Baby’s first blog post

Me after packing up one of my big wholesale orders last year. Smarter than I was at 13 but still stupid enough to try to bring back blogging in 2023 and monetize my hobby.

Look out Prince Harry, I’m sharing my side of the story too

For years now, I’ve been making the New Year's resolution to write more, with the purpose of publishing or sharing what I’m writing. I have kept journals since I was 7 years old (though they’re admittedly sparse or sporadic in some years). Last weekend I cleaned out a box of old things and found my journals from roughly age 7 to 13. I thumbed through some and read others from cover to cover, amazed at how generally stupid I was at 13 but also amazed at how consistent I’ve been. I was surprised at the realization that I’ve always been writing. I know it might seem like I’m still a little stupid if I, a writing instructor, am somehow surprised to discover that I’ve always liked writing, but it’s been a struggle to figure out exactly what I want to be writing and stick to it. Some years I’ve published an essay in a zine and some years I’ve tried my hand at more academic writing, or presented something at a conference related to my work. But I’ve come to the realization that what I really want is a place to share my personal reflections, whatever those look like. I loathe typing long texts on my phone, and while sometimes instagram is a platform to share longer form written reflections, it just doesn’t work for me (or for anyone apparently since hating on instagram is an entire sub-genre of instagram posts at this point). I already have this web domain for my ceramics, and I decided that I’m going to make it a multipurpose space.  So here it is: the Punctuation Ceramics blog. I won’t make any proclamations about what kind of writing I’ll share here, because I want it to be sporadic, open, and reflective of the multiple facets of my life as a ceramicist and teacher. So I submit here, my first entry: a little review of how and why I got more serious about ceramics last year and what I learned along the way.

2022 was the first year I really threw myself into ceramics and treated it as my part-time job. It was also the first year I more intentionally married my ceramics hobby with my teaching career and my love of literature. I leaned into my author mugs, did a pop-up at a bookstore, and maybe most importantly, I began to share my ceramics side gig a little more with my teacher colleagues. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, I can back up a little and give some context. I’m an adjunct English and Writing instructor at a community college in Portland. I’ve taught for 12 years, and despite applying for countless full time positions, I’ve remained an adjunct. This is in line with national statistics which show a steady decline in full time faculty positions and an increased reliance on adjunct labor in higher education. At the institution where I teach, these ratios are especially grim, with over 70% of all classes being taught by adjunct faculty. So for the past 5 years, I’ve supplemented my part-time teaching work with other part-time work for the college. Notably, I started a Reading and Writing tutoring center with my friend and colleague in 2016. Over the past two years, however,  the job changed drastically coinciding with a campus reorganization and the pandemic shut-down. I stuck it out until Spring 2022, when I decided that it was time for me to move on. By this time, the job was actually a fairly substantial part of my income, though the large majority was still coming from teaching. Nonetheless, I decided it was now or never and I was ready to try to monetize my ceramics hobby. 

My table at the Two Rivers Bookstore winter market. I loved having the opportunity to pair my author mugs with the books that inspired them and chat with people about how my ceramic work reflects my academic work and my love of literature.

I knew I didn’t want to make ceramics my only gig; I still wanted to enjoy ceramics without the pressure to fully support myself with my art. But why not make ceramics my part-time gig? I was already spending hours a week in the studio and slowly starting to sell my work to a wider range of people. There was no question that I needed to have some additional work. Teaching as an adjunct wasn’t enough, and if I left the Reading and Writing Center job, I had to replace it one way or another. So I made the leap. I quit the Reading and Writing Center gig and threw myself into ceramics. I bought this web domain, started applying to markets, and began telling my colleagues that I was leaving the tutoring coordinator job to pursue my ceramics business. While I have many gripes about working in higher education and the institution as a whole, I can hardly believe how lucky I am to have so many colleagues whom I adore and deeply connect with. One colleague ordered a punctuation mug from me during the zoom meeting when I shared that I was leaving the coordinator job to pursue ceramics. My teacher friends made huge donations to the mug raffle in August, helping me raise over $700 for abortion access funds. My pop-ups and markets were peppered with visits from my teacher buddies.  My three best work friends all have sets of bowls from me and send me photos of their family dinners in the dinnerware that I made.

Perhaps this is why I feel like now is the time to start a blog. Opening up about what I’m doing and why has given me the confidence to move forward with my pursuit of ceramics as my part-time job and to connect with the community I already have. This time last year, I was still working for the Reading and Writing Center at the college. As part of my job, I had taken on the project of creating a blog for the center. I had a vision of publishing monthly student writing, essays from tutors, and thoughts from teachers about writing, teaching, and their connection to the community at the college. I wrote the first entry myself, with a short reflection on the history of blogs and how a community centered writing blog could help us all reconnect to one another after the years of disconnection caused by the pandemic. In retrospect, maybe I just wanted to write my own blog all along but I didn’t yet have the vision for where it would fit into my life. So here I am a year later; I wouldn’t say I have a vision, but I always tell my students that sometimes the hardest part of writing is just getting started, so don’t be too precious about it, start something and see what comes once you get going. I’m doing just that.