By Jane Woodside
Seven years ago my life could not have been more different from the way it is today.
I spent most of my waking hours in the office or in the gym and my favorite sport was shopping.
I remember going on a shopping spree shortly after making partner at the prestigious San Francisco law firm where I was privileged to practice law. A lawyer friend egged me on. "You can buy that" he said . "You're a partner at a major San Francisco law firm".
It felt great to hear that. But there was also another voice whispering to me.
It said, "What next?" I had built a good life but not a fantastic life.I decided that I deserved to spend some time on some old interests which had been back-burnered while I was concentrating on my career.
I'd always been fairly good at drawing accurately and was usually credited with having a good sense of design and color.
So when a friend asked me to join her in taking a pottery class, I readily agreed. The Sunday afternoon classes were relaxing and the teacher would let us hang around and continue to work for several hours after the three hour class was over. Before long I was arriving early and staying late. Then I switched to another class which offered longer "open studio" time.
When I met the man who I am now married to, he had to sign up for ceramics classes to see me on the weekends. Clearly I had found a passion for clay.I liked practicing law and was good at it.
I wondered if there was a way to combine my interest in art and my career in law.
No doubt my legal skills were useful to my art interest. In 1994, my husband and I decided to rent studio space (having received a kiln and potters wheel as a wedding present) and I negotiated the lease.
As a business lawyer I was also capable of determining exactly how many pots I'd have to throw to cover the studio rent, cost of firing and materials and yield some profit. I dismissed the idea of making money from my pottery as impossible and settled for considering it an expensive hobby.Still I was fanatical about the pottery.
I went to the studio almost every day. I got books and videos on forming and decorating techniques from the public library and used my bus commute time to read them. Before long my production rate had doubled, then tripled and then I had to think about marketing my pots or be crowded out of my studio. Having spent a lot of my legal career advising small businesses to have a business plan, I decided to make one for myself.
Since my pottery has an Arts and Crafts movement look about it and because I do the finishing work necessary to make quality pieces, I determined that my target market was a fairly sophisticated buyer of handmade crafts and decided to focus my efforts on high quality juried craft fairs and galleries which carried pottery of similar quality.
I realized that there was a difference between the ideal business plan and one that I could manage while practicing law.
Nonetheless I jumped in with both feet and by the end of 1996 I had gotten into several prestigious craft shows and was showing my work in two well-known galleries.
Things were going well in the law practice too. After several years of trying to build a client base I was starting to bring in some sizeable deals.
But when another lawyer in my firm said I was her "role model", managing both career and outside interests, I was genuinely shocked. I felt like I had just had the year from hell and was so stressed out I couldnąt see straight.
I had just turned 40 and still didnąt know what I wanted to be when I grew up. And then there was the biological clock. I could hardly find time to eat dinner let alone have a baby. Major life alterations were in order.Something had to go.
I shared my frustration with my husband.
I wanted a child. I wanted to keep the studio. I didn't want to give up my career‹or more like I couldn't afford to give up my career because it paid for the studio‹not to mention half the mortgage.
After several long discussions of the possibilities and impossibilities of this dilemma, we ran the numbers and figured we could afford to get through three years without any income from me.
And I decided I could live without practicing law (or shopping) but that I needed to try to be a full time potter and that we should probably get started if we were going to have a child.
Someone once said that the most important things we do in life are having children and making art. In my fantasy life I would be a successful artist and mother.It seemed like a perfect plan. I gave notice at the office and agreed to work part time for the first half of 1997 to transition my clients.
I figured it would take me two or three years to get pregnant (based on the experiences of my older mom friends) and by then I would have my business up and running.
So much for planning.
I gave birth to a beautiful baby girl two weeks after I moved out of my office.
I love my life today. I get up at 7am each morning, breast feed, change diaper and take off for the studio. My husband takes care of our daughter until 2:30 pm when he has to leave for work. I get home by 1:30 so we have a meal together and then I get to spend time with our daughter until he gets home from work. We both work on household chores when our daughter sleeps or is quietly playing but to be honest the house looks like hell a lot of the time.
My production rate keeps getting better and now sometimes the galleries come to me. I might have net income in 1997‹I'm sure I will in 1998.
Will it be enough? Will I regret giving up a fifteen year career? Only time will tell.
But at least I will have tried to live my fantasy life.
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