Meme: 31 Days of December: Day 14 Proud

[escritoireazul]

Day 01: a picture of you taken this year
Day 02: talk about music this year
Day 03: talk about movies this year
Day 04: talk about television this year
Day 05: talk about books this year
Day 06: talk about food this year
Day 07: your week, in great detail
Day 08: your Hanukkah wish list
Day 09: a photo that makes you happy taken this year
Day 10: a photo of you taken over ten years ago
Day 11: your favorite photo this year
Day 12: your favorite website this year
Day 13: new items you’ve added to collections this year
Day 14: What you are proud of from this year
Day 15: something that made you laugh this year
Day 16: something that made you sad this year
Day 17: something that made you happy this year
Day 18: what is on your desk right now
Day 19: what you learned this year
Day 20: talk about hobbies this year
Day 21: what you are most pleased about this year
Day 22: talk about art this year
Day 23: What you did to have fun this year
Day 24: a photo of you and your family
Day 25: Talk about politics this year
Day 26: A list of what you got for Hanukkah
Day 27: A new years resolution
Day 28: Something which caught your interest this year
Day 29: Travel you did this year
Day 30: Your plans for New Years
Day 31: Best moment of the month


Day 14: What you are proud of from this year

My first instinct is to say nothing, because I feel like I have done nothing this year but fail and be mentally ill. However, that's pretty much bullshit, so I am going to talk about pottery. I've planned to talk about it more ever since Day 7, when I talked a little bit about a productive class, and you guys seemed interested, and this is a good time to do it, because really, I am proud of pottery.

I started taking classes because I wanted to challenge myself. I love learning new things (when I finished grad school, everyone else kept talking about how happy they were to be done with school and never going back, which makes sense, because our degrees were doctoral level degrees, but even then I was ready to find a new program and go back to school. It is a shame that I don't want to teach.), but I am terrible at being bad at new things in front of other people. I taught myself to play basic piano long before I let my parents sign me up for actual classes. I practiced for hours on my own before I ever even admitted to anyone I wanted to try out for color guard back in high school. I'd been writing stories for years before I ever let anyone read them. (Fandom was good for this. Yes, I'd already been writing for years, but it taught me to share stories and take criticism, and has been incredibly useful for everything else in my life.)

I am not artistic. I struggle to draw a straight line. I've never been big into painting until last fall, right after I got laid off, when I finally started teaching myself watercolors. I design jewelry and clothes all the time, but I never let anyone see, because they're not yet good enough. I love making art and cards with my arty friends and Sister K, but I hate letting them see what I'm doing, because it's never good enough. (I've been going to card making events with Ms J, where we create cards that have already been designed, and the instructor is right there to show the technique, and even then, (a) I can't stick to the design I have to make it my own (which is encouraged), and (b) I hate that people see me struggling.)

So with all that background, plus the fact I've spent most of this year job hunting and failing at getting a job, in my field and casual jobs alike, I decided what my bipolar brain needed was something else to fail at something new to learn.

Long story short, J and I reconnected with a friend of the family at the end of last year, who is also called J because dear god no one believes in any other initial in my world. I would call him Brother J, but J's brother was Brother J, so. Fuck it. Baby J is like a little brother to me (he was bffs with Brother M back in the day), and his wife, K, owns a pottery studio. She offered me lessons for free, and gifted me my first bag of clay, which I actually have yet to finish, though I am down to the very last of it, and J just bought me a new bag. After that first set of lessons (technically six weeks, but because of scheduling, as long as the first bag lasted), I'm exchanging work around the shop for studio and kiln time. (Last week, I helped her price a bunch of new pieces she was taking to an event over the weekend.)

I am good at pottery, and that is a problem.

I showed a lot of progress early on, and then had a couple classes where nothing came off the kiln, I kept damaging it while trying to raise the walls (the move that allows you to make the walls the same thickness from top to bottom) or while trying to cut off the top (because I kept making one side higher than the other while raising the walls). I struggled a lot with that. More than once, I ended up crying over a piece, either sitting at the wheel (not ideal because then K worries) or while scrubbing my hands after class (still not ideal because JFC why am I crying it is just clay, but better than where anyone can see). The early success was actually terrible for me, because then I felt like I should be doing better, I could be doing better, I was just failing because I am a big failure. (See also: time at my last job, or this job hunt, or my writing, or pretty much everything I've ever done but especially the last few years. Grad school + bipolar + incredibly stressful more than full time job did a number on my confidence, my mental health, and my physical health.)

I thought about giving up, a lot. I felt like I was wasting clay and K's time. (Who cares about my time. I am clearly doing nothing with my life.) It is hard enough to even get myself out of the house for class some weeks. But when it works, when it clicks and I finally understand something I have been struggling to get, god, that is a good moment. (Pottery skills are not skills I had picked up anywhere else in life. Everything, from kneading the clay to centering it on the wheel to doing any sort of shape, is new and difficult and I can't wrap my brain around it. Until I do.)

I'm going to keep trying, because being bad at something is good for me, and having to work to learn something is good for me, and I really love it. There was a time, before my most recent bipolar crash, that I even loved the failures, because hands on clay is such a good feeling. I want that back. (Plus K wants to sell my work, eventually, which is stressful and wonderful at the same time. I am so far from there, but I want to get there, and that requires putting in the time at the wheel.)

I am trying to challenge myself more in 2016, and pottery will be a part of it.

Now, for pictures. I've had about 8 two hour lessons, total, though sometimes they are split up into a couple one hour lessons depending on scheduling.





This is the very first ball of clay I ever put on the wheel. As you can see, it went badly, but I absolutely fell in love with the way it felt against my hands and the way the wheel spun and such little pressure made such big changes.



I threw four balls of clay my first week, and this is the only one that actually became anything. It is a terrible piece, but K wanted me to have something to show from my first lesson, so I agreed not to smash it. Look at how wobbly and twisted it is. The twist comes from how I raise my walls (too fast because I'm worried about breaking the clay and also that weird higher edge that then needs to be cut off).



That first piece, glazed and fired. I only got it back last week, and I am surprised by how beautiful it looks, even though the structure is terrible. X said it looked like a secret sea and needs an octopus in it; luckily, I have a ton of handmade octopi that X and L and JBJ sent me in a care package last year, and I think that is exactly what I will put inside this and display it in my creative room, once I get it arranged and finish unpacking. (And maybe a little heater put into it, because one wall is basically glass and it is way too cold to work in there in the winter for me. J loves it.)



The second class, I threw four balls again, and managed to make two pieces. I've since dried them and trimmed them, but haven't had time to glaze them. (Or the heart; we glaze at the end, and the next couple classes after they were dry enough to be glazed, I had nothing to show no matter what I did, and was completely disheartened by the end of class.) I am trying to make a coffee mug, and that is what the bigger one is supposed to be, except it cracked inside while drying, and probably won't hold water. However, I am going to use it to organize all my art pens, which is something I needed to do anyway.



The third class, I only had time to throw two balls, but I managed to make this gorgeous thing. It is, again, supposed to be a coffee mug, but it really looks more like a bowl. Which is fine, the people in my life who drink coffee drink A LOT of coffee, so a coffee bowl works, too. It has been trimmed, but not glazed and fired yet.



The next couple classes, this was all I had to show for my work, no matter how many balls I threw (heh, balls, K and I laugh about pottery talk often). I do love making designs on the throwing bat after I take a piece off, but one piece going wrong after another just completely disheartened me. (Even though I had failed pieces earlier, I also had something physical to show for the other pieces, but also, we hit fall, and Mom's birthday and death anniversary, which kicks off the list of people's death anniversaries for my family, and my mental health crashed and burned.)



Last week, I put together my last four balls of clay, and was seriously considering not going to pottery any more after I finished. I could always help out in the studio for fun, and K, Baby J, J, and I could keep going to dinner once a week even if I didn't go to class. I ruined the first piece, and it made me sad, but I pushed on to the second.

And, finally, after what felt like forever but apparently was really just a couple classes, good lord, Carla, be more dramatic, I took a piece off the wheel again. It is yet another coffee mug, and it is a little too short, but I needed the win of completing something more than I needed to make it taller and potentially ruin it. Even better, while raising the walls on this one, I figured out what I was doing that made one side taller than the other, and stopped doing it. Things clicked. I felt confident again.

I needed that. Now I look at it and all I can see are the flaws, but that is how I am with everything, and that is never going to go away. I push through it.


In short, pottery joy, and woe.

Comments

[glinda]

I think they're all lovely - the glazed one definitely needs an octopus - thank you for sharing them and I hope your pottery adventures in 2016 bring you more joy than woe. :)