For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to learn how to use a pottery wheel. Maybe it’s the idea of making something beautiful with my hands. Maybe it’s because it looks super cool and creative and calming. Maybe it’s because I was an ’80s baby who grew up in a cultural zeitgeist shaped by the movie Ghost.
You had to be there, I guess.
Regardless, I finally signed up for an intro to wheel class over the summer, and I’ve been taking classes since then. Before starting, I knew this endeavor would likely bring up all my perfectionist, achiever, self-critical tendencies (they’re kind of predictable that way). So I set the intention to be patient, gave myself permission to learn slowly, and encouraged myself to practice self-compassion. You know, all that good stuff.
I was feeling great! So ready to revel in the learning experience! So ready to model “trusting the process” and treating myself with kindness! So ready to be perfect at… being imperfect.
That lasted for about a week.
The first day of class, I was reassured to see pictures of Patrick Swayze posted throughout the studio, watching over us like the patron saint of pottery. This seemed like an encouraging omen.
I took a breath as the instructor started a step-by-step demo. First, I took notes… which distracted me from watching. Then I watched closely… but couldn’t retain the information. I sat down in front of my wheel… and my mind went blank. Suddenly I was unsure how I’d ever learned anything in my entire life. Did I actually know how to do anything at all?
I quickly became overwhelmed. But I did my best—trying to remember everything, trying to practice, trying to pretend I didn’t see everyone else learning more quickly and easily, and then trying to pretend that didn’t bother me.
I made a ton of mistakes, but I told myself that was okay, it was just the first class. I still had five classes left to get the hang of this—no hurry, no worries. Right?
But with every class, I progressed slightly while making the same mistakes again and again, rushing through the steps so I wouldn’t forget them while simultaneously not doing any of them correctly.
As the weeks went by, my inner achiever felt desperate to get the hang of it. I would look over at the person next to me who was cranking out piece after piece, and a feeling of urgency would rise in my throat and start speaking rather loudly in my head.
“Now is not the time to pause! Or notice!” The voice urged me. “You have to keep up. You have to get better, or at least not get worse! Stop doing things wrong! Get yourself together!”
Then I would look down at the lump of clay on my wheel, stare at it, and try to remember the next steps while one of those toy monkeys playing cymbals clashed around in my head.
My kind and patient instructor would regularly circle back around to me and repeat the same feedback over and over—reminding me to pause and check on things like hand placement, wheel speed, and clay consistency. To create structure and containment with my body while letting the clay move around me, instead of trying to control it.
“Fast wheel, slow hands,” quipped a sign by the studio doorway. But my approach to throwing clay was more accurately described as, “slow brain, fast hands, who knows what the wheel’s doing.”
At my low point, I became so frazzled when trying to trim something vaguely resembling a pot that I forgot to secure it, and the thing flew clear off the wheel and rolled across the floor. Hot tears burned in my eyes. Why was this so tough for me? And why was I nearly crying when I was supposed to be practicing self-compassion? I’m not sure which of those two things embarrassed and confused me more.
This was not the peaceful, grounding mindfulness practice I had in mind when I signed up. But it was mindfulness practice, alright.
I stumbled my way through the rest of that class and managed to make two small thingamajigs by the end of the six-week course. But I wasn’t giving up. As uncomfortable as I feel when I’m terrible at something I’m interested in, I feel even more uncomfortable with the idea of giving up on that something just because I’m terrible at it.
So I signed up for another course, hoping it would go more smoothly this time. And in some ways, it did. I remembered the basics, but my primary struggle remained—I could not create a pot on the wheel through brainpower alone. I had to anchor into my body and work the clay by feel instead of by sheer force of will.
And yet, despite the fact that I practice mindfulness, pausing, noticing, and grounding myself in every single session as a play therapist… despite how often I support kids and parents in doing the same thing… I have struggled to apply those practices to my chaotic spins on the pottery wheel.
While I was driving home after class recently, I started thinking about some what-ifs. What if making pottery had come easily to me? What if I had no problems remembering the steps, using the tools, and shaping the clay? What if I had finished each course having created an impeccable dinnerware set for a family of six and a matching dog dish—what then?
That would have been fun, sure. It would have given me a sense of accomplishment and some neat Instagram fodder and maybe even a wee bit of smugness about how quickly I’d picked it all up. And that ease and confidence is so appealing, like a cozy blanket I want to wrap around myself. Oh boy, does that feel warm and fuzzy and safe.
Alas, my pottery experience has been the opposite of that in pretty much every way. But I suppose I am being offered something rich and inviting in its own way, if I am willing to accept it. A misshapen pot, if you will, of awkward opportunities.
A chance to make mistakes. A chance to notice my anxiety about that. A chance to feel the pressure swelling up in my chest, and the urge to rush to fix things. A chance to watch myself as I rush to fix things—and probably make things worse. A chance to notice how much that frustrates and petrifies the parts of me that fear I’m only okay if I know what I’m doing and I’m doing it well. A chance to notice that I’m thinking so much about all of this that I don’t even feel the clay in my hands. A chance to feel the clay in my hands. A chance to try again. Again. Again. Again.
It would be lovely, wouldn’t it, if I could tie this up in a pretty bow by saying that by the end of the second course, I was calmly making shiny, smooth, symmetrical bowls.
But something else happened instead. I spent my last class glazing my lopsided creations while sitting across from a more experienced potter, who was working on several mugs. I genuinely admired them and told her they were beautiful, and she looked up in surprise and smiled. She told me that she’d been worrying that one of the handles was crooked.
At that moment, I was reminded that for many of us living in this capitalistic culture, perfectionism has been encouraged and rewarded since birth, and it can feel like a lifeline—to safety, to self-worth, to belonging. Maybe it takes more than a six-week pottery course, or two, to gently unearth such a deeply rooted survival strategy.
By the end of class, I was feeling tender-hearted toward my misfit pottery pieces and finding sweetness in the fact that they were truly one-of-a-kind creations—a visual timeline of my pottery-learning journey in all its wobbliness. Not because I was trying to practice self-compassion. But because I was feeling so many different emotions, and I was able to notice—and hold—them all.
And in a process where good-enough has been hard to come by, that’s good enough for me.
In the meantime, I’ll keep signing up for pottery classes. I’ll keep getting confused, embarrassed, frustrated, and impatient. I’ll take a deep breath, and I’ll try again.
But the next time I visit the studio and sit down at the wheel, I’ll also mutter a quick prayer to my guy Patrick over there at the makeshift shrine by the window, because, let’s face it, I need all the help I can get.