“A sensitive being, a creative soul” (Wordsworth)

People ask why I keep making pots and writing. Apparently, people my age don’t haul around 50 pound boxes of clay. Being retired, to me, is the chance to be creative. I have always been driven by two values: learning and creativity. The learning part is easy to explain. School was a good experience for me, and when I was ten, my father drove home my great, great Aunt Lillian’s Model T Ford. He had to take it “as is,” which meant with the back stuffed full of National Geographic magazines going back to 1918. Over time, I read them all. I pretty much just kept going to school. Creativity was hard to express in my health care career until I learned to combine it with learning, which is why I loved teaching all those years. Creativity involves being engaged, enthusiastic, imaginative, resourceful, and inventive. Being an artisan, I don’t want to know how something “should be” done; being retired means I can do it my way. I love it when the muse takes over. I love watching a chunk of clay and a few leaves turn themselves into lovely celebrations of nature!