You see the finished mural. You don’t see the three hundred hours of scaffold.

Finished work hides its own history. You see the clean result, with no record of the false starts, the parts painted over and the weeks of unglamorous labour that made it possible. Comparing your messy middle against somebody’s finished surface is not comparing like with like, and it is the fastest route to deciding you have no talent.

Go and find the scaffold this week for one thing you admire. Look for the early work, the drafts, the interview where somebody says how long it took. Then let your own unfinished thing be unfinished, and keep a record of your scaffold, because one day it is the interesting part.