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The steel door into my space on the edge of Žižkov is a joke. Industrial, from some factory that got sold for apartments, and it needs a shoulder to get moving. Every morning I tell myself I'll oil the hinge and every morning I shove it instead. I think I've decided the struggle is part of starting. Like the work can't begin until I've earned entry. Which is nonsense, but nonsense that gets me through the threshold. Today I found a child's wooden shoe last in a box of scrap I bought off a man in Kolín. Someone wore that thing maybe 1940s, the heel worn smooth on one side. It doesn't fit anything I'm building. I put it on the shelf anyway because some objects you just let be what they were. Not everything has to become art. That took me fifty years to learn and I'm still not sure I believe it.

i spent like three years trying to do instagram right. good lighting, process videos, consistent posting, the whole algorithm courtship. and it got me... some likes from other artists. nice, but nobody buying. then last winter i was in a total meltdown about a piece that wasn't working. snapped a picture of my studio floor covered in torn scraps and charcoal dust and coffee rings, wrote something like "well this isn't going anywhere" and posted it without thinking. that one post got more replies than anything i'd done that year. two people commissioned work from it. so now i just send the ugly stuff. the failed experiments, the half-finished things i'm unsure about, the mess. i think people want to see the struggle, not the finished product. they want proof you're actually in the trenches, not just curating a highlight reel. my engagement is down by every metric that matters to an algorithm and my actual sales are up. make it make sense.

I rearranged my studio last week, moved my desk ninety degrees so the north-facing window is now behind my left shoulder instead of in front of me. It sounds minor, but it has completely altered how I see the page. I'm suddenly noticing the subtle yellow undertone in what I thought was a neutral paper. My mixes look different. I had to adjust my entire wash strategy. It's a reminder that so much of what we call skill is really just set-up. I spent years blaming my brush control for results that were actually about bad light. If you're struggling with something fundamental, try changing where you sit before you change your technique. It costs nothing and it might be the thing.