Crappy Week

I should probably explain what I meant by saying I was having a “crappy week.” See, I’m a worrier. I’m always worrying. And right now at work we’re leading up to our annual sale, which happens to be when we do most of our business for the year. It’s really, really important that the sale is successful. I also want the sale to be successful on our website, since that’s my particular baby and I want to justify all the effort I put into it. So all this sale preparation is stressful at the best of times… and then you add in the fact that we’re extremely low on staff this year. I love the staff that I do have; I think they’re all awesome at what they do. But I don’t want to kill every bit of enthusiasm they have for their jobs by piling on too many hours and too much stress. And then there’s the bigger issue of reliability… *sigh* Because just because a person is good at their job, doesn’t mean they always turn up. So for all of these reasons, I worry. And everybody else tells me not to worry, and that makes me worry even more. I mean, somebody should be worrying, right?

Anyway, I trudged off to my ceramics class last night in the hopes that sticking my hands in some clay might bring some Zen balance to my head. Surprisingly, for a while it did! I made a nice, big thick bowl and then my first reasonably successful straight sided pot. We also learned how to “turn” our work from the week before, which basically consists of spinning it on the wheel like a lathe and carving off bits with a wire tool. (Mine were a little too wet still so I’m saving them til next week.) Then I tried to throw one final pot, but the worries were starting to creep back in. And you know what? It’s impossible to center a pot when you’re not centered yourself. In the end, I scrapped it. I guess knowing when to quit brings a kind of balance too…