A song for the classier side of us

*

Bistro Fada - Stephane Wrembel

Allow Myself to Introduce, Myself

As with any progress we are making in life, in any domain, there is always a starting point. A point when, you technically haven’t even begun yet. Well, I  mean physically begun. Emotionally and mentally you have already started, and from what I keep hearing, that is half the battle. 

My name is Nikki (short for Nicoletta) and as of right this moment, I am a student working towards a career in Behavioural Science, with a severe focus on children who have been diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). I have obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in Neuroscience and Psychology from a prestigious Canadian university, and in a few short months —five, to be exact—I will be able to work in the field of behavioural therapy. There is just one small detail in all of this: I cannot stand it. 

I am more than halfway through my program for behavioural science, and just the thought of continuing makes me anxious, nervous, weep like a child, and ultimately terrified. I know what you’re thinking. It’s autism… working with (mostly) children. What could possibly be so terrifying?! It’s not the physical labour I am afraid of, it’s what it all means and represents. “This is what you have been working towards for almost 6 years now! Isn’t this what you wanted?” is what my logical brain says to me. Then my heart cries, “at one point, yes! Working in psychology was what I wanted!” 

I originally went into psychology to work with people who are suffering from addictions. Realizing quickly that this field would completely change my life (i.e. listening to their stories, their struggles, what they had to do for drugs/alcohol etc), I decided to work with children. Now, the mere thought of doing this everyday makes me want to jump off into the Niagara Falls. (All of a sudden, the crazy woman who did this in a barrel with her cat doesn’t sound so crazy anymore!)

To put my thoughts more simply and getting to the root of my fear (how psychologist-y of me) I can’t seem to agree with spending my life doing things that make me unhappy. Too many people do this all day everyday; and too many people don’t even notice that they are! Why would I want to keep pursuing this job? So I can show my parents and my husband that “Look! I actually completed it. Now I am eligible to get a big girl job and spend 40 hours a week miserable, like all of you!” One step further, I am suppose to be okay with this. It’s just how the world is! You gotta do what you gotta do, right? 

No, thank you. 

Another reason I fear going into this job is if I don’t stop now, when will I? I have a fear in life that one day I will wake up and be 55 years old and regret everything because I did not listen to my heart. My poor little heart is like the guy at the political rally wayy in the back that yells out “YOU GUYS ARE ALL LIARS!” Everyone hears him, faint as he is because he’s wayyy back there, agrees with him, but no one ever actually does anything about it. I always imagine myself like one of those dogs being pulled somewhere they don’t want to go. They are trying desperately, pushing their paws into the ground, but the owner keeps pulling with the leash at their necks, dragging them across the ground. I knew this was becoming a problem when I use to cry on the way to school almost every morning.  Driving down Lakeshore Boulevard in Toronto (a major street), I wanted to just put my car in park right in the middle of the lane and cry because I was so overwhelmed with this feeling of ‘what am I doing with my life’. One night my husband and I were discussing the idea of dropping out of the program. Trying to help me he started listing arguments for both sides, hoping this would make things clearer for me. Oh, was it ever clear. When he started telling me the points as to why I should stick it out for five more months, I started crying and my heart kept saying “no, no, no, no, there has to be another way…”

This whole notion of working a career that isn’t your dream job, climbing up the corporate ladder, and spending 8 hours per day doing it (not including commuting time, which if you live in a big city like I do now, can be an extra 3 hours per day) is something I can’t wrap my mind around. Here is a calculation that makes me go “wait a minute… this is what most people do without even questioning it?!” There are 24 hours in a day. On average, or at least the ideal average is that we spend 8 of those 24 sleeping. So that leaves us with 16 hours awake. Eight hours spent at work, adding to that a minimum of 2 hours commuting time (again, an average) is 10 hours spent working. This is 62% of your waking day. The last thing I want to be doing is spending my time, and therefore my life, doing something that I am not passionate about, especially something that makes me want to hide in a corner when my alarm clock goes off thinking ‘hopefully it won’t find me and I won’t have to go’. Charles Bukowski, a famous author/poet, once wrote, “people are strange: they are constantly angered by trivial things, but on a major matter, like, totally wasting their lives, they hardly seem to notice.”

How does this relate to pottery? Excellent question. About 2 months ago, I was scrolling through Groupon (for those of you that don’t know what Groupon is, it is a website that offers humungous discounts on a variety of things; anything from workout classes to sports bras to vacations in Thailand; highly recommended). I saw an offer for a one-time only pottery class that was being held very close to where I live, and it gets better: 50% off. (Note: I was actually in the middle of lecture when I saw this, only further driving my point home). My heart literally jumped. I couldn’t type in the number of my credit card fast enough. When I contacted the business owner to set up a time, I remember how bummed out I was that I had to wait 4 weeks because he was so busy. I was like a little girl finding out that the Spice Girl concert, instead of being tonight, got postponed to a month from now. Ultimately, cheesed.

Patience is a virtue I’m still working on.

You know that age-old saying “time flies when you’re having fun”? Well, the two hours that was the pottery class flashed by me at the speed of light.  I did not want it to end. My instructor was this very witty, I-have-dried-clay-all-over-my-hair-and-clothes-and-I-couldn’t-care-less type of easygoing man. It was a small class of eight people, and each one of us made a small bowl and a large platter. Just to show you how carefree this man was, when I was finished shaping my bowl, I had removed it from the center of the wheel, so it was sitting more towards the edge and by accident pressed the pedal so the wheel started spinning making my bowl fly 4 feet and splat on the ground. His response? “Now there’s a first… NOT! Thank God it didn’t hit me! *insert laughter* Here’s more clay, make another one.” 

Within two days after the pottery class, I had told pretty much the entire universe that I did a pottery class and showed them pictures of my creations. I was thrilled at this new found passion, it was like an adrenaline rush for me. My life for two brief hours was enlivened. I knew that I wanted to keep pottery in my life, but with school being so demanding/exhausting/energy-depleting, and I had to also continue working at my part-time serving job just to support myself, I had no idea when I would find the time. Hmm, lets see, I am free from midnight to 2am? Does that work for you? 

After a lot of thinking and praying (sometimes could also be classified as begging), I had the realization that my school was making me miserable, and I need to stop it as soon as possible before I send myself into a madhouse. Weeks had past and all I could think about was pottery. I was studying the terms, looking at various creations, Googling things such as “how to make a living with pottery”, and researching people who are actively throwing and made it their life. Something was telling me I had to pursue it. Remember how I said patience isn’t one of my best qualities? Yeah, well, I had to start pursuing it now. More accurately, five minutes ago. 

So here I am today, decided to take that leap of faith to pursue pottery. Going in full throttle…  pedal to the metal… full steam ahead! 

This blog is dedicated to my story. This is an unusually long article simply because it’s my first. My first block of classes are shortly approaching. I’m not going into this that naive, I know my story will include great times, hard times, and times where I will tell myself “you actually suck at this. Please, just stop while you’re ahead.” 

Ultimately, my story is a story of following your dreams. Even if they are going to make me extremely dirty and ruin my clothes, my heart will be happy and cleansed of hostility. 

Now, let us throw.