Since 2025 is almost over, I’ve been swimming in a sea of administrative and logistical tasks. I actually find this stuff enjoyable, mostly because I’m a bit organizational crazy. Over the last couple of days, I’ve been trying to take a detailed inventory. It’s more than just how many paintings or Artist’s books I have on hand. It’s an inventory of the many facets of my practice. It’s just time-consuming to gather up all the numbers for the whole year, especially because I haven’t done an inventory like this in many years, if at all, really.

I’m almost done completing my baseline metrics for 2025 (many of which are close estimates) and my projected 2026 totals. I consider the projected outcomes more like goals than real hard evidence that they would actually turn out the way I hope, so I estimated on the low end.

As I said, I’m almost done. I still need some real numbers for pieces on consignment and my website stats, especially since I’ve discovered I never had Google Analytics installed on my site. At least not for years. That’s a significant fail, but I guess I didn’t care that much. I know I get a lot of web traffic compared to most people, or other artists’ websites, rather, but I didn’t care about keeping close track of it on a rolling basis.

During all this, I put together my latest newsletter, which will go out sometime next week. I still yammered on and on, but I didn’t have much in the way of news since I’ve been recovering from the surgery. And I haven’t had too much time to work or gather up any news or press. Not that I’m able to accumulate press on my own. That usually just kinda happens depending on what I have going on with shows, etc. I’m really hoping the VIP packets I’m sending out will draw in an art writer who would like to cover my upcoming show. But we shall see.

I’m very slowly working on the last three paintings for the show. I’m sure I’ve already mentioned that, but now I really am, since I started the last one recently: my brother and I as little kids. We’re sitting in our little chairs that my great-grandfather made us, and Mike is holding our first dog, GG, in his lap. The title is Before the Tragedy because, not long after, GG was struck by a car and didn’t survive. I think it’s the first major trauma I can remember before my great-grandmother died.

I have some ways to go on this, but I’m starting to really see the importance of working on three pieces at once because of drying times. It makes it so much easier and faster, not that I’ve been paying much attention to speed these days. I’m still pretty tired and confused. My brain has not been working as it should in super noticeable ways. I’ve been forgetting almost everything!

For instance, when I was trying to take inventory of works on paper and books, I’d focus on one book, go into the garage to count how many I had on hand, come back to my studio office, and forget the number I just counted. I couldn’t enter it in the spreadsheet until I went back into the garage and wrote it on a notepad first. Basically, I found myself counting and recounting the same shit over and over because I’d forget in a matter of a minute or two. Simple tasks like this are suffering, and are frankly time-consuming.

The Artist’s books are kinda kept all over the place, however, like in my flat files, and various plastic bins. I can see why I got confused; I’m just surprised I couldn’t keep a simple number in my head for such a short moment in time. I have a bad habit of putting myself down for mistakes like that.

So tomorrow, I have another artist friend who is going to join me on a Zoom so I can practice my mock studio visit. I’m still nervous and tongue-tied about it, but I’m going to go over some of my old statements to refresh my mind on what each series is about. You’d think I know that in the forefront of my mind, but not when I’m on the spot. It’s during a slideshow presentation, and I’ve been getting all flustered about how fast to click through each image, what I should say, when I should pause, and when to stay silent. I also need to time it. I think I still have too many images. I also need to take a couple of new images of my studio. Maybe a panorama or something. This is the best one I have right now:

I’ll let you know how it goes.