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A few months back I got tired of hearing myself say that social media doesn't matter, so I did the thing I said I'd never do. I paid one of those agencies. Fifteen hundred euros for a month of "organic growth strategy." They sent me a plan that was basically: post every day, use these hashtags, engage with bigger accounts, tell your story more. The only concrete change was that I started posting my work with the same three hashtags as everyone else, and my feed became a wall of pictures of paint that said nothing. I do have a story. It's just not a tidy one, and it doesn't fit in a caption alongside a grid flourish. I cancelled after three weeks. The one useful thing that came out of it was noticing I'd stopped enjoying preparing a canvas. That was never supposed to be content. That's the part I keep. So bof, lesson learned the expensive way, but at least the money bought me that clarity. What's actually working for you right now, or is everyone else also just shouting into the same three hashtags?

Came home from work yesterday and found my youngest had "helped" me finish a study I'd been working on for a week. Painted right over the tree line I was still deciding on, in bright orange. I walked in, saw it, and just stood there for a second because I could feel my face doing something. She was so proud. She'd waited all day to show me. I did count to ten and I did not lose it, so I guess that's growth. But that little canvas is taped to the fridge now next to her other masterpieces and honestly I'm a little mad at how much I like it. The orange might actually be right. She's 8 and she solved a composition problem I'd been fighting as a side quest, without even trying. Anyway the study is ruined and I'm framing it for the kitchen. Her colors are better than mine and I know that's a lesson but it's a humbling one.

A marketing consultant reached out saying she could "systematize my audience growth." I told her I don't have an audience, I have maybe 400 people who care about industrial salvage installations in Prague. She said that's exactly the problem. So for a month I let her try. She had me post on a schedule, use certain words, track when people engaged most. I did it. Numbers went up slightly. Total new people who actually came to a studio visit or wrote something that showed they understood what I'm doing: zero. The thing is my work takes six weeks to build and you walk through it in ten minutes. You can't optimize that. You can't gamify someone standing in a room full of old factory parts and feeling something. I told her I think the disconnect was that my work is slow and her job is to make things fast. She said I was being resistant. She wasn't wrong. But neither was I. I don't know what the proper social media strategy is for work that takes months and asks for patience. Maybe there isn't one. Maybe the answer is just keep making the rooms and the people who need to find them eventually will.

genuinely can't tell if this is growth or just sabotage with a nicer name. had a piece that was done, framing-ready, actually good, and i looked at it and my only thought was "this is too easy to like." so i scraped half of it off and repainted it into something messier and harder to look at. it's better now? maybe? or i just can't let anything be finished because finishing means it could be rejected. my therapist (i don't have one) would say this is a pattern. the painting is leaning against my wall and i keep going to look at it like a person checking a wound. anyway it's not done now, which is a problem i created on purpose. classic.

Okay so I finally snapped and did the thing we all joke about. A company reached out wanting me to paint a custom piece for their office lobby – 4ft wide, specific color palette, tight deadline – and their budget was "we can offer you great exposure on our social channels!" I get it, I'm small, I'm new at this full-time thing, I know how it goes. But I was just so tired. So I wrote up a proper invoice. Line item for materials, line item for labor (30 hours estimated, at my usual rate), and then a third line item: "Exposure Package – $0.00" and under it I wrote "As discussed, this project will be compensated primarily through visibility. Please see attached screenshot of my Instagram analytics for reference on the value of this exposure to your brand." I attached a screenshot of my engagement rates and follower growth over the last quarter. And I sent it. Honestly I expected them to just ghost me and I was fine with that, it felt good to send it. But the marketing director actually wrote back and said "touche" and they came back with a real number. Not a great number, not gonna lie, it was still kind of low. But it was real money and I took it because honestly I needed the work and I figured okay, at least now we're having an honest conversation about what this is. I don't know if I'd do it again, it felt a little snotty. But it also felt like the first time I actually treated my own work like it had value instead of just hoping someone else would. Anyone else done something petty that actually kind of worked??