Last night at the mediation class I attend once a week, it suddenly occurred to me that thinking about pottery all the time is not
a good, healthy activity. I estimate that I spend about 70% of my waking thoughts on pottery: what I’m going to make, how I’m going to make it, and how to sell it. Those are the main thoughts. The follow-up thoughts can range from obsessing about how I’m going to obtain more free packing peanuts to ship my work to what I’m going to do to design a better catalogue. And on and on and on.I was noticing this because when I go to my meditation class it is really hard to stop thinking about pottery and clear my mind. Once I do manage to clear it and focus on meditating I inevitably fall asleep.
Every week I’m amazed that I have such a hard time falling asleep and staying asleep in a bed, but in meditation class I can fall asleep sitting up. The problem is that I’m chronically sleep-deprived because when I go to bed at night I’m still thinking about pottery. Who can sleep when in their mind they are on the wheel? When I was relaxing in the hot tub after class I noticed that I wanted to start thinking about pottery right away, and again I thought, “This is crazy”. It’s like, ignore everything else and just wear a groove let in your brain where you feel happy. By the time I’m 50 I’m only going to be able to squawk about clay, because I won’t know anything about anything else.I know that artists have a reputation for being weird and crazy
like this, but I don’t want to be like that. I would really like to know from everybody who read this blog—not just artists—what they think about the most and what percentage of the time they think about it. Don’t be a chicken, it’s so easy to post comments on my blog, you can even do it anonymously.
