I'm not sure what I'm doing here...

January 23, 2025

... but I'm doing it anyway

As I lay in bed at night trying to fall asleep, my head is full of brilliant words and sentences that string together to form the perfect-first-I'm-back post here. Then when I come to type it out all those brilliant words have become crickets and September stuck on a loop in my head instead.

I did write something a few months ago on a train but it became more of a diary entry moaning about my job- a job which ended up being bittersweet to leave when we moved in December 2024. I wrote another thing in April last year that I planned to share, but it got weird and was a lot about gym.

I started Scratch Diaries on Substack as a place to sort of warm up to sharing again, a place where I can start from scratch. I’m not completely new to sharing my ceramics and writing, but it’s been over two years since I had a studio and made pots that I shared and sold. It feels entirely like I’m starting from scratch.

But as it turns out, to make a scratch, you gotta scratch into something.

Something that is already there. And I have my foundations. It might be a bare bones structure, but I have something to build on and scratch into, something to make a new version of.

So I’m embracing being awkward and new, a bit embarrassing, sharing ideas and connections and, eventually, new ceramics. Finding freedom in starting fresh, in a new country, as fucking frightening as it all is.

I love collecting textures. One thing I’ve done consistently over the last 10 years or so is photograph surfaces, textures and compositions that catch my eye. Things like this “collaborative collage” I spotted on a bus shelter in Camden:

Ugh, I love it. Collaborative public collage in Camden, June 2024

My husband and I moved to a new house and city this past December. Our whole space just feels beautiful and so us.

We have a second bedroom- yay study/ dry studio/ clean workshop!

We have a decent garden shed- yay ceramics studio! Now I just need to clean out the shed to set up the studio; this includes cleaning up lots of leaves piled up around the shed doors.

Today I bought a rake. I found some cash that I had hidden in my phone cover when we went out for new year’s, so I decided to treat myself to a cool expanding rake that you can make wider or narrower depending on where you need to use it. I’ve been online window shopping for rakes and dreaming about sorting out the garden for a while now, so it was about time.

With this move comes looking for a new job. I’ve made a few applications for positions that I think will be improvements on my previous jobs, i.e. ideally I won’t have to work evenings and weekends. I had a bit of a moan to my husband about this one application that required a bunch of extra writing in addition to the usual cover letter, and how I was doubting the strength of my applications. He made the point that the only way to get more confident is to keep applying for different roles, and keep making contact with organisations I’m interested in working with.

Which led me to my Word(s) of the Year:

Just do it anyway.

Do it afraid, anxious (difficult but possible), do it awkward and embarrassed, do it green. Do it unplanned, do it on the floor or the kitchen counter if you have to.

Just fucking do it anyway.

Because honestly, the world is on fire and so are we. Any day now I/you/we could be fighting for our lives… and already are. We gotta do the thing while we still can.

And for me the thing is ceramics. I really want to make cups again. Some really funky cups. And sculptures and jewellery I’ve been daydreaming about for years. I’ve spent the last two and a bit years with my head down working and saving money towards a goal. Now that we’ve reached that goal, I’m trying to give myself permission to go back to being arty me. So:

clean the shed → get a work table → unpack the studio stuff → be a ceramist

My cups won’t save the world. They won’t solve anybody’s problems. But they will bring some joy. I know this because they have in the past, and I have that to start from.