battle for my attention - ceramic art versus clean inside art and writing stuff

Folded in-between pages of other doodles, some from my doodle-a-day expulsion-of-the-fool goal, and other scribble drafts of the main project I am currently working on, I have been designing ceramic art again. These “plans” include how I’m going to fire this new series of pieces, how I want to texture the surfaces and colors for glazes I haven’t mixed up yet, much less tested. It’s sad because I’m so close to being able to start working in my first-ever very-own clay-studio and also so far away from being in there doing that.

The guilt monster is like. “If that’s what you really want to do with your time, you’d be out there in that cold damp vermin-infested rickety box doing it. Nothing would stop you if that’s really what you want/who you are, so don’t feel sad, just do the thing.”

The rational part of my brain just glares at the guilt monster with a cold dead hatred like the stare from the scuffed-dull plastic-eyes of an old stuffed-animal that has taken years of abuse. In a way this is actual, I’m in a giant fuzzy housecoat and fuzzy slipper boots with plush winter pj’s on, all black with my plastic glasses and matted curly hair that needs a wash, again. I am rather like a human stuffed in a furry costume. It’s 40 something and dropping what do I expect this far North in December, of course with climate change it’s not as cold as it should be, but dude has as it been raining. It leaks in there. I’m not budging from my fuzzy wrappings for clay today. This is the conclusion I draw, but then, I keep thinking about my layers of wool and fake-silk hiker’s underwear, In a pile under my icky-clay-sweater and work-jumper. I might go out there and drag a few 50 lb bags and boxes of clay around. Then I think about the wedging table I haven’t built yet. Damn-it, need so much heavy stuff to make ceramic art. (Just FYI, built my clay wedging table in March, 2018).

 I could set up for tiles, but things are not ready to dry a kiln load of art. They would explode just like the several kiln loads of tiles did before I started fire drying them. I don’t have fuel and time enough to waste fighting the weather to get things dry enough to not explode. I take a deep breath, turn the page and shift my focus.