HOW NOT TO LEAVE YOUR DAY JOB

My kitchen windowsill with some of the vessels I’ve been making

This time last year, I was working out my 3 month notice period after resigning from my job. Thursday 26 March 2020 was due to be my last day in the office after almost 18 years working for the same company. I was going to take the big leap, the plan was to have a month off to do all the things I never normally had the time to do - I imagined a bliss filled month with the kids at school while I met friends at cafes all over London after visiting galleries and exhibitions. Then after all that swanning around I’d knuckle down to the hard work and begin my new life as a freelancer.  But as we all know 2020 didn’t exactly go to plan... the office closed 2 weeks before I was due to leave and lockdown started. Suddenly freelancing with no clear plan didn’t seem like the most sensible idea for either me or my family, we needed some financial certainty when everything else was so uncertain. At first I just extended leaving by a couple of weeks but when it looked like things weren’t changing anytime soon, my employer asked me to withdraw my resignation... and so I carried on working and I was left feeling both disappointed that I hadn’t made the big exciting jump, but also hugely relieved that I had some security.

So now what. Well this month I’ve reduced my hours from working 4 days a week to only 3 days, and while it isn’t the big mic drop I’d imagined this time last year, it definitely feels like a move in the right direction. The last time I was working so little at my day job, my son was 2 and that was exactly 10 years ago. Since then I’ve always either worked full time or 4 days a week, but now I find myself in the dizzy position of having more hours away from my (home)desk than ever before. 

I’m going to take it one step at a time, but there are some ideas that have been bubbling away that I’m interested in exploring.  For the last 2 years I’ve been making with clay again and rekindled my love for it, so maybe that is a place to begin. I started making pots aged 16 and after doing a degree in it, I always thought I’d be a potter, but along the way I ended up on another path and only found my way back to making ceramics after I became ill and needed to find a way to slow down and restore myself. Since then I’ve been making pots most evenings on my grandma’s old kitchen table, which now sits in our freezing and ironically named sun room,  while I listen to podcasts on slowing down and starting a business. Once glazed I put the vases on our kitchen windowsill, the pots are definitely getting better and that windowsill is getting very overcrowded….I’m not sure if anyone will want to buy them yet but maybe it’s time to find out...