Making With Meaning: Finding My Way Back to Joy

After ten years of creating pottery in front of a camera, I came to a quiet but important realization: I wasn’t really a Hobby Potter anymore. In fact, five years ago I wasn’t quite sure what to call myself at all—only that I was longing for a more purposeful mission in clay.

My time on YouTube was a rare and beautiful season of becoming what I now think of as a professional beginner.

 

I learned out loud—openly, curiously, and joyfully—moving from one technique to the next for the sake of discovery itself. Every new process was an invitation to try, learn, and move forward.

And eventually, that season reached its natural end.

What I hadn’t yet done was slow down enough to be alone with the clay—to sit with one approach, one question, long enough to discover where it was truly leading me. I wasn’t on YouTube just to make videos. I wanted my clay journey to mean something.

Not because I was finished—but because I needed to find myself in the clay again.

What Happened in the Quiet

Stepping away gave me space—not just to listen to my heart and to God’s quiet direction, but to learn what I had been missing.

Before clay, I had no formal art background. I didn’t understand color theory, composition, or design. So during that season, I studied. I looked to abstract artists in other mediums, explored color relationships, practiced with underglazes, and began paying closer attention to how design itself carries meaning. It’s something I’m still refining today.

Without the pressure of an audience, I could finally focus. I wasn’t making content—I was building understanding.

Where It Led Me

What became clear was simple but transformative:

My work needed meaning—for my heart first.

I didn’t want to make just to make. I wanted what I created to carry something—encouragement, reflection, hope, and joy. Pieces meant to be used, held, gifted, and returned to again and again.

As I continued creating, I noticed a natural rhythm begin to form in my process. That rhythm eventually became the six-step Making With Meaning framework I share in the first video of this series—a way of understanding how meaning moves from the heart, through the hands, and out into the world.

That clarity reshaped how I create.
And it led me into this new series on YouTube called  Making With Meaning.

Where Joy Comes In

For the 1st month concept the guiding word/theme is  joy "Joy in the Making"

Joy, not as a fleeting feeling, but joy as something steady—something practiced, cultivated, and grown over time. It’s the reason I’m creating these pieces the way I am: so they can be shared, used, and passed along as quiet encouragement in everyday life.

In the next post, I’ll be inviting you into the studio with me—sharing the journey of the joy-centered pieces,  the process behind them, and how this word is taking form in clay.

And if there’s one thing I hope you take from this, it’s this:

It’s okay to pause.
It’s okay to shift.
It’s okay to redefine why you create.

Your journey doesn’t have to look like mine. But when your work begins with meaning—when it starts in the heart—it has a way of finding exactly where it’s meant to go.