A Good Place to Start.

Another pottery blog?! Why, yes. Yes, it is.

A long time ago, when I was in the thick of rearing tiny humans, I had a small dream of starting a mommy-blog. After creating the website on blogspot, writing a couple of things, and not getting much traffic, I decided it wasn’t for me. I mean, I was passionate about motherhood at the time and sharing my journey, and I have always loved writing, but the more I thought about it, the more I just felt like, “why am I doing this?” I would ask myself regularly why anyone would even wanna know what the f*ck I had to say about motherhood. I was just another young mom with big opinions on how to raise my kids. The world did not need another mommy-blog from me. Someone out there had probably already blogged my exact opinions, anyway..

So, obviously that didn’t go far. Instead, I just went all in with stay-at-home-mommin’, focused on raising my kids, and decided I would circle back to finding a passion for myself after my kids were in school. I got sucked into the thick of child-rearing and lost ‘me’.

Which is where we are now. All of my kids are in school every day, so I finally feel like an actual human being again, who has her own personality, likes, and interests. I remembered that deep down, under all of the layers of ‘mom’ I piled atop myself, there were bits of me I buried. I decided I wanted to find them again. And maybe dig up some new shit.

Honestly, I can’t remember how I came to find pottery and become interested in it. I’m the type of person that finds a hobby, gets hyper focused on it, then loses complete interest in it when I find something else. I thought pottery was just gonna be another one of those things. But something really weird happened….I continued to like it. Actually, my passion and obsession for it grew. And even when I wasn’t able to begin learning pottery, I was still absorbing all of the information I could about it. I watched HUNDREDS of Youtube videos on how to center, pull walls, glaze, etc. before I even touched clay.

Now, you may ask, why didn’t I learn as soon as I found an interest in it?

Was I procrastinating because I was afraid I would lose interest in it once I finally began to throw? Possibly. Was the fear of failure debilitating? Definitely. Was I putting it off because I’m the type of person who absolutely loathes the beginning stages of learning something new? Absolutely. If I’m not naturally good at something, I find it hard to continue it. Definitely not one of my best personality traits, but hey, at least I can admit it.

But I digress…

Eventually, my husband’s grandparents purchased me my wheel for Christmas. It was the most amazing gift to receive. It showed me that they actually believed in me, to invest so much money into my dream. After that, my husband found an old kiln on a buy-sell site for 200 bucks.

Now, you’re probably thinking that is where it all finally began and I dove in, learned how to throw, and was slangin’ mud immediately. Wrong. I held onto my equipment, without even setting them up, for over THREE YEARS.

What the actual f*ck, Kass? Right?

I have excuses. Some of them are actually good, too. But I will not go into them because this post is getting a lil long, so that’s a tale for another time.

Anywho. My journey finally began in 2020, the year the world went to shit. Because, like most people, I needed something to pull me through the bleakness of human existence in a cruel and bitter world (so dramatic, I know). So, while I homeschooled 5 elementary aged kids in my garage-turned-classroom, I carved out a little corner for myself to learn pottery.

And it was a long, arduous, frustrating process. I’m still learning. And sometimes I go a few months (because I get a lil drepressy sometimes) without sitting at my wheel and I feel like I have to relearn how to center all over again. That shit gets a lil annoying, but alas, I continue to do it. Someday, I’ll get my shit fully together. Probably.

Maybe.

But shit, I think I got a little off-topic. I think I started this post talking about blogging…so, all of this is to say, I am going to try to merge my passions together here; writing and pottery.

I will try to update here as best as my chaotic brain can remember to and post about my journey of learning, so that maybe you can start your journey, too, and feel better about yourself and what you’re doing because the roundabout way I have gotten to where I am has been complete and utter chaos. Absolutely do not recommend.

If you love pottery and want to begin learning, just start. Don’t wait years. And if you can’t afford the equipment, find a studio to learn at (keep in mind that I give this advice, but my anxiety would NEVER allow me to do this)…do as I say, not as I do, ya know?

Either way, I’m excited. I hope you’re excited. Let’s f*ckin’ do this.