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I posted a reel last week of the cutting stage, just the hammer and the smalti and the sound, no music even. Instagram showed it to almost nobody, the analytics said so, 400-something views. I nearly didn't bother checking the messages. Two different gallery people had written to ask about a show. I keep having to relearn this. The platform's idea of a good post and my idea of a useful post have nothing to do with each other. The algorithm wants the thing that keeps people scrolling. What I get out of it is the one person who stops scrolling because they actually care about the craft. That person doesn't need the reel to perform. They just need to see it once, at the right moment. I've stopped optimizing. I post the work the way I'd show it to someone in my studio, and I let the numbers be what they are. The views that matter are the ones that write back.

i've been doing this monthly newsletter for like three years now and honestly most months it feels like shouting into a hole. open rate hovers around 30%, click rate is laughable, and i spend way too long writing it for what i get back. last month i almost skipped it. was in a weird headspace, had nothing to say, thought about just letting it die quietly. but i'd already written the draft so i sent it anyway. it was basically just a photo of a half-finished piece on my studio floor with a caption about how i didn't know what i was doing with it yet. got an email back from someone i'd never met. they said the honesty of it made them reach out. they commissioned me to make something for their new building's lobby. $4,200. so now i have to figure out what i'm doing with it. which is ironic because that's exactly what i said in the newsletter i almost didn't send. i don't know what the takeaway is. maybe just that the stuff we almost don't post is the stuff that actually lands. or that consistency matters even when it feels pointless. or that i still hate writing newsletters.

Finished a 30x40 portrait on Thursday. Woman in a red scarf, wanted to do it because the light on her jaw was exactly the thing I've been chasing for months. Took fourteen hours spread over a week. She asked the price before I started and I said €120. Never even paused. When I did the math after, that's €8.50 an hour plus the pastels worn down and the paper. I could make more babysitting. The worst part isn't the number. It's that I knew before I even said it that €120 was too low, and I said it anyway because the longer I leave the number hanging in the air the more I feel like I'm lying. So I blurt something out and then I'm stuck with it. My partner keeps telling me to write the price down before I'm face to face with anyone. God knows I've said the same thing to myself. Then it happens again. Anyone else here the kind of person who can't hold a price in the room, no matter how many times you promise yourself? I'm honestly starting to think I need someone else to do the talking for me.

Found a collector's email from April sitting in my spam folder this week. They had asked about one of the cold wax pieces, the big grey one with the red seam through the middle. I never saw it, never answered, and then on Monday they wrote again, in that patient way people write when they assume you're busy and important. Two sentences. Wanted the painting, asked if I'd hold it until their move in September. It sold in three messages. No reel, no process video, no hashtag. I'm not saying social media is worthless. I do it, I have a person who helps me format the videos, and the contact sheet post the other week genuinely brought traffic. But I've been watching the numbers this year and the through-line is uncomfortable: almost every sale that mattered came from a private email, a studio visit, a gallery forwarding my name to someone. The public work keeps the name warm, but the money moves in the quiet places. Naja. I keep posting anyway. But I go through my spam folder now like it's a second studio, and I wish I'd started doing that ten years ago.

Found a stack of them last night while reorganizing the studio. Little torn corners of paper where workshop folks wrote "this is my favorite piece so far" or just "????" or once a tiny drawn arrow pointing at a scrap of found photograph with "who is this?" in pencil. People always want to know which one matters to me and it's always the question marks. "????" means they actually stopped. The compliments slide off, but a real question stays in you for weeks. I keep them in a shoebox on the shelf next to the charcoal dust. Not sure why. It's not sentimental exactly, or maybe it is. They're the closest thing I have to a studio journal that isn't about me.

Back in the lean years I took a restoration job that paid a commission, not a flat fee. The contractor was a friend, the project was a Byzantine floor in a small church up near Kilkis, genuinely interesting work, and I was eating rice and beans so I said yes without asking the number that mattered. Eight months on my knees, in and out, matching tesserae that some other hand had set in the 6th century. Lovely job. When it was done he came by with a cheque and it all felt very brotherly until I did the division in my head driving home. €2.10 an hour. I knew the whole time it was cheap. I didn't know it was that cheap. I think some part of me didn't want to do the math because then I'd have to leave, and the work was the only thing keeping me sane in that period. I still take friends-and-family work at a discount sometimes. But I always write down the hourly number before I start, in the margin of the sketch, so I can't pretend later. If it comes out under minimum wage I either raise it or pass. The church floor was worth doing. The price was not.

I had a newsletter for almost two years. Every two weeks, a studio note, what I was printing, the tide tables that week, a dried piece of seaweed I pressed between pages. Nothing pushy. Just the work. I stopped six months ago. Not because of open rates or unsubscribes. Because I realised I was writing for an audience I couldn't feel. The emails went out and something went into a void and maybe someone read them somewhere and maybe they didn't. I had no way to tell. I know the advice. Build your list. Own your platform. But I think there's something honest about admitting that not every kind of reach is worth having. The newsletter worked better on paper than it ever did in my gut. I've been quieter online since then. Posting less. Selling more through the people who find me through word of mouth and the local shop that carries my prints. It's slower. It also doesn't feel like I'm feeding something that never looks back. Anyone else stopped doing something that was supposed to be essential and found it didn't matter?