Adopt the pace of nature

Recently I’ve been trying to slow down.

I’ve been thinking and reminding myself of this quote I read: “Adopt the pace of nature. Her secret is patience.” When I’m sitting with my baby daughter and am tempted to jump up and grab my phone, I remind myself of this. If we’re not careful, our whole life can rush by us with to do after to do and we never get around to being the person we’ve meant to be.

With this blog idea or my instagram, it can feel like I need to always be in the mode of producing something to put out there - basically always trying to come up with something new to engage my audience. But to what end? I keep thinking about this idea that a guy in the documentary “Buy Now” on Netflix said. He worked for Adidas and he said the pace of new ideas and production was always speeding up; in an effort to please shareholders, he always had to be trying to keep people buying and growing the business. He was on this hamster wheel until he realized the devastation his industry was causing people and the planet (It’s a really good but also horrifying documentary - you should see it!). I think about this with my pottery business - what am I going after? I’m not trying to make money from it really. I really like the idea of people having and valuing my pottery for years to come. Also I like making the actual pottery of course and the connection to community pottery brings me (whether that’s talking about pottery at art fairs or being in pottery classes or, this new thing, joining the Peninsula Art League). So I’m thinking instead of producing and producing, I’ll slow down and focus on the joy it brings me. I’ll focus on the joy of sharing my pottery, sharing my pottery process, and sharing my pottery thoughts and the connections it leads to.