“All I know is pouring rain…” – TS

So my hypergraphic season continues, I guess. Also my Swiftian season; my mid-autumnal stretching out of the wet clay season; my outdoor painting procrastination season; my Why In The Actual Fuck Does This Text Not Export With Styles Intact But Too Lazy To Go Figure It Out season.

Like seemingly every conversation I wade into, I over killed that ‘season’ riff about two things too many, didn’t I? It’s like I literally can’t help myself.

See? Here’s another one: “It’s like, a simile. Get it?”

Thinking about people I like and admire, whom I’ve known for years or maybe even decades now, but where somehow I never managed to bring them around to wanting a stack of my plates in their cupboard, or one of my mugs in their hand first thing every morning. The self-aggrandizing, juvenile view of that is that there’s something wrong with them; that they can’t see the beauty and superiority of what I’m doing enough to value it as I do, and as I want them to. Lately, I’ve been flipping the telescope around and looking at this from the correct end: if they’re not jonesing to come buy one of my mugs, then that’s on me.

Yeah, yeah, I know what you’re going to say. People are people, no accounting for tastes, buying is not the same as valuing or appreciating, everyone has their reasons. And you are right; it can be two things.

Somehow, I have not sufficiently made the case that this is something worth doing, an object worth having, a — dare I say — relationship with me that they’re missing out on. “Oh, and this is Scott. He’s my potter.”

Where is that disconnect? Where have I failed? One too many mediocre pots squeezed though the kilns when I was just desperate for item count on the shelves, that made their way into these people’s homes and didn’t make an impact? A story I told that I shouldn’t have, or at the wrong time, or in the wrong way; or a story I didn’t tell and left an opportunity to connect on the table? A question answered badly, with ego or unwitting condescension? A question that was never asked because of some look on my face?

Or just the fact that I ask for Blue State city prices in the Red State countryside?

Most likely, it’s some of all the above, plus dozens of other factors that have nothing to do with me or my wares, plus dozens of other factors that are 100% my fault, but which I’ll never be able to see through my haze of defense mechanisms, bias, ignorance, self doubt and simple, animal greed.

It’s six thirty am on a Saturday. It’s not raining; everything has changed. I’m tired, but I will breathe out some porcelain pots today; or do my best; gods willing and the creek don’t rise.