The Collector#

I describe myself as a hobby collector. They mostly centre around making things, I have always been interested how things are made.

How it All Began#

The first book I ever read was an science book. I learned English watching “Mythbusters” and “How it’s made” the Discovery channel. I have almost set fire to the house on many occasions as a young child. Growing up on a farm, certainly encouraged manual labour, taking things apart and fixing them. I was quite fortunate to also have inherited bags of ’80s electronic components from my father’s youth. It also most certainly didn’t hurt to have my great-uncle as a neighbour, who used to be what the west would call a “Tool and dye” guy. He modestly, only called himself a machinist, even though he was a mechanical engineer. He, himself, grew up on the same farm I grew up on and used to tell me great stories about fixing his dad’s (my great grandfather) tractor as a young boy.

I got bored with LEGO and Mecano around the age of 5. I started taking stuff apart around the house. In an effort to keep me from braking more things, my mother got a book on Origami. This was my first great hobby, one which I still do from time to time. You can check my Instagram for some examples.

One Too Many Hobbies#

By the age of 25, I got into a habit of collecting a new hobby every few months. I watch a cool video, I get excited, I spend the couple of months hyper-focusing on that subject.

Some of my hobbies which I haven’t mentioned already include but are not limited to:

• Gardening
• Whittling
• Machining
• Chemistry
• Cooking
• Watchmaking
• Cycling
• Coffee Making
• 3D Printing
• Collecting Vintage Computers
• Motorbikes & Cars
• Lapidary
• Metal Casting
• Knife Making
• Photography

Most of these I can rationalise as contributing to essential skills for when society collapses and we have to re-built it. The truth is that being able to make anything tickles the dopamine receptors in my brain in just the right way.

The Problems#

Having too many hobbies might not seems like an issue, unless you are a financial planner, and in in of it self is not.

The problem is me. I love to hyper-focus on things. I tend to want to learn as much as possible about a new hobby as fast as possible. Get really good, really quickly. I thrive on skiing up the steepest bits of the learning curve.

I burn out.

For most of these hobbies, doing more, faster, is quite easy. Everything happens when you are doing it. If you are not doing anything, you are not getting anywhere and that is when all the momentum disappears.

Tangentially, most of these hobbies benefit (if not require) the use of technology, in particular, staring at a screen. Even my beloved Origami, still requires my iPad for looking up diagrams.

Luck#

I was in a hobby supply shop one day, and I happened to buy some pottery clay. I am not sure why, I knew it needed a kiln to turn into ceramics, something I didn’t have.

It started off like all the other hobbies. I watched some YouTube videos, hand built some pots, built my own pottery wheel, repurposed the forge as a kiln, the usual. I wasn’t very good, and I wasn’t having much fun, but it passed the time.

My friend from Portugal came to visit around this time and it so happened that they were both really into pottery. They were also really good at. So naturally, I used my time with them to leach as much wisdom as I could. In reality, we had a great time testing my home made pottery wheel.

I also found out that one of the people at work were also into pottery, and their partner was an actual ceramicist¹.

I was starting to enjoy it. It ticked all the “primordial” skills boxes, it was a nice skill to have under my belt, but it’s greatest strength had yet to show itself.

The Best Second Hobby#

And now we are getting to my favourite feature of pottery as a secondary hobby. It forces you to have patience.

Some people confuse perseverance with patience. I have perseverance for days, once I start something I can’t let it go until it’s done. This usually comes at the detriment of my health. Have you ever got so excited about something that you couldn’t sleep? Yeah, that happens a lot.

Pottery teaches you that patience is not optional. You need to wait, a lot.

Here is how making a batch of pots usually goes:

• Wait for the clay to be at the right moisture (days)
• Wedge the clay (15 min)
• Throw a few pieces (~1h)
• Wait for them to dry to leather hard (1 day)
• Trim/Turn them (~1h)
• Wait for them to dry to bone dry (a week)
• Fire them (a few hours)
• Wait to cool down (a few more hours)
• Glaze them (minutes)
• Wait for the glaze to dry (a day or so)
• Final Fire (a few more hours)
• Wait for them too cool, again (overnight usually)
• Wait for birthdays to be able to get rid of them (<1y usually)

As I hope you have noticed by now, there is a lot of waiting. And that is a really good thing. You need to stop and wait for things to happen. And there are a lot of things out of your control. You cannot baby the dry process or the firing (even if you think you are). Not to mention that at least half of all the things you try to make, end up getting recycled because they had some faults.

Being a person obsessed with efficiency, it is so incredibly cathartic to have a hobby that forces me to slow down.

One More Thing#

This might might either be very obvious or not obvious at all, but you can’t really use technology for pottery. While your hands are covered in clay, you tend to want to keep away from computers. I don’t get the feeling that I am “wasting time” not using some piece of software.

Sure, I used my electronics, machining and designing skills to build the tools that I am using, but I chose to do so. You can not only get by, but enjoy, using a pit fire and hand building.

In fact, if you are reading this, it’s very likely that you might have a particular set of skills that would be very useful for making pots. Pottery is full of fun chemistry. At the same time, you will unlock the ability to make high temperature, abrasive, electrically isolating parts for other projects.

Pottery is greatly augmented by other engineering disciplines and in turn augments many more.