Pottery & Anxiety
Lest you fear I missed my blog post yesterday, let me put your mind at ease and tell you I wrote in my journal instead, sitting on my apartment stoop as I waited for Amanda to pick me up. Such city living! I was going to type it up here later, but when I reread it this morning it sounded pretty whiny and pathetic, so I'm going to spare you all.
I had an off day yesterday. I woke up feeling fucked up – I remember half waking up in the middle of the night, straight up terrified of something, my heart racing in my ears and my stomach twisting. I fell back asleep, but the anxious feeling didn't really leave me all day. This week has been a bit much.
But today is another day, my cold is getting better, and I've got the morning to devote to writing – minus one client call that should be easy. And I just had a cookie for breakfast.
Yesterday I found myself trying to paint flowers on a bowl, exactly the kind of detailed, focusing, mind-quieting work that my mood needed. My friend Amanda works at a pottery studio, where she trades hours for wheel time and takes classes and just in general makes a lot of things out of clay. She had a shelf full of pots and mugs and bowls that needed painting or glazing and asked if I wanted to give it a shot. I thought I'd maybe get through 3 or 4 pieces – I got through one. But it was fun. The tricky thing about painting pottery is that the way it looks going into the kiln is not the way it's going to look coming out, so I have no idea if I picked the right colors or covered everything evenly, but I was reasonably happy with my first attempt.
In about a week we'll see how it comes out! Then I'll have to figure out what to paint next.
I've got 8 days till NaNoWriMo starts. I'm going to be honest and say I'm terrified I'm going to fail, give up, or get to the end and realize nothing I've written is worth keeping and I can't actually do it. None of this is productive thinking. So instead I'm going to go grab some goldfish crackers and start writing.
I had an off day yesterday. I woke up feeling fucked up – I remember half waking up in the middle of the night, straight up terrified of something, my heart racing in my ears and my stomach twisting. I fell back asleep, but the anxious feeling didn't really leave me all day. This week has been a bit much.
But today is another day, my cold is getting better, and I've got the morning to devote to writing – minus one client call that should be easy. And I just had a cookie for breakfast.
Yesterday I found myself trying to paint flowers on a bowl, exactly the kind of detailed, focusing, mind-quieting work that my mood needed. My friend Amanda works at a pottery studio, where she trades hours for wheel time and takes classes and just in general makes a lot of things out of clay. She had a shelf full of pots and mugs and bowls that needed painting or glazing and asked if I wanted to give it a shot. I thought I'd maybe get through 3 or 4 pieces – I got through one. But it was fun. The tricky thing about painting pottery is that the way it looks going into the kiln is not the way it's going to look coming out, so I have no idea if I picked the right colors or covered everything evenly, but I was reasonably happy with my first attempt.
To make the colors cover, you have to give everything three coats. My first go around I was being careful, meticulously bending the brush around my pencil lines. By the last I was slopping it all over the place. The nice thing about this style, though, is that it doesn't have to be super neat.
The last step was to wipe off some of the paint from the bottom so it didn't stick to the kiln. I let Amanda do that part.
In about a week we'll see how it comes out! Then I'll have to figure out what to paint next.
I've got 8 days till NaNoWriMo starts. I'm going to be honest and say I'm terrified I'm going to fail, give up, or get to the end and realize nothing I've written is worth keeping and I can't actually do it. None of this is productive thinking. So instead I'm going to go grab some goldfish crackers and start writing.