The Tuesday I Didn't Talk Myself Out Of It

November twenty-second. I want to tell you about a Tuesday three weeks ago that I almost didn't have.

I'd been walking past the community center board since September and I'd seen the open studio slots listed there, Wednesday afternoons, Thursday evenings, Tuesday nights. I know what the wheel room looks like; I've been in it. I did the six-week beginner class years ago, I made one intact bowl that I still have, and then I quietly did not return. That is the part I am leaving off the official version of events, which is that I let a whole skill lapse into background furniture and told myself I was just busy.

Three weeks ago it was a Tuesday. I had a shift in the morning, I'd eaten lunch at the kitchen table, and I had nothing pressing until Wednesday yoga. I walked past the community center on my way to the grocery store and I did not stop. Then I got to the end of the block and I turned around. I don't have a better explanation than that. I went in, I asked if there was a spot at the open wheel that evening, there was, I paid the materials fee, and I went home and came back at six-thirty with my sleeves already pushed up because I knew I was going to forget to do it once I sat down. The clay was wet and cold and the cylinder I made went sideways almost immediately and I stayed for the full two hours.

End of session. Hands in the sink. Staying was the right call.

The walk home I kept checking whether I felt proud or just relieved, and I think what I actually felt was neither. I felt like I had done a very ordinary thing in a very ordinary room that I had made complicated for no reason. The bowl from the beginner class is still on my windowsill. It collapsed in the kiln and I kept it anyway. I don't know if I'll go back next Tuesday. But the Tuesday I didn't talk myself out of it is now a fact, and that's already more than the version of the evening where I walked past and kept going.