Learning to be Bored

I think I’d have to take a course in how to be bored. I can’t ever remember being bored. As a kid my friends and I would ride our bikes for miles to a river, build a fort or a raft . Our big German Shepard Gage was our guardian and went everywhere we did.  We’d go skinny dipping at the quarry. I was expected home for supper and other than that I was MIA.  If you dared miss a Sunday dinner of roast beef, Yorkshire pudding and mashed potatoes  that my Dad cooked you were up Shit Creek without a paddle. Only a fool would miss that anyways.

Fact is there is too much to do for me to be bored.  Everywhere I look there is something interesting to do. Books I need to read, drawings I need to do, friends and family I need to see, things to do around The Cactus Lounge that I want to do. The studio is always calling me.

This was supposed to be the towel, bedding closet but I turned it into a place for some pots. It is sort of my Asian collection with pots from China, Japan and Korea. I like the wee tea cups to offer a friend a wee nip and the old chipped rice bowls for soup or salad.

I’ve been giving a lot of thought to work ethic lately. How is it born? How can some people just sit there bored? How could they ever run their own business? How can you run a business if you say things like “that’s not my job! In our business everything is your job. Yes, everything!

Read my million seller book. There are over 150 jobs a potter must do. If you think all a potter does is make pots you had better think twice. My Uncle Jimmie said the thing he liked to do most was make pots and that represented 10% of his time. The other 90% is all the other jobs that are not my job!.

I had my two kids prepare their resumes at age 13 and took them job hunting. You can imagine a resume of a 13 year old. They both got jobs and loved having their own money that they didn’t have to ask for. No entitlement! At Pinecroft they hired for the summer a young farm kid to do dishes and I have been stealing him to help with wood. I ask him to get something. He runs, he doesn’t saunter. I can see him anticipating what to do next. What age is he? 13!!! I hope we can hang on to this kid. Work ethic is not dead. Too many 13 year olds sleeping in and fooling with their computers all day long. There is no free lunch, Canada!