January 1st, 2023 and for the first time in 12 years, I do not have to get up at 5am in the morning to check if everything will go well with the website and students for my annual big workshop event starting at 8am EST on January 1st.
January 1st, 2023, I am starting my sabbatical. I am cool, I am not bound to get up early, I am not doing the workshop for the first time in 12 years, I can sleep in AND…
I am wide awake at 5am. Weird …
You cannot just drop the ball completely, can you? How do you actually live a sabbatical …like, is there a book about how to best approach that? Make a plan? How do you grow? How do you set the lightbulb moments off?
I planned out my weeks - first still with lots of time slots for all kinds of business related tasks and with time slots to paint on the easel. Google calendar was my friend. After all, this all is geared to get me back on track as a full time artist who actually makes art. So easy - just show up and do it.
YOU MUST START PAINTING EVERY MORNING FIRST THING. NO EXCUSES!
Oh and I signed up for a 10 week long Wheel-Thrown-Pottery class on Fridays. Because I always wanted to do that and I finally had time for it.
The only thing I didn’t make excuses for was the pottery class.
I went there like clock work, I was the first one in, I attended all extra open studio times and more, and I took some additional classes around it. I wasn’t particularly good at it, but I loved doing something totally out of my wheel-house (tehehe). I enjoyed the thrill of working hard and finding delight in minor progress. My teacher, who had a very dry humor, said “Welcome to hell” to us the first day we started.
I giggled. He didn’t mean it to discourage us, he was telling us to be prepared that doing good pottery takes years of practice and skills to learn. I think we need to hear this more often. As an art teacher I can tell you that a lot of adult people have very weird expectations on what happens when they take an art class.
Tell it how it is man, don’t sugar coat, it doesn’t matter to me, I am in it.
Weirdly enough, I was in heaven! I had missed the feeling of joy when you do something completely new, when you have little aha moments, or just sheer luck. When you see the wonky ugly little mess you made, that is beautiful to you because you know that your grubby little hands just formed it and you just delight in this feeling of “I made this”.
When you are brand new to something, every step is a success, you are not yet on the road of “perfection hell” unless you really really want to go that way. But why would you? Just stay in your lane on the road to “look I can make the wheel spin and the shit is not just flinging off the wheel and hitting the fan”.
Did this bring me further to my lightbulb moment during sabbatical year and towards figuring out what to do and how to do it next? Honestly, I don’t know yet, but it definitely got the wheel spinning.
Nat
Getting the Wheel Spinning