Pottery

Things I have learned in a warm pottery studio; 

I value things that require workmanship.  Truly everything has its own energy, and something a human poured labor, love & craftsmanship into will provide more joy then something mass manufactured from a machine.  I would love knowing the farmers who made the food, inside a bowl in which I know the maker, sitting on a table in which was sanded by a hardworking hand.  A daily way to trace back and give gratitude to the source. 

Pottery makes me a more generous person.  I have never been a person who enjoys giving gifts.  I am not a material person and have always felt things have weight so I never wanted to burden people with stuff.  But while we are certainly filling our cupboards and shelves with some of my creations it became obvious very quickly that I would be giving some away.  And I have come to find that it isn't at all about the thing itself.  Whether my piece forever sits on their shelves or gets a sticker on it at a garage sale to be given to the next person, it is that care and love I am gifting.  A small gift as a way of sharing how I feel for them.  

I love the mess.  I mean lets be honest, I already knew this one.  If you did one of those word maps of my blog I am certain mess and imperfections would be big and bold.  I am constantly telling couples I want to capture what is real and imperfect and meaningful on their wedding day.  The interesting new insight pottery gave me was turning the mirror on my own business philosophy.  While I was busy telling my couples not to stress about their wedding days being perfect, I certainly was not extending that grace on my own photography work.  Walking into my wedding season I realized I was placing an unbelievably high expectation on myself to capture every wedding perfectly.   While that is good in theory (because obviously I want to give my couples the best possible photos) the problem with demanding perfection is that it closes off the opportunity to take some creative risks and continue to grow.   Picking up this new creative outlet reminded me that you have to continue to push yourself, get messy, make some mistakes, and probably make a couple things that aren't as pretty (like a coffee mug with way to small of handle!) in order to continue learning.  

I want to continue seeking things that open me up.  Simply put, the warmth this pottery studio has brought to my heart extends so much farther then the cupboard now filled with bowls.   

Centering

I don't know why I repeatedly correlate success with being able to do all the things all the time.  How I almost feel boastful as I tell people I am busy and run along to the next place, only to hit a wall 3 days later.  I have basically realized the limits of my "woman pulling it all off" is about 10 days.  After that you will find me to many days in to be pulling off the messy unshowered look, and either in tears or sleeping.  Yet for some reason I repeatedly put myself through that cycle.  Moving farther and farther from a healthy center and then crashing back in.  Then I rebuild with only the basics, the things that make me feel most alive.  I get back to a happy place, and then I begin adding on again.  

This is actually just my thoughts jotted down as I come out of another I-pushed-too-hard-and-now-I-am-spent cycle, so I can not offer a nicely buttoned resolution.   But maybe someone is nodding along thinking "I feel ya girl".  And honesty is refreshing. 

P.S.  I love the group of women, that for over a year now have helped me to continue to share little pieces and images of myself over on The Story of Me Project.  

February - Personal 10

No dinner reservations or flowers delivered to the door, we have never been ones for big plans or gift giving. Romantic gestures never correlate with a specific date on the calendar.  There were years of forgotten dating anniversaries, but I could tell you we got engaged sometime in August.  I worked on our first wedding anniversary and he will work on our second, but hopefully we will find a quiet weekend to go up to the cabin.  And maybe that makes you cringe, a relationship without surprises and big signs of affection seems absent.  But our language of small intimacies is what speaks to my heart.  

The mornings we can stay in bed laughing and chatting, him cooking me eggs and making coffee while I hang out on the kitchen floor wrapped in a blanket.   The fact that we make tacos for dinner once a week because he knows how much I love them.  And how I try my hardest to remember what can go in the recycling and to grab the re-usable bags before going to the store (even though I swear there is something wrong with my brain because I thought it would get easier over time). 

"All I can tell you is once you see the magic in the little things, you'll be fine, because magic knows exactly when that happens & it'll never leave you alone after that"  - Brian Andreas

This February's personal images from Valentines day.  A friend came over with a hand-me-down film camera and we spent the evening making grainy blurry pictures in our apartment for the sake of creating while Rich cooked up tacos and here are all these silly imperfect images that I can't get enough of.  

***I always have a "get more personal pictures/try new things" project somehow in the works.  For now it loosely seems to be a collection of 10ish photos once a month.  I created the category Personal 10 so you can see past collections (but more so its there for me as a way of being able to easily look back until one day I get all these personal images into photo books filled with little notes in the margins)