Issue 11 · 1 June 2026
For anyone who's two people depending on the room — friendly at work, quiet everywhere else. A note on the half that recharges, the daughters who shrunk it, and the door back to yourself.
Two rooms. Same person.
People who meet me in the salon think I'm an outgoing guy. People who meet me anywhere else aren't so sure. Both groups are right, in a way. I've been the same person in different rooms for so long now that I forget some people find it strange.
Behind the chair, I'm easy to talk to. I'll ask about your week, your work, what's happening with the kids. I listen for the small things. Years of standing behind a chair teach you that conversation isn't small talk — it's the way you understand the person you're about to put scissors to. The chair invites it. The work needs it. I've come to like it.
Outside the salon I'm a different kind of person. I don't walk up to strangers. I don't message friends much. I won't be the one starting a conversation in a room full of people. Not shy, not sad — just done with words for a while. I sit with myself easily. I notice things. I think a lot.
For most of my life, that quiet half has been the one that recharges me. It's the half that does the maintenance. It's where the next piece of work begins, where the unsolved things from the day get put back in order, where I stop being someone else's audience and start being my own again. It is, honestly, the half I like best.
These days that half has less room to breathe.
From the studio — Suspended Strength, available as paper, wood, and framed.
My older daughter Misty is nineteen — old enough to push back, sharp enough to make her case. She's figuring her own way through, and that's the job at nineteen. She's a good kid. My little one Ivy is two. She wants me close, and she already has a will of her own. You can see it in the way she decides things. Between the two of them, the salon, and everything else that keeps a household standing, the hours I have to myself have narrowed.
When I finally do sit down with myself, every personal thing I haven't dealt with that week shows up at the same time. The quiet I used to find easily takes a bit more work to reach now.
Then I open the iPad and start cross-hatching, and the room dissolves. Another universe — I don't have a better word for it. Stroke by stroke, the noise stops being noise. The unsolved things stop pulling at me. I'm not avoiding them. I'm just away from them for an hour. When I come back, I'm easier to be around. That is, more and more, the point of all of this.
I used to think the quiet hours were a luxury. I've started to see them differently. They're not a treat I owe myself. They are the maintenance that keeps the rest of me running. The girls don't need a father who's run flat. They need the one who's had a few hours to think.
Quiet is the maintenance. The rest only works because of it.
The three laws for a friendly, quiet person
I. Being friendly when the room asks for it is real. Being quiet when it doesn't is also real.
There is no fake version of me. There is the version the chair invites, and the version that gets to exist when nothing is being asked of it. Both are the same person. The friendly half is not a costume. The quiet half is not a problem. They take turns, and the take-turning is the whole life.
II. Solo time is not selfish. It is the maintenance that keeps you good for the people you love.
For a long time I felt guilty about wanting an hour alone. I don't anymore. The hour alone is what makes the next ten hours with the family decent. A father running on fumes is no use to a nineteen-year-old who wants to argue or a two-year-old who wants to be carried. The hour is the engine, not the indulgence.
III. Build a door back to yourself, and use it every day.
For me the door is cross-hatching. For someone else it might be a long walk, or a kitchen, or a workshop. What matters is that the door exists and that you walk through it before the noise gets loud enough to spill into the people you love. The door is not an emergency exit. It's a daily routine.
A credo to keep on your desk
Be friendly when the work asks. Be quiet when nothing does.
01. I will not apologise for being friendly in one room and quiet in another. Both are me.
02. I will treat the quiet hours as maintenance, not luxury.
03. I will put the iPad down for the family, and pick it up for myself, without guilt either way.
04. I will give my daughters the version of me that has had a few quiet hours.
05. I will not let the unsolved things follow me into the studio. They can wait an hour.
06. I will keep the door open — to myself, to the work, to the room that calms me down.
Two rooms. Same person.
— 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.