them, not because we wait for them.

And now I wonder, what are the stickers at the bottom of your drawer? What have you been waiting to use, to try or to start? However irrelevant it seems, it might be worth pulling it out now.

Life is not lived in unopened sticker packs, it is lived in the pages we dare to decorate before the perfect day arrives.

So even though I won’t dance on a stage tomorrow or become Warren Buffett overnight, I can still peel a dolphin sticker and stick it on my laptop. I can pick up the first page of a book without knowing if I’ll like it. I can wear the outfit on a random Friday. 

What’s the point of saving things for a day that never comes?

The stickers deserve better.

And so do I.