The first pots teach you things no book and no video can teach you ahead of time. They teach you how clay actually feels under pressure, not how it’s described but how it responds in your specific hands with your specific amount of force on that specific day. They teach you that the wheel has its own rhythm and you have to find yours inside of it. They teach you that frustration is part of the process and that sitting with it long enough usually gets you somewhere the frustration alone never could.

I remember my first pots. They were uneven and thick-walled and the bottoms were too heavy and the lips were anything but level. I was proud of every one of them anyway, and I should have been, because each one represented a question asked of the clay and an answer received, even if the answer was not the one I was hoping for. That exchange is how you learn. There is no shortcut through it.

Here is what I would tell someone sitting down at the wheel for the first time. Don’t try to make a good pot. Try to make a pot. Any pot. Something that holds its shape long enough to come off the wheel in one piece. That’s the first goal and it’s enough. The good pots come later, after you get the bad ones out of the way and your hands have had enough conversations with the clay to know what they’re doing. You cannot think your way to that knowledge. You have to make your way there.

Hand building is the same. Your first pinch pot will be lopsided. Your first slab piece will crack at the corners. Your first coil pot will show every finger mark and none of them will line up the way you pictured. Make it anyway. Make the next one. Make fifty of them before you decide whether pottery is for you, because the first ten are just introductions.

Keep your first pots if you can. Put them somewhere you can see them. In five years, they will be the most honest record you have of where you started, and looking at them will show you something that praise and likes and sales never quite will. They will show you exactly how far you have come. The clay was here before you sat down, and it will be here after. Life is far too short not to start.

If I were living yesterday a second time: I would have been easier on myself at the wheel in the beginning and saved the self-criticism for later when I actually knew enough to make it useful. Bad early pots are not a sign you can’t do this. They are proof that you started.

Things I am grateful for: My first terrible pots and everything they taught me. The forgiving nature of clay that lets you wedge it back up and try again.

If I get to live to be 86, I might only have: 12,669 days left. A few of the early ones went toward lumpy walls and collapsed cylinders that turned out to be the best education I ever got.

Originally published at Creek Road Pottery

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At some point most makers run into the same quiet trap. You finish a piece, set it on the shelf, and before you’ve even decided how you feel about it yourself you’re already wondering what someone else might think. You start looking for a signal. A nod, a comment, a like, a sale. Something from the outside that tells you the work was worth making. I’ve been there more times than I’d like to admit.

The problem with needing validation is that it moves the measuring stick outside yourself and hands it to someone else. Someone who wasn’t in the studio at six in the morning. Someone who didn’t fight with the clay or rework the lip three times or lose sleep over the glaze. They get the finished piece and a few seconds to form an opinion, and somehow that opinion gets more weight than the hours you put into the thing. That’s a real bad trade.

Good work doesn’t need an audience to be good. A pot that holds water holds water whether anyone praises it or not. A well-thrown bowl with a good foot and a honest glaze is a well-thrown bowl whether it sells at the first show or sits on the shelf for two years. The quality is in the object. The opinion is in the person looking at it. Those are two different things and it’s worth keeping them separate.

This doesn’t mean feedback has no value. It does. A more experienced potter pointing out something you missed is useful information. A customer telling you a mug changed their morning routine is genuinely worth knowing. That kind of input can make you better. What I’m talking about is something different. It’s the waiting. The making work in order to be told it’s good rather than because you believe it is. That’s where the trouble starts.

Make the work. Assess it honestly. Learn what it’s teaching you. Set it on the shelf and move on to the next one. If someone recognizes it for what it is, good. If they don’t, the pot is still what it is. You were the one in the studio. You already know if it’s good.

If I were living yesterday a second time: I would have trusted my own eye sooner and spent less time waiting for someone else to confirm what I already knew.

Things I am grateful for: Every pot that sat on the shelf unsold and taught me something anyway. The makers who showed me by example that the work is its own reward.

If I get to live to be 86: I might only have: 12,670 days left.

Originally published at Creek Road Pottery

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If I get to live to be 86, I might only have: 12,671 days left. One of them went toward a solar controller, some trimming, and helping a guy from Ohio get his wheel back on.

Originally published at Creek Road Pottery

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The pottery needs a deep clean. In a perfect world I would remove everything from the space and set it all outside, then do a deep clean and allow only what is necessary back inside. I have loads of clay that need to be reprocessed, the shelving could be cleared and wiped down, and then I would need to mop the floor where everything sat. Just planning it all out here I think is a good start, as at least it’s in the back of my mind now.

Since I now have my father’s Wheel Horse tractor running I hope to take all the kiln brick up to the kiln site to clean up the area in front of the pottery shed that I use as my shop. I need to mow and landscape it a little to make things look a little more lived in. Then another big task is to break up all of the pottery in my cry pile and put it in a box and tape it up so I can toss it in the dumpster. Some makers bury the shards in a hole but that only creates issues for the next landowner after I am gone, and pets could get clay shards in their feet. Better to deal with it now.

I also have a sun porch that needs cleaning and organizing. It’s a nice space I could use to grow plants as it’s a closed-in covered porch. We store our camping gear there along with recycling containers and other items taking up space. The idea would be to put in shelving to store the camping gear and use the space to start plants for the garden. The sun porch is also a nice place to sit late fall and enjoy the beautiful scenery we have out here in the area we live in.

So there is my spring cleaning list that I may not get to until fall. But having a plan is a great start. Even if I can do one thing to make the space more comfortable to live in that would be great. Currently the whole place looks like a pottery junk yard.

If I were living yesterday a second time:I would have written this list down sooner. A plan sitting in your head is just a worry. A plan written down is a starting point.

Things I am grateful for: Beautiful scenery outside every window, even the ones I’m too tired to open.

If I get to live to be 86, I might only have: 12,672 days.

Originally published at Creek Road Pottery

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I woke up somewhat exhausted after the night shift at the big paper factory. I need to get back to throwing pots soon, as it has been some time. The studio needs a cleaning and the wood kiln needs to be built. I saw it standing out there when I got home this morning. I’m glad I put the wood kiln where I did. I worry that if it were out of sight, it would become out of mind, and that would be a tragedy of sorts. That is why I write here each day, to keep things in sight and go over things to stay focused on all the projects I have going on. I am halfway through these long work days and look forward to having time off after another two days. I hope to focus on making pots and cleaning the studio now that I got the yard mowed.

Keeping busy has been helping me stay in shape and active. Although I might have gained a few pounds from having a beer or two, working on the kiln will cure that. I need to pick up a few bags of sand to mix in with the fire clay that I will be using as slurry between the bricks in the arch. After the arch is done, I hope to build the chimney. I feel bad that I have been talking more about pottery and kiln building rather than doing, but the last few months of getting my financial accounts and spending in order has allowed me to save money and be able to concentrate more on the kiln and the pots.

I also have kiln bricks for the rocket kiln. I hope to use the old bricks from the kiln floor I pulled up during the deconstruction and make the burn tunnels for the kilns that will be set up on cinder blocks. The perfect way would be to set them up on a bank. I do have a bank, but I may not be able to put the kilns there. The rocket kilns work like rocket stoves. It is mainly a J-shaped structure where you burn wood in the front and have the kiln sitting on top of the other end. The research I have done says you can reach high temperatures with wood in a short period of time. I believe I will need to work out a firing schedule for the rocket kilns I am building and may need to try a few different things to see what works best. Some builders put loads of money and time into the rocket kiln designs but here I will just be using what I have.

On the entry into the rocket kiln I plan to use high-temp ceramic bisqued bowls that I threw with the bottoms cut out. The bowl will sit under the kiln and on top of the heat tunnel. After being sealed up with fire clay and sand, it should have a good draw. Since I fire all updrafts here, my rocket kilns will be updrafts, as that is what I am most familiar with. Some of the downdraft rocket kiln designs seem to take up too much space from inside the kiln. I might work out a way to have a stack damper so that I am able to even out the temperature somewhat inside the fire chambers. I can’t wait to start the project. I might build one and then build the others in the same style as what works. I hope to show the whole build here for paid members. For now it’s off to the paper factory for another challenging but interesting night. I have no idea what might happen. All I need to do is show up.

If I were living yesterday a second time: I would have gone straight to sleep when I got home instead of standing in the yard looking at the kiln. It will still be there after I rest. It always is.

Things I am grateful for: A kiln I can see from the driveway. The old bricks pulled from a deconstructed floor that are about to become something new. The financial work of the last few months has quietly made space for everything coming next.

If I get to live to be 86, I might only have: 12,673 days left. A couple of them are going to the factory tonight. The rest are going to the kiln, the wheel, and the work.

Originally published at Creek Road Pottery

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Four twelve-hour days before a day off. Overtime day plus Memorial Day holiday pay means a few extra dollars at the end of it, and those dollars are going somewhere they’ve never gone before in about fifteen years. A savings account. I’ve always run everything through one checking account, money in and money out, no cushion, no emergency fund, just the checking. With the credit cards paid off there’s finally something left over at the end of the month, and this time it’s not going back into debt. It’s going into a savings account and staying there.

The kiln still needs prep work before it’s ready to fire wood, but something else moved up the list this week. I’ve been paying attention to the oil and gas situation and what looks like it could be a real shortage by June or July. I’m not going full panic, because panic wastes time and money on all the wrong things fast. Instead I’ve been taking a few measured steps. New tires on the old vehicle. Oil filters and oil set aside for at least one oil change on each vehicle and the zero turn. Nothing dramatic, just the kind of quiet preparation that means you’re not scrambling later when everyone else is.

I’ve also had Claude tracking my gas purchases, how often I fill up and from where, so I have real numbers on how price fluctuations hit my actual budget getting back and forth to the factory. It also mapped out the stations in the area that tend to run lower so I can route toward savings at the pump when prices move. Running scenarios and predictions and comparing them against what’s happening in real time has been useful, not as a fear generator but as a way of staying aware without getting buried in conflicting information. There’s a lot of conflicting information out there right now for a lot of reasons and most of it is not designed to help you stay calm.

The part that’s helped me most is deciding to gamify it. Treating each challenge as a problem to solve, each prep step as a move in a game, takes the anxiety down a few notches and makes the whole thing feel more like navigation than survival. It turns out that seeing uncertainty as interesting is a choice you can actually make, at least some of the time.

I’ll share some of the specific methods Claude helped me work out, the ones that have already saved real money and pointed me toward better ways of managing the financial side of things. I needed the help. Doing it on my own wasn’t working and I’m not too proud to say so. Some people think it’s too much to load into an A.I. tool. I understand the hesitation. What I can say is that Claude’s approach has felt more human-oriented than I expected, and so far it’s been one of the more useful things I’ve brought into the studio and the household both.

Back to the factory tonight to earn the living that funds everything else. The pottery, the projects, the solar setup still coming, the kiln waiting on me, the garden growing without my help. All of it sits here while I go do the other work. That’s the arrangement and most of the time it’s worth it.

What have you done to make your life a little better in the last few days? I’d genuinely like to know. Leave a comment.

If I were living yesterday a second time: I would have started tracking gas purchases six months ago instead of now.

Things I am grateful for: Overtime pay that finally has somewhere useful to go.

If I get to live to be 86, I might only have: 12,674 days left.

Originally published at Creek Road Pottery

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I checked the garden first. Things are coming in nicely and the deer haven’t touched a single plant yet, which feels like a small miracle given what’s been bedding down in the lawn. Speaking of the lawn, my friend who was supposed to come mow called to say he’d taken his kids fishing instead. I understood completely. I would have done the same thing without a second thought. I’ve lived with high grass before. One more week wasn’t going to hurt anything except appearances, and appearances can wait.

The new lawn tractor was delivered today. A zero turn, which I had never driven in my life. I had the delivery driver back it off the trailer for me, which felt like the right call. I waited until he pulled out of the driveway before I tried it myself. Opened the cap. Needed gas. Filled the zero turn, topped off the car while I was at it, came back, started it up, and nearly took the side mirror off the car on my first attempt at a turn. Once I worked a few things out I went slow and got the whole lawn done. Came inside with a sunburn and a sense of accomplishment that was probably a little out of proportion to mowing a lawn, but there it is.

The hard part was mowing around the wood kiln. It’s sitting there in the yard, still unfinished, in weather that would be perfect for stacking. I’ve had enough going on with the smaller things that the kiln keeps getting pushed, and pushing past it on a zero turn in the sunshine felt like a conversation I wasn’t ready to have. The bad times are coming, or something like them, and I’ve been preparing so that when they arrive the landing is softer. The kiln is part of that preparation. It’ll get its turn.

The solar project is still on the list and moving closer. My plan is to get the controller next week, then the panels and batteries in the weeks after that so I can at least start storing energy. For reasons I can’t fully explain, my mind has locked onto the end of July as the target. Something about getting at least a partial offset in place before summer peaks feels important. I also signed up for the budget plan with the power company to even out the monthly bill while the bigger solution comes together. Two old electric kilns are waiting to be converted to wood-fired rocket kilns. That’s still ahead too.

A lot is still ahead. But the lawn is mowed, the garden is growing, the deer stayed out, and the zero turn and I came to an understanding. Today that’s enough.

If I were living yesterday a second time: I would have put sunscreen on before getting on the zero turn and not after. The sun doesn’t care how much you’re enjoying yourself.

Things I am grateful for: A summer day that asked to be spent outside and delivered. Garden plants doing their quiet work without interference from the deer. A friend who took his kids fishing instead of mowing my lawn, which was absolutely the right call. A zero turn that forgave me for the first few turns. The solar project getting close enough to feel real.

If I get to live to be 86, I might only have: 12,675 days left. One of them went toward a sunburn, a mowed lawn, and a garden that’s holding its own. Not a bad way to spend a summer day.

Originally published at Creek Road Pottery

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It takes steps to get where you’re going, and sometimes those steps are slow. They take time, and taking time means pulling it from somewhere else, which often means giving something up. There are days I wish projects worked like high-speed rail. Point A to point B, fast and direct, skip the walking. But that’s not how it works. The steps are the journey, and if you somehow arrived at the end without taking them, you’d find yourself standing there unprepared, holding something you didn’t quite earn yet and don’t fully know how to use.

I’ve spent the last few months paying down debt. This coming month was supposed to be the first month debt-free, outside of the house and the car. Then the lawn needed mowing, and I didn’t have a mower, and depending on someone else to get to it means the grass grows however tall it wants before they show up. Growing up on a farm, I can tell you that what’s out front of the house right now could put up a respectable few bales if I had the cows for it. So I financed a lawn mower. New debt. One step back on a goal I’d been walking toward for months.

I didn’t intend this post to be a complaint about lawn mowers or finances. I wanted to use it as an example of steps that don’t involve pots. Today was a day off, and my wife kept reminding me it was fine to actually take one, to step off the productivity treadmill where even resting feels like falling behind. She was right. Aside from buying the mower, I got my dad’s old Wheel Horse tractor started and running so I can haul bricks up to the kiln site. Overtime is coming at the paper factory this week, which means the kiln sits a while longer. That’s the deal sometimes. But here’s the part worth telling. I had a beer tonight in one of my wood-fired cups.

I threw that cup. Trimmed it, dried it, ran it through the gas updraft kiln for a bisque fire, then drove it out to Bill Moon’s wood kiln in Mills, Pennsylvania, where we fired for three days straight to get the surface it has now. I may have worked harder making that cup than I would have worked the same hours at the paper factory. But the cup has a story that belongs to me. The paper factory has a story too, but that’s not my story. Someone else wrote it and I participate in it.

The wood-fired cup was a journey I took step by step, on my own, from a lump of reclaimed clay to something I’m drinking a cold beer from on a Tuesday evening. Every step mattered. The first one, the last one, and all the slow ones in between. Miss any one of them, and there’s no cup. I’m lucky I got to take all of those fair and foul steps.

If I were living yesterday a second time: I would have sat down with the beer and the cup a little earlier in the evening and let the rest of the list wait. Some things deserve to be appreciated without rushing off to the next thing.

Things I am grateful for: A wife who reminds me it’s okay to rest.

If I get to live to be 86, I might only have: 12,676 days left. One of them went toward a lawn mower, a running tractor, and a beer in a cup, worth every slow step it took to make it. That’s a decent day off.

Originally published at Creek Road Pottery

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The projects collect. That’s the part that gets me. Every rabbit hole produces a project, and every project joins the pile, and eventually I’m standing in front of the pile unable to pick one and not moving at all. Freeze up. Classic Resistance, dressed up as curiosity. But I’m not ready to say the rabbit holes are the problem.

There’s something genuinely alive about that feeling at the top of a new hole. The wondering what’s down there. The sense of curiosity that pulls you through one tunnel and into the next. I go in and I keep going because each turn reveals something worth knowing, and the learning feels good in a way that’s hard to talk a person out of. Sometimes I surface after a few months. Sometimes it takes a couple of years. I blink and it’s a different season and I have three new shelves of books and a Facebook group and opinions about things I’d never heard of before I fell in.

Take the topic of wood ash glaze. Simple enough starting point. I collect ash from the stove, sift out the chunks outside with a mask on, and inside of an afternoon I’m researching safer sifting methods. Which leads to a book on ash glazes. Which leads to a few books. Which leads to test tiles, then mixing my own, then six Facebook groups where we share results and ask questions about results. Someone posts a surface technique that catches my eye and the next thing I know I’m watching YouTube videos and thinking about making a hundred pots that way. By the time I come up for air there’s a small shelf dedicated to ash glaze alone. Then I see a slab-built raku piece and the whole thing starts over.

I wonder sometimes if boundaries would help. Set a rule, finish one hole before starting the next, something like that. But then I think about what might have gone unexplored and the boundaries start to feel like loss. Maybe the rabbit holes are just how some people are built. Maybe curiosity without a fence on it is the feature, not the bug. The trick might not be stopping the holes but getting better at surfacing, taking what I learned, putting it on a shelf in order, and picking the next right project from the pile instead of freezing in front of it. I’m still working that part out.

Do you jump down rabbit holes? I’d genuinely like to know. Leave a comment and tell me where yours have taken you.

If I were living yesterday a second time: Not to cut the learning short. Just to have a time to come up for air and decide if I wanted to keep going or move on.

Things I am grateful for: A brain that still gets excited about what might be around the next corner.

If I get to live to be 86, I might only have: 12,677 days left. A good number of them have been spent underground in one tunnel or another. I’m not sure I’d change that.

Originally published at Creek Road Pottery

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There are days the factory takes everything. Not just the hours. The hours you can plan around. It takes the thinking too, the part of your brain that strings ideas together and knows what to do next. You drive home on the route you’ve driven a hundred times and park where you always park and somewhere between the car door and the kitchen you lose the thread of whatever you were going to do next. Tonight is one of those nights.

I’ve been at this long enough to know that showing up tired still counts. The post that gets written on fumes is still a post. The day you dragged yourself to the wheel and centered one pound of clay before giving up is still a day you touched the clay. Resistance doesn’t care how tired you are. It will take exhaustion as an excuse just as fast as it takes fear or distraction or a full schedule. The only answer I’ve ever found is to do something small and let that be enough. So this is the small thing tonight.

I think about the kiln sitting out there in the dark. The arch waiting on me. The tatami bricks I haven’t laid yet. The garden my wife and I put in this weekend that is out there in the ground right now doing its quiet work whether I’m watching it or not. That’s the thing about seeds and kilns and the slow projects. They don’t need you every minute. They just need you to come back.

I’ll come back tomorrow. Rested, or close enough to it. There will be clay to move and bricks to lay and a post worth writing about something other than being tired. But tonight this is what I’ve got, and I’ve learned not to apologize for that.

Some days the factory gets the best of you. The studio gets what’s left. That’s the deal you make when you live two lives in one body, and most of the time it’s a deal worth making.

If I were living yesterday a second time: Rest is not quitting. It is preparation.

Things I am grateful for: My wife, who understands this life and never once made me feel guilty for being tired. The fact that tomorrow exists.

If I get to live to be 86, I might only have: 12,684 days left. One of them just went toward keeping the writing alive on nothing but grit and the good sense to keep it short.

Originally published at Creek Road Pottery

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Good advice. Seasoned advice. The kind that comes from someone who has fired more kilns than I’ve owned. I read it carefully, took notes, and then did something I didn’t expect. I stopped moving.

The kiln that worked was sitting in pieces around me, and suddenly I wasn’t sure how to put it back together.

What I eventually had to admit to myself was this: the advice hadn’t broken my plan. My own rumination had used the advice as a door, walked right through it, and started rearranging furniture in a room I’d already settled.

There’s a difference between expert opinion and empirical evidence that potters don’t talk about enough. Expert opinion describes what should work based on accumulated knowledge across many kilns, many firings, many situations. Empirical evidence describes what did work in your kiln, on your site, with your materials and your hands. Those are not the same input. They’re not equal.

The expert has never fired your kiln. You have.

That’s not arrogance. That’s an honest accounting of what you actually know versus what someone else reasonably suspects.

The hard part is that good advice from a credible source has a way of giving your self-doubt permission to reopen closed questions. You were moving forward. The advice arrives. Suddenly you’re not moving at all, not because anything actually changed, but because the loop found a respectable entry point.

One clarifying question helps when this happens: is this advice about something that failed, or something that worked?

If it’s about something that failed, listen hard. Integrate it. Change course. That’s what good advice is for.

If it’s about improving something that already worked, write it down for the next build. File it respectfully. Then go put the thing back together the way you took it down.

Your first kiln doesn’t need to be perfect. It needs to be fired. The second one is where you apply everything the first one taught you.

If I were living yesterday a second time: Good information deserves respect. It doesn’t always deserve a delay.

Things I am grateful for: The clarity that eventually comes when you stop ruminating and pick something up. The second kiln, still ahead, where all of this becomes useful.

If I get to live to be 86, I might only have: 12,684 days left. A few of them went toward learning the difference between a question worth reopening and one that was already answered. That’s worth knowing.

Originally published at Creek Road Pottery

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I also set it up to track spending. When I scan a receipt and upload it to the right session, the manager section logs it, runs cost comparisons, and shows me where things are changing over time. No more guessing.

The grocery tracking has been the most eye-opening part. I photograph my receipt each time I shop and upload it. Claude groups the items into categories, runs month-to-month comparisons, and flags things I might be able to grow in the garden instead of buying. It even estimates a rate of return on what we plant and projects what we might save over a season. That kind of information used to take a spreadsheet and a free afternoon. Now it takes a photo and a few minutes.

The same format works for the pottery business. Sessions for raw materials, inventory, energy costs, labor, and sales, all feeding into a manager session that produces a running to-do list, current totals, and price changes tracked over time. Real numbers instead of estimates. Better pricing decisions because the data is actually there to look at.

You can still do this the old-fashioned way, a notebook or an Excel file works fine. The difference is that Claude acts as a data analyst on top of the record keeping. It finds patterns, flags things you missed, and offers recommendations if you ask. It does the sense-making, not just the storing.

That said, A.I. makes mistakes. It can also be misused, leaned on for creative thinking instead of kept in its lane as a tool. I’ve hurt myself with tools before. I’ve stabbed my finger with a pin tool, cut myself on a thin metal rib mid-throw, and caught my hand with a hammer on a missed nail. The tool wasn’t the problem any of those times. Using it carelessly was. Knowing which tool to use and how to use it safely matters more than the tool itself. It’s worth doing a quick risk check before starting any new project, A.I. included. Double check everything it gives you. Trust but verify.

And wear gloves when you’re pulling weeds. Thorns don’t care how good your system is.

If I were living yesterday a second time: I would have set up the manager session sooner instead of trying to hold all the projects in my head at once. A system that tracks things doesn’t cost you creative energy. It gives it back.

Things I am grateful for: A tool that keeps the projects moving without requiring me to remember everything. The reminder that the right tool, used right, is still just a tool.

If I get to live to be 86, I might only have: 12,684 days left. A few of them went toward building a system that makes the rest of them a little less chaotic. That feels like a good investment.

Originally published at Creek Road Pottery

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I’ll own that. But doing a garden this year is part of the same plan everything else is part of, growing food that’s getting expensive at the store and depending a little less on systems we don’t control.

On the pottery side of things, the plan for this holiday weekend is to work on the wood kiln and get as much done on the arch as I can. In a perfect world I’d also start laying the tatami brick roof on the firebox. I watched another kiln builder do it on video and want to try those techniques here. If time allows, I’d also like to set the base for a rocket kiln that fires on small pieces of wood. The idea there is to get out from under the high cost of propane. Two kilns fired on wood changes the math on this studio in a real way.

The studio also needs a cleaning before classes start. The bathroom situation is something I’m still sorting out. The only restrooms I have access to are the personal bathrooms in the house, which doesn’t work for students. I’m looking at renting a porta-john for the summer into fall. Still figuring out where to put it, which is the kind of problem you don’t anticipate until it’s the only problem left.

The solar project is still moving. I’m saving up to buy the panels and batteries so I can at least start storing energy while I work out the other components. The goal is to have stored power offsetting the coming spike in electricity costs from the grid before that spike arrives. Between the wood kilns and the solar, this studio is slowly becoming what I’ve been planning for: low cost, self-sufficient, self-reliant, and self-sustaining. When that happens, I’ll be in a better position to help others do the same.

If I were living yesterday a second time: I would have done things the same. Buying plants was quite fun.

Things I am grateful for: A great deal on garden plants we didn’t have to pay full price for.

If I get to live to be 86, I might only have: 12,684 days left. A few of them went toward tomatoes and tatami bricks. Not bad for a long weekend.

Originally published at Creek Road Pottery

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Doing nothing is easy. It’s the path of least resistance, and Resistance knows it. Doing nothing means depending on others all the time. Doing a little more means depending on others a little less. That’s been my approach lately, and it’s adding up in ways I didn’t expect.

The small things I’ve done so far: I switched to reclaimed clay to cut material costs. I paid down debt by tightening my spending and picking up some overtime at the factory. The credit cards are paid off now. The money I was handing to the bank in interest every month stays here instead, and I’m putting it toward things that actually matter. My wife and I doubled the size of our garden this year so we can grow food that’s getting more expensive at the store. And I have plans in place to offset the electric bill by putting solar panels and storage batteries on the pottery shed roof.

None of those are dramatic moves. They’re small, deliberate choices, made one at a time. Helping yourself is a gift to yourself that eventually becomes generosity toward others. You can’t keep giving from an empty account, financial or otherwise.

The current challenge is information overload. I have several projects running at once and most of them are time-sensitive. The garden is the most urgent. I won’t be able to sit with indecision about what to plant because the planting window won’t wait. Miss it and you miss it. Resistance would love nothing more than for me to feel so overwhelmed by too many choices that I quit before anything goes in the ground. So I’m pushing through, making calls with the information I have, and accepting that some of what I plant will fail. That’s fine. I’ll know what to do differently next time.

The solar project, the garden, the reclaim clay, the paid-off cards. None of it happened by waiting for the perfect moment or the complete picture. It happened by deciding and doing, one thing at a time, and trusting that forward motion beats standing still.

If I were living yesterday a second time: I would have made one decision off the list instead of A made decision, even an imperfect one, moves things forward. Thinking about it again doesn’t.

Things I am grateful for: Credit card debt that is behind me now. A wife willing to double the size of a garden we’re still learning to grow.

If I get to live to be 86: I might only have: 12,684 days left. A few of them went toward doing something instead of nothing. That’s how it adds up.

Originally published at Creek Road Pottery

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We have deer that bed down in our lawn. Rabbits, too, the kind you can almost walk up to. We’ll need fencing. That’s the next step after the soil and the seeds and the decisions about what to actually grow. We plan to visit the hardware store over the Memorial Day weekend that is coming up. In a way, we are getting ready for the economic downturn that is well on the way.

The idea of planning, of putting things in place now so that later takes care of itself, makes it a little easier. I paid off the last credit card I had, so now we have extra funds that were going to interest at our disposal to use for gas and food as prices spike. It all takes planning and trying to do the right things at the right times. When you see a storm rolling in, it’s time to get under some roof. A garden works the same way. You don’t put a tomato plant in the ground in August and expect tomatoes by September. You plan in the cold months, you plant in the right window, you tend it through the heat, and then you get tomatoes. Or you don’t, because deer got in. But you gave it a chance.

There’s a pottery connection here, as there always is. I’m thinking about fermentation pots. Sauerkraut crocks specifically. Traditional, heavy, functional pieces that do one thing and do it well for decades. If we’re growing cabbage, I want to be the one making the pot that ferments it. That feels right in a way I can’t fully explain. The garden feeds the table, and the studio feeds the garden. A closed loop. Self-reliant in the way that actually means something.

Planning the garden didn’t grow the vegetables. I learned that last year by thinking about it and doing nothing. This year, we’re putting things in the ground and seeing what comes up. Some of it will fail. The deer will get something. The rabbits will find a way in before the fence goes up. That’s fine. Failure in a garden, like failure in a kiln, teaches you what to do differently next time.

For now, the raised beds are going in. The books are off the shelf and actually open on the table. The fermentation pots are on the list. That’s enough for today.

If I were living yesterday a second time: Gardening, like pottery, is better when you’re not rushing because you ran out of daylight.

Things I am grateful for: The knowledge that putting something in the ground is an act of hope.

If I get to live to be 86, I might only have: 12,684 days left. Today a few of them hours went toward putting something in the ground that might feed us. That counts.

Originally published at Creek Road Pottery

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You didn’t have to pay for this. There are a thousand free things to read on the internet and most of them are louder than me. You chose this anyway, and I don’t take that lightly.

Here’s what your support actually does. It keeps the lights on at Creek Road Pottery. It helps fund the wood kiln build that’s been underway longer than I’d like to admit. It gives me one more reason to sit down and write before the sun comes up or after a twelve-hour shift at the paper factory, when the easier thing would be to just go to bed.

What you get in return is the unfiltered version. The posts everyone reads, plus the pieces I write specifically for you. Deeper dives. Practical lists. Honest reflections on what’s working in the studio and what isn’t. The kind of writing I’d share with a fellow potter over coffee, not the kind I’d put on a sign in a gallery window.

I’ve been at this pottery work for over ten years now. Over 670 Pottery Dailies posts. I’m still learning, still firing, still showing up. That part isn’t changing.

So pull up a stool. The coffee’s on. Let’s get to work.

10 Ways Ceramic Artists and Studios Can Collaborate When Times Get Hard For paid subscribers of The Pottery Dailies

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I’ve said it many times: if we go apocalyptic in our thinking, it clouds our vision of the future. It leaves us feeling depressed, locked into a victim’s outlook. As creatives, we need to be self-reliant, self-sufficient, and self-sustaining.

None of that means going it alone. Collaborating with other creatives, sharing ideas instead of hoarding them, might be the only real path to staying creative and viable. All the “self” in that doesn’t mean selfish. Self-care is part of belonging to a community. You can’t be self-reliant if you’ve burned yourself out keeping everyone else warm.

That’s where generosity comes in. An abundance mindset opens up the field. It creates room for more people to contribute, to be generous with what they know and what they have. You end up with a community that is self-reliant, self-sufficient, and self-sustaining together, not in spite of each other.

If your studio is seeing rising costs, take ownership of that. Think creatively. Maybe you collaborate with other studios, take turns hosting each other, share what you know. Some people worry that kind of openness hands ideas to the competition. In an abundance mindset, it does the opposite. It positions you as the leader, generous with the specialized things others don’t have. Say one studio fires gas and another fires electric. Invite the electric folks to try gas. Take your own work over to theirs and fire electric. In the race to the bottom, the winner wins bankruptcy.

Things don’t always go the way we plan. Not everyone thinks like you, believes what you believe, or does what you do. During hard times, the people who build networks and choose generosity come out differently than those who isolate out of fear. Enough people making different choices, in small ways, can disrupt the systems that seem to control everything.

Generosity doesn’t mean free. It means choosing something other than scarcity.

If I were living yesterday a second time: I would have spent less energy worrying about what other studios are doing and more energy thinking about what I could offer them. Competition is a mindset. So is generosity. You get to choose which one you carry into the studio.

Things I am grateful for: Viktor Frankl, for writing things that still land decades later. The studios down the road that fire differently than I do. The fact that an abundance mindset is available to anyone willing to pick it up. Creatives who share what they know without keeping score. My community, which has never once made me feel like I was on my own.

If I get to live to be 86, I might only have: 12685 days left

Originally published at Creek Road Pottery

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In short, there is no need for gatekeepers anymore. You can do the work and reach the people you make work for and the people you pick. There is no need to make work for everyone, just the people who care. Seth Godin, in his book The Practice, talks about this extensively. Also, Steven Pressfield in his many books on art adds the why and the how to overcome the Resistance, followed up by Lewis Hyde and his ideas around how creating is an act of generosity.

There are many out there who will not want you to succeed. They would love to stay in the old systems as that system gives them power and influence, and for sure loads of money as gatekeepers. Thank goodness nowadays we do not need those people anymore. It is very easy to create a thing, then say to someone who might care “Look what I made.” But make no mistake, Resistance and self doubt will fight you the whole way until you might feel like giving up. Resistance will pretend that it has your best interest in mind, however it does not. It wants you to waste away what little time left you have in your life and not bring about the change you seek to make by creating.

We can start by picking ourselves for the small things. Maybe have a little talent night with your neighbors. You could even start a little coffee house where folks could come meet in a park and play music or create together in some way. The possibilities are endless and many simply need to be given permission. Well you have my permission to start picking yourself now. Life is far too short not to.

If I were living yesterday a second time: I would have picked myself for something small instead of waiting for permission I don’t need.

Things I am grateful for: Seth Godin for saying pick yourself in Purple Cow and The Practice. Steven Pressfield for naming Resistance and showing how to fight it. Lewis Hyde for framing creating as generosity.

Days remaining if I live to 86: 12,687

What are you waiting for permission to do? Who are you waiting to pick you? What would happen if you just picked yourself today?

Originally published at Creek Road Pottery

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Everything needs attention. Nothing is done. I had maybe four hours before I needed to sleep for the next shift. What gets today?

This is the question I ask more than I want to admit. Not “what should I work on” but “what gets the limited time and energy I have left after the factory takes its share.” Some days the answer is nothing. Some days I walk past all of it, go inside, and sleep. Those are the nothing days I wrote about before. They’re part of the process even when they feel like failure.

Today I chose the reclaim clay. Not because it was the most important thing. The kiln matters more. The solar project matters more for the long term plan. But the reclaim clay was something I could actually finish in the time I had. Process one bucket, wedge it up, bag it, put it on the shelf. Done. That’s progress I can see.

Steven Pressfield talks about Resistance loving the big overwhelming projects because they paralyze you. The kiln sitting there for three years is Resistance winning. But processing one bucket of clay is Resistance losing. It’s small. It’s manageable. It’s choosing to do something instead of standing in the driveway doing the math on everything I’m not doing.

I’ve been thinking about what Seth Godin says about the practice. You don’t wait for the perfect day when you have eight hours and full energy and no other obligations. You work with what you have. Today I had four hours and factory-shift tired. That’s enough for one bucket of clay. Tomorrow I might have two hours and nothing-left tired. That might be enough for ten bricks on the kiln. The practice is showing up with whatever you have and using it.

My wife asks me sometimes why I don’t just hire someone to finish the kiln. Or buy new clay instead of reclaiming. Or skip the garden and just buy vegetables. The answer is complicated. Part of it is money. Part of it is wanting to know I can do these things myself. Part of it is the artist’s journey requiring you to face the challenges instead of paying someone else to face them for you.

But the real answer is simpler. This is the work. Not just making pots. Building the infrastructure that makes making pots possible. Growing food that fuels the person who makes the pots. Processing clay that becomes the material. Stacking bricks that become the kiln. It’s all the work. Thinking pottery is just throwing and glazing is like thinking farming is just harvesting. The harvest is the end. The work is everything that makes harvest possible.

I processed the bucket of clay. It’s good clay. My old favorite that got discontinued eight years ago. I have maybe six more buckets of it in reclaim form. That might be enough clay for the whole year if I’m careful. That’s self-reliance. That’s using what I have instead of waiting for conditions to be perfect.

The kiln is still sitting there. The solar panels are still a plan. The garden boxes are still empty. But there’s one more bag of wedged clay on the shelf that wasn’t there this morning. That’s what got today. Tomorrow something else will get its turn. Eventually all of it gets done or none of it matters anyway.

Viktor Frankl said if you have a strong enough why you can bear any how. My why is seven years until retirement and pottery needs to be sustainable by then. The how is twelve-hour factory shifts and stolen hours and choosing what gets today from a list of things that all matter. It’s not elegant. It’s not efficient. But it’s the work.

If I were living yesterday a second time: Tomorrow I’ll remember that choosing what gets today is better than letting Resistance choose nothing.

Things I am grateful for: The four hours between factory shift and sleep.

Days remaining if I live to 86: 12,688

What gets today? Not what should get today or what you wish could get today. What actually gets the limited time and energy you have right now?

Originally published at Creek Road Pottery

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It felt good to finally do something instead of just talking about it. For weeks we’ve been discussing the garden, researching strategic planting, collecting books, making lists. Today we actually built something. The boxes are ready. The grow bags are set up. Now we just need to fill them with soil and decide what goes where.

The deer were watching us from the edge of the yard. They seemed unimpressed. They don’t know yet that we’re planning fencing. The rabbits that bed down in the lawn kept their distance. I think they suspect something is changing.

My wife organized the boxes by what she wants to plant in each one. Tomatoes in this one. Peppers here. Herbs in the smaller boxes. The grow bags will be for things we’re testing, things we’re not sure about yet. It’s strategic planting but also experimental. We’re learning as we go.

I was thinking while we worked about how this connects to pottery. You can plan a kiln build for three years or you can stack six raised bed boxes in an afternoon. Both matter. Both are progress. The kiln teaches patience. The garden teaches that sometimes you just need to start building and figure it out as you go.

Next step is finishing to fill the beds, after we will plan the seeds. Then the waiting to see what actually grows. It’s almost like loading a kiln. You do the work, you make your best choices, then you wait to see what comes out. Some things will work other thing may not but at least your tried and showed up for.yourself a little.

If I were living yesterday a second time: I would have started earlier.

Things I am grateful for: My wife who organized what goes where while I filled the boxes with dirt. The afternoon of actually doing instead of planning.

Days remaining if I live to 86: 12,689

What did you build today instead of just planning? What moved from your head into the world?

Originally published at Creek Road Pottery

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