A few non-sequiturs before I start the real entry:
Last night I drank cheap wine out of a paper cup with Ritz crackers. Someone point me to the nearest trailer park.
Tonight at 7 PM my friend is going to the hospital to be induced and have a baby girl. Just bought a small pile of pink clothes (I love baby clothes!)
I just got licked (on the hand you filthy minded people) by a 7 week old puppy.
I don�t think I get the most use out of the semi-colon (you know, it looks like this ; ), I tend to rely on parentheses, dashes and what nots. I think I�m going to try adding some semi-colons to my life.
Now that I�ve figured out how to make bullets in HTML, I feel so hottttt.
Now to the real entry (As if those bullets weren�t enough to keep you all satisfied).
It seems whenever I am going through something emotional, one of my audits in Agoura seems to happen. I don�t know what the coincidence around this is, it just seems to happen that way, and I can trace it back at least a whole year. The drive to Agoura is about 2 hours from my house (less with no traffic). Most of the drive is just getting through LA and �the valley� traffic. And I never stress over the driving that I do on my job; driving is thinking time. Which is something I seem to need when I�m emotional. So that part is good.
Once you get through most of the valley, you hit this part that just has rolling hills. When I get to the audit, I am usually in a room that looks out on the hills. It�s very beautiful. And peaceful.
So during today�s drive, I just started thinking about the good in my life, trying to focus on the positive and not on the events of the last few days. I actually was thinking about the things that make me most proud of myself. And there�s one thing in particular that I am most proud of, because it�s something that most people cannot do. It�s actually not that huge, it�s not like I rescued people from burning buildings, found the cure to some horrible disease or developed a new world economy. But it holds great meaning to me, and I think, without having achieved it, I think there would actually be great impact in other people�s lives.
When I was in college, we had to take a practical arts class. I chose ceramics because my sister had taken it and made all this cool stuff. It looked fun. Put your hands in clay and squeeze it? Sign me up!
There�s a process to �throwing� clay. First you start with a glob of clay on the potter�s wheel. You have to get it wet so it�s more pliable. You have to keep your hands wet so they slide easily over the surface of the clay as you shape it. You have to push down on the clay with the cup of your hand until you can feel that it is centered on the wheel. If you don�t center it right at the beginning, everything you do from that point will be off-balance. I would often find it helpful to stand when centering the clay. If you are working on a large piece, I would need to use my whole upper body. It�s almost as if you are exerting your authority over the clay. As the potter, you have to take control and give the clay the best start in it�s journey.
It�s really a remarkable process when you move your hands and see the clay take shape. What was just an uneven blob, becomes first a nearly-symmetrical blob, then you form the curve of a bowl, or the straight edge of a cup. And you have to use just the right amount of water. Too much and it won�t shape, too little and it sticks to your hand.
Usually, you attach a piece of wood to the potter�s wheel and then you work the clay on the wood. That way you can just transfer the wood afterwards, rather than having to move a very fragile object. After shaping your object, let�s just call it a bowl, because the word object is so sterile, you then put it in the �green room�. The �green room� is a room with carefully controlled environment with a special humidity rate and temperature. This allows the clay to harden, but not to dry out. Before it hardens, it is very moldable. Just touching it lightly will leave a mark.
After shaping the bowl from wet clay, the bowl is not yet finished. But the detailed work cannot be done on wet clay. The clay has to dry out just enough so that you can �trim� the �foot� of the bowl and carve in any design you want. If the clay is too dry, it will break when you try to finish it. If it is still too wet, you will only ruin the shape of the bowl, instead of enhance it. At this stage, you can hold the clay in your hand. If you push on it hard, it will give, but you won�t leave marks with the normal touch of your hand.
The bowl is cut from the wood with a long wire. You do your best to center the bowl, upside down, on your wheel. You do this in small steps; placing the bowl in what you feel is the center, turning the wheel slowly with your foot and gently tracing the edge of the bowl with your finger while the wheel spins. Once you have it centered, you hold it in place with some clay. You then spin the wheel and use your tools to carve the foot into the bottom of the bowl as it spins. You also trim off any excess clay so that the bottom and edges of the bowl are all about the same thickness.
After trimming the bowl, you are ready to let it harden. The bowl is then placed in another room to dry out. At this stage, the shape of the bowl is finished; it cannot be adjusted or tweaked once it is dry. At this stage, the clay is very fragile; it breaks easily. The last step is to coat the bowl in glaze and place it in the kiln for firing. After it has been fired, the bowl becomes very strong. Dropping it on hard surfaces will break it, but it is durable for general use.
I tell you this story not to impress you with my potter skills but as a parable for life. Our personalities start out as blobs of clay. There are some characteristics inherent to the clay that cannot change, just as there are many different types of clay that produce different finished products. Some clays are very fine, like porcelain, while others are more grainy, more earthy. So we come into this world with some parts of our personalities already determined. And after that, it is up to the potter.
After I abandoned my career as an English Teacher (I was 1st a creative writing major, but then got tired of writing for someone elses deadline and putting out crap just to meet a timeline, then became just an English major, but realized that there wasn�t much you could do with that except teach and I didn�t think I wanted to be an English teacher), I changed my major to child development. When studying child development, you learn that a child�s personality is fairly malleable up until the age of 8. Prior to that, they are more prone to the influences of the outside world. They are like the wet clay. It is easy to leave your mark on them.
Early childhood is a crucial time to ensure that a child has the right influences in their life. No parent can keep all harm from a child, but the less harmful influences that a child experiences, the better it will be for the child later on. The child will learn to trust the world and go out with confidence. Too many negative experiences, and the child may learn that the world is not a place of safety. This affects the child�s confidence and personality as they develop into an adult.
After the age of 8, it is not impossible to change a person�s personality; it is just harder. It requires work. You have to catch them when the clay is still wet enough to shape, but not so hard that they break. You have to have the right tools. You have to have the knowledge and experience on how to shape the personality.
I know that I was born with bi-polar. I can see evidence of it in my childhood experience and the way I viewed events. So my clay was already grainy and full of imperfections before I was ever placed on the wheel. There are a few childhood experiences that I know left a negative mark on me. There was a molestation at the age of 2, an attempted rape at 7 and some other type of abuse that I just have glimpses of in my memories. These events shaped the clay of Janet while she was on the potter�s wheel. They left their fingerprints.
I was a very shy child. When strangers came to the door (as they did more often back then), I usually ran to the back of the house or away from the door. If we were out in public, I was the child that hid behind her mom�s legs to get away from strangers. I wasn�t particularly friendly with people I knew either. Most adults scared me a bit. I remember my mom made me start summer school before I ever even started kindergarten. She made me walk myself to school on the first day. I was so scared and upset. I came home crying 3 times but she kept sending me back out into the world. The big scary world.
One I got to know someone, they would usually like me, it just took me so long to get to know people. I would make friends but I never felt like any of them were my best friend. I had 2 friends that were together my best friends, but not one person who considered me the best of all. I just wasn�t that person. I was too shy to make that kind of connection. There were times when those early friendships made their mark in my clay too.
So I left the �green room� with my shyness intact and going strong. It had dug its roots deep into my psyche. I considered it a permanent part of me. That�s just who I am. Hi, I�m Janet, I�m shy. This trend continued throughout high school and my early adult life. In public, I usually used the �get in and get out� strategy, going about my business and hoping that no one really noticed me. I was afraid to speak up in class, afraid to draw attention to myself. Some times, I even had panic attacks at social events, as I was so overwhelmed by all the people. I mean, if you could flashback on the old Janet, you wouldn�t even recognize her as me � other than my looks, I did look like Janet. But if you just saw my soul, if my personality was a bowl on a shelf, you wouldn�t be able to connect that personality with the one I have now. You wouldn�t even think they came from the same clay.
I thought I was dry, I thought I was ready for glaze. But it turned out, that at 27, there was still work for the potter to do. I entered a stage in my life when I was �uber-religious�. Our church often had large functions in Los Angeles or closer to home. By large, I mean anywhere from 200 to 5,000 people. Now that is quite overwhelming for a shy person, and it was for me. I remember telling one of my friends, who was taking time after the lesson to talk to people, strangers even, that we needed to go because I was shy, I was overwhelmed. I remember very clearly what she said, �Janet, you don�t have to be shy, you can change it.� I seriously thought she had lost her mind.
When we would go to group events, large or small, she would tell me I had to meet X amount of strangers before we could leave. Usually it was 3 or 5, not too overwhelming of a number, but a lot for a shy person, for a socially-phobic possibly socially-retarded person. I don�t use the word retarded as an insult. I can look back and see that I had very poor social skills throughout my early adulthood, so when I use that word, I use it in the manner it was intended, not the manner that society has placed on it. Retarded in that my social skills weren�t age-appropriate, I was socially still trapped in childhood.
Through her prodding, I eventually emerged a bit. I began to meet people, to talk to strangers at these events. It never felt easy, but it felt EASIER. And even after I left that church, I continued in this path. I gained confidence, I trusted the world (well, a little bit anyway, just don�t get too close, you know?). I became a trainer, I was responsible for standing in rooms full of strangers and teaching them. I became a facilitator, leading meetings, telling directors that they are off-topic and drawing them back to the agenda. I led workshops for directors and vice-presidents. I became a Toastmaster and shared my life with people in my speeches. I made friends wherever I went. I became the girl who talks to everyone at the grocery store, the restaurant, waiting at the car wash.
It�s hard for me to picture the old Janet, she is so far removed from me now. I see her as another person. She existed, but she is not ME. The surgery only enhanced the process that began back when I was 26. As I lost weight, my confidence grew. My job today takes me out into the world on a weekly basis, where I have to interact with a variety of personalities. I have to be outgoing in this job. Shyness does not work. And I find that I like this person I have become. I like being the friendly person who chats with the checker at the supermarket.
A few weeks ago, I went in to a StarSchmucks because I had arrived at an audit early. There was a large group (about 8-10) of business men, all dressed in their fancy suits, holding a meeting at the StarSchmucks. Many of them were rather attractive. The old Janet probably would have turned around and gotten back in her car, either without her coffee, or she would have gone through the drive through. If the old Janet was really determined to have coffee, she MAY have entered the store, but would not make eye contact with anyone, she would keep her head down, she would exercise her finest �get in get out� skills. But that Janet is gone. And I�m glad. I love her, but she wasn�t working for me. That day in StarSchmucks, I walked in with my head held high. I said hi to people that made eye contact. I sought out eye contact. And when I passed that table of businessmen, instead of being ashamed, I wondered how many of them were checking me out!
When people meet me today, they cannot even fathom the person I used to be. It is impossible to imagine such a transformation. Major personality shifts, after the age of 8, take a lot of work. Major personality shifts after the age of 26 are nearly impossible. It�s like taking a bicycle and turning it in to a Ferris wheel. You may have used some of the parts, and they may be similar in that they both have a turning wheel, but you wouldn�t confuse one for the other. Just as you would not confuse a well crafted bowl, with a plate.
If the potter has done a good job, the bowl will be a work of art. I just didn�t know that the potter could make hardened clay pliable again. But he can. And if you really try, you can change your personality. You can become someone totally different. You can become someone that people are drawn to, instead of someone that repels them.
And I did that (with some help, mind you). That is my proudest achievement. And I have every right to be proud of this. I hold it up to myself today and I smile, knowing that no one can take that away from me.
