A Potter’s December: Finding Stillness in a Chaotic Season
December has a certain energy to it — and by “energy,” I mean the kind of frantic buzz you can practically hear humming through the air, like someone plugged the whole month into a faulty 90s Nintendo adapter.
Everyone is everywhere, doing everything, all at once.
The calendar becomes a Tetris challenge.
School concerts. Work wrap-ups. Fruit mince pies multiplying on benchtops like they’re trying to organise a coup.
And in the middle of all of that, there’s clay.
Clay doesn’t care that it’s December.
Clay does not acknowledge end-of-year deadlines, or your inbox, or the fact that someone in your life will absolutely say, “We should catch up before Christmas!” with the impossible expectation that the twenty remaining days should somehow stretch to fit seventeen social engagements with three hours’ notice.
Clay moves at the pace clay has always moved.
It waits.
It dries.
It cracks when you get cocky.
It slumps if the humidity has opinions.
It demands two hands, three deep breaths, and zero rush.
And strangely — beautifully — that’s what saves me in December.
When the world speeds up, clay slows me down
Not in a zen-monk-on-a-mountain way.
More like: “If I don’t centre myself, this lump will fly off the wheel and hit the dog” kind of mindfulness.
The studio becomes a pocket of stillness in a month that doesn’t quite know how to stop.
The soft rhythm of rolling slabs.
The faint scrape of a trimming tool.
The almost meditative repetition of refining edges, checking curves, smoothing joins.
Not stillness as in silence.
Stillness as in presence.
Stillness, as in remembering that being a human is more important than being a productive one.
Stillness as in allowing joy to be hand-sized, not schedule-sized.
A slower season — even when it doesn’t look slow
When I first left corporate life, I thought December in the studio would feel like a Hallmark movie — serene, snowy, full of hot drinks and soft lighting.
Instead, it looks like:
• me trying to glaze twenty pieces with exactly two clean brushes
• River Song and Wilfred staging wrestling matches beside the kiln
• the studio TARDIS somehow swallowing whole boxes of biodegradable packing peanuts
• me having very strong, very unpublishable words with a glaze that refuses to behave in humid weather
• drying racks full of pieces that absolutely did not read the memo about deadlines
But it’s slow in the ways that matter.
Slow in how I use my hands.
Slow in how I move.
Slow in how I notice things — the warm breeze through the glasshouse windows, the late afternoon sun slipping earlier each day, the calm that sneaks in when I’m not looking for it.
A gentler December for all of us
This isn’t really a post about pottery.
(Tragic, I know.)
It’s a post about finding small moments of stillness in months that try to swallow us whole.
It’s about:
• taking one deep breath before saying yes to something you don’t actually have time for
• choosing things with intention, not obligation
• remembering that enough is a complete sentence
• making pockets of quiet that don’t require candles or playlists or curated rituals
• giving yourself permission to be a soft creature in a loud month
And if you happen to find that stillness through crafting, baking, reading, gardening, walking, making, or sitting on the floor doing absolutely nothing at all?
Then you’ve found your December magic.
Wishing you a December that feels good in your bones
Whether your month is packed, peaceful, chaotic, cosy, or something in between — I hope you carve out moments that feel like exhaling.
Moments that feel like clay in your hands:
soft enough to shape, steady enough to hold you.
When the world speeds up, may you find places that let you slow down.
And may those small, steady moments carry you into the new year with more gentleness than hustle.
Until next time,
Nawsheen, your friendly homebody artist from Murrumbateman.
