I trained as a sculptor and painter in college and then spent thirty-seven years not being an artist. I kept making things anyway — knitting, spinning, dyeing, sewing, felting — while earning a living writing software, work that paid fine, but left nothing in my hands at the end of the day. In 2022 the software career ended and I found clay, and Mud. Pottery provided the haptic feedback of making things and the usefulness of a sweater, which turned out to be exactly what I'd been missing. That and the community at Mud both keep me coming back.