Owning a business can be dizzying. When you're in the zone, feeling the flow of both creativity and streams of wonderful customers is indescribable. Then business slows or life catches up with me and my motivation wanes. My designs seem to become less about what I am connecting to and more about what will appeal to most people or require less of me. That's not what I want to be putting out there. I want to feel inspired, and for the love of my work, the emotions being integrated in to the furniture and canvas art to permeate their surface and envelope whomever is taking it in.
So I started a pottery class - in hopes that a new art form would stimulate my current ones. But I was too distracted - I couldn't get my head in to it and my pottery was reflecting that.
Then, I call it my 2 am idea, I had the vision of offering a raffle to sell a piece of furniture - a minimal dollar amount for a chance to win a one of a kind piece. It was such a fun experience I rolled it in to a second one that was just as amazing.
Within days of a successful second raffle I returned to my pottery class and was centering my clay easily, creating unusual shapes and playing with an ease I hadn't felt since I started.
It wasn't a coincidence. When my bucket is full with the terrific experiences the shop offers me daily it becomes a part of all the other things I get to do. Which I want to add to that thought- while I was sitting at the pottery wheel that is flanked by a row of street facing picture windows, I wondered to myself, how many people walking by think to themselves "I wish I was able to sit in a pottery class on a Tuesday morning." And in turn I thought to myself "I sure am fortunate to be sitting here with my hands wrapped around a beautiful piece of clay."