"Sounds like a lot of work," I remarked. He laughed.
"Lori, everything you do sounds like a lot of work to me," he replied.
I realized he was right. Pottery, gardening, cycling, and now blogging and home imporvement all demand a meaningful effort, and sometimes require activities that I don't especialy like, such as glaze mixing, or effort when I don't feel like it. But the satisfation outweighs the effort by tons. I am poor by most American standards; I am not conventionally ambitious; but I am by no means lazy. I love to work. Work is great. It's jobs that suck.
"Suck" is a strong work, of course. The job that I have now (the Inconvenient Part Time Office Gig, or IPTOG) is perfectly fine. It's not difficult, the pay is reasonable, the folks are pleasant, and they are quite flexible and accomodating. But just the fact of having to be where someone else expects me for great chunks of my time makes me wish I could ditch it. (There's a whole 'nother post it the guilt that comes with wishing I could quit, when so many other folks are just wishing they had a job.) But I don't, because of another random, defining thought: You get what is really important to you, whether you know it or not. That's not all you get, naturally; you also get random crap from the random-crap-generator called life. But you get what you really care about, mostly, and you can tell what that is, because it is what you prioritize. Apparently security is one of my prioritites. I can willfully change it, or I can accept it, or even embrace it; probably for now, I'll just think about it some more.
All this is a long way of saying, I don't have new pots to post, because I've been working full time at the IPTOG, filling in for co-workers vacations. But I do have bunches of thoughts, and will share them all.
I'm looking for an IPTOG and the only thing keeping me sane is the clay, which, as you say, takes a lot of time, for me recently painstakingly painting on slip. But when the pieces turn out it's all worth it.
ReplyDeleteA couple of posts back you inspired me to try some stickers. I found butterfly stickers at the dollar store and just used them and it worked great. I also plan to re-use the stickers: I let the slip dry, peeled the sticker off the piece, put it back on the paper it came on, wiped the slip off and hopefully can reuse the sticker. I never would have thought of this if I hadn't read your blog, thanks so much.
Interesting to read your posting tonight as I have been thinking about the world of work today and having some of those same thoughts, just not as well articulated. Love that quote, "It's the jobs that suck" even if the work is great - or even if it is meaningful.
ReplyDeleteHi, I put a link to your blog on my blog's most recent post about your stickers. thx again.
ReplyDelete