I’ve been thinking lately about what happens if we don’t tell our stories. If we stay quiet. If we wait. The truth is, someone else will tell it for us. And they might not get it right. They might flatten it, twist it, or forget the parts that mattered most. That’s why I sit down to write these posts, even when I’m tired, even when the work at the factory runs long and my hands ache from a night of throwing.
It’s not because I have everything figured out, it’s because I don’t. These words help me make sense of what I’m doing with clay and why it matters. And when I write, I’m not just writing to the air. I’m writing to myself and one other person. That person might be you. And together, we remember that making something—even just one honest pot, is an act of storytelling. And that story, once made, carries meaning far beyond the wheel.
Every day I check the bottom of my posts and see the number of days left—13,008, give or take, if I live to be 86. That’s not just a countdown, it’s a wake-up call. It’s there to remind me that everything we want to say must be said now. Not later. Not someday. Because the truth is, we could fall over getting the mail. We don’t get to pick how the story ends, but we can shape what we leave behind.
My story lives in the pots, in the carbon-trapped glazes, in the wood kiln rising on the hill. It lives in the words I write before sunrise, in the mugs that hold coffee for someone else’s morning ritual. And if that’s all I ever do, if I never get famous, never go viral, never make a bestseller list, that’s okay. I will have made work that mattered. And someone, somewhere, will hold that work in their hands and know: this was made by someone who lived with urgency, who told his story while there was still time.
If I were living yesterday a second time:
I would have slept a little more today.
Things I am grateful for:
My wife made me an amazing lunch.
If I get to live to be 86, I only have:
13007 days left.