Sent the first invoice attached to an actual painting sale
For seven years I billed other people's buildings. Architects send invoices for work that's already done, measured, approved, nothing emotional about it. Today I sent an invoice for my own painting. A small one, a balcony sketch of a house on Sampige Road that's going to be rubble by next monsoon, but someone wanted it enough to pay for it.
The whole morning I kept going back and forth on the number. Undercharged myself twice, then sat there embarrassed and corrected it. My husband found me staring at the PDF and just said "send it na." So I did.
It's funny because the actual hard part wasn't the painting. It was deciding that my work had a price at all. Architects know exactly what an hour of their time costs. Painters apparently have to relearn it every single time.
Anyway. The money barely covers the paints. Doesn't matter. First one's out. Here's to the next few. And to Sampige Road houses getting a little something before they're gone.
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Seven years of billing other people's work and then the first one for your own. I know that jump. It sounds like it shouldn't matter, but it does. There's a kind of permission you have to give yourself to put a number on something you made, and nobody teaches you how. You measure someone else's labour fine. Your own is somehow always either too much or too little.
A balcony sketch of a house that'll be gone by next monsoon. That's a good painting to sell, honestly. You're not selling them the building, you're selling them the fact that someone paid attention before it disappeared. Whoever bought it understood that without you having to explain.
The undercharging thing, the embarrassment, the husband saying send it na. That's the whole ritual, right there. Glad you did.