A bishop stuck behind its own pawns is barely a piece. Don’t box in your own talents with your own habits.

A piece with no open lines has all its power and none of its reach. The pawns in front of it are not the enemy’s, they are its own, which is what makes the situation easy to miss. Most of what boxes in the thing you are good at was put there by you: a routine, an avoidance, a story about what you do not do.

Name one habit that keeps your best thing shut in, then open a single line this week. Sign up, send the message, bring the sketchbook. One square of room is enough to be worth something.