Small Bite 006: The Pottery Wheel Is Turning

And you can't slow down.

This piece was featured as a segment on The Sunday Scaries Podcast and has been reformatted into column form. You can listen to it here:

Looking down at the wheel in front of me, everything felt under control. Unlike my first lesson, I was using more water this time. As I looked over at the students next to me, I knew I was better at centering my clay than they were. And while I wanted to ask what the next step was, I figured I could just go with in instincts and figure it out. But when you’re working with something as delicate as clay, going with your amateur instincts is seldom the move. After all, if pottery was done solely by instinct, we wouldn’t be needing lessons in the first place. As the class wore on, I found myself shifting from a place of contentment and excitement… and into a place of frustration and panic. While other students had brought their works to the front and started new ones, I had hardly gotten through my first. In fact, we had twenty minutes left in class and I had yet to present a finished product.

When I was young, I remember my dad coming home from work and spiking a 2nd place plaque into the garbage can. Each year, he’d enter his retail store into the town-wide Holiday Window Decorating Contest. And while I may be mistaken, I’m fairly certain he won it nearly 20 years in a row. Until he didn’t. When I asked him why he was so angry with second place, he said something to me that stuck with me. He muttered, “I only enter things I know I can win.” And it was in that moment that I began to look inward. From a looks standpoint alone, it’s clear that I am flush with my father’s DNA. And from competitive standpoint, I think things are fairly clear cut as well. I got my competitive genes from him. I hate losing but I also hate people knowing how much I hate losing. In my gym days, I was the person trying to outrun the person next to me on the treadmill. When I played soccer, I cared about two things: Putting the ball in the net, or doing everything in my power to stop you from putting it in the net. And from a professional standpoint, well, I hesitate to even get into that. While there are ugly parts to having the trait of being under-the-surface competitive, it’s something I’m certainly glad I inherited from someone.

But when it comes to picking up a new skill? You know, like pottery? Well, that’s when it starts to rear its ugly head. When it begins to turn me into my own worst enemy. I became embarrassed when I got isolated as the only person who hadn’t finished anything yet. Bowls, vases, cups, jewelry trays — how did all these beginners figure all this out? Why was I letting the perfectionist in me come out when I had only been to one single previous pottery class? I went in with low standards, but I’m competitive enough to at least assume I’ll be better than most at something — especially when it’s something creative-driven. When I finally put my vase next to everyone else’s work, I’ll admit that I liked my piece the most. But I think that’s a natural reaction whenever you create something — of course you think it’s the best when it had nothing to do with anyone but yourself.

Is pottery the perfect hobby these days? Honestly, maybe. It requires no phone, the equipment is reasonably priced, there are studios everywhere — and the best part, there aren’t really any right or wrong answers. As a student, I always hated when our art classes would pivot to pottery. Partially because I hated anything that wasn’t pencil drawing, but also because I just simply wasn’t good at it. But that was the entire point — to learn a tangible skill that not everyone can do. When you’ve got your competitive juices flowing, you simply want to ditch what you’re bad at and stick with what you’re good at. Pottery, fly fishing, meditation — these are all hobbies I’ve attempted to pick up in the last few years. One has been a large failure, fly fishing. The other was something that I did consistently for months on end, meditation. And the final is one that I’m in a love-hate relationship with, pottery.

While I don’t have another class on the books any time soon, I do think the feelings I had in that class will bubble within me for a long time. Hopefully long enough that I can create something for my dad that he can put where the 2nd place plaque would’ve gone. I think he’d probably like that more anyway.

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