How do I know if an essay is “done”

It’s seven thousand words

What is that quote about the words bleeding....is that anything

Sorry I’m sorry I’m trying to delete it

I swear to god I know the answer to this one

I looked at a nearly finished draft today and realized I forgot everything I knew about writing

ok, I slept and I know the answer for myself. There are a few kinds of done. There's the "done" of reaching the end of the draft, when I know I feel like I found the door out of a completely unlit room after fumbling around for the knob. Then there's also:

The "done" of having the essay revised after that, because I have to go back and get everything working in harmony in light of finding the end. That is where I was stuck yesterday.

Image 1 is the first kind of done and image 2 is the second

Image 2: I intend for my essays to work by having all the pieces connected to the other pieces by multiple threads, basically, and so I have to go back through and make sure everything is answering the narrative question / is connected to multiple other things

Yesterday I just totally hit a wall in my process and I think it was because I didn't really have the time I needed to hold the whole thing in my mind (I need an entire day) and be able to consider the beginning, middle, and end simultaneously

It's interesting that there are so many replies with some variation on getting sick of the piece, hitting the deadline--this is why I never pitch. My 1st book was a case of getting sick of looking at it and I truly learned my lesson (I'm not happy with the book as it exists)

Which is not to say that it's a bad strategy for other writers, but for me, deadlines don't do much to help me produce generally, and I think it's too hard to tell from inside the process whether being sick of the essay means I'm being a perfectionist or avoiding something

all that's to say, my seven thousand word essay is absolutely not done