Issue 08 · 18 May 2026
For anyone holding several lives at once — a day job, a family, a studio on the side. A note on doing a bit of everything, and the working philosophy underneath all of it.
Many lives. One desk.
The studio is the same shape it was last month — paper, ink, a desk under a window — but everything around it has gotten heavier. The bills are louder. The day job is harder than it was last year. The family is busy in the way families are when nothing is wrong, but nothing is light. And paschar.art is still here, asking for the hours it asks for.
I cut hair for a living. It is honest work, and I am quietly good at it, and right now it is the hardest it has been in a long time. People are spending differently — the longer I stand behind a chair, the more I can feel the year in someone's appointment book before they tell me. The chairs are full. The room is tighter.
Inflation is a word the news prefers more than I do. What it actually means, in a small life like mine, is that the same number of hours buys less of the same week. The rent does not move. The grocery shop does. The materials for a wood print cost what they cost — and what they cost is more.
On top of the day job, there is family — a kind of work that doesn't end and isn't measured, and I would not trade a minute of it. Dinners. Errands. The small administration of people who love each other. And on top of that there is this — paschar.art — the studio inside the studio, the thing I am building line by line on the side of everything else.
From the studio — Eternal Arena, available as paper, wood, and framed.
The honest truth is that I have not figured out how to fit it all. I do a bit of everything. I cut hair in the morning. I am with family in the afternoon. I draw at night, and on some nights I write a page like this one at the end of the drawing. Doing a bit of everything is not the same as doing nothing well. It is the way I have found, so far, to keep all of it alive.
What I am learning, slowly, is that mental strength is not a feeling either. It is not waking up sure. It is showing up to one of the lives on a hard day, and then to the next one. It is choosing not to drop a single thread, even when the easiest thing would be to let one fall so the other three feel lighter.
I am not going to pretend the year ahead will be lighter than the one behind. I will pretend nothing. What I will do is hold on — to the small studio, to the day job, to the family, to the line on the page — and call this the year I learned to carry more than one thing without dropping any of them.
The year won't get lighter. I will get stronger.
The three laws for carrying more than one thing
I. Doing a bit of everything is not failing at one thing.
The world tells the small operator to specialise. Some of us cannot, and some of us will not. A life with a day job, a family, and a studio is not a divided life — it is a built one. The pieces hold each other up. The day job pays for the studio. The studio keeps the day job from being the whole story. The family reminds both why any of it matters.
II. Mental strength is a daily action, not a feeling.
I used to think the strong people woke up sure. I don't think that anymore. Strong is quiet. Strong is showing up to one of the lives on a hard day, and then to the next. It is choosing not to drop a thread, even when letting one fall would make the others feel lighter for an afternoon.
III. The year doesn't get lighter. You get stronger.
I have learned not to wait for the year to soften. Inflation will not write me a letter. The chair-by-chair grind of the day job will not ease because I'd like it to. What I can do is grow into the weight, one week at a time, until what was heavy last year is the warm-up.
A credo to keep on your desk
Hold on. Don't drop a thread.
01. I will not apologise for doing a bit of everything. The bits add up to a life.
02. I will measure mental strength by what I showed up to, not by how I felt about it.
03. I will let the day job be honest work, and pay the studio's rent without bitterness.
04. I will give the family the part of me that is theirs, fully, when I am with them.
05. I will keep the line on the page, even on a fifteen-minute night.
06. I will grow into this year, instead of waiting for it to soften.
The bits add up to a life.
— Paschar
Follow the slow build — @paschar.art
Process clips, the desk under the window, layers in progress, and the quiet middle of pieces like this one. One post for every long week at the studio.