It's Gettin' Dark in Herre

So no picture show tonight as promised, but a moment to note nonetheless.
Shit meets fan tomorrow.

I will find out if my piece survived the kiln. There is mixed optimism amongst the staff. My blustering American brand of optimism has taken a temporary dip after a conversation with one of my favorite staff members. I owe the dip to my high levels of trust in his experience (despite his particularly steely brand of Dutch pragmatism that translates into a general level of negative expectations of the world) and even higher levels of fatigue.

It would be interesting to see if anyone out there has studied levels of whatever chemicals in your body send *tired* signals to the brain. Besides a clear correlation between sleeping hours vs. waking hours and the quality/content of each, every time I have to do something particularly stressful here, like stacking work on kilnshelves for firing (monday) or making these large crocheted pieces (finally! today!) it is extra exhausting. Like a power surge to every part of me which blows a few circuits. All the Europeans here emphatically tell me I'm Doing Too Much. I think you all would think nothing of my days here, really. A little exercise, 8-12 hours in the studio. None of it *feels* like too much.

Have I lost perspective?

Ok, maybe it has been a little too much these past 5 days , but I only have a week left to make everything I want to make. Stress levels are reaching peak levels, as has been expected. But I specifically took last night off and watched an episode of The Wire (thanks Jess!) and two episodes of The Office (Thanks Claypies!) -- in order to be in good form today. And today needed to be a good 14-16 hour powerhouse. We're only coming up on 10 hours (and I took one of those for a run) and I'm cooked. Again, I'll remind you that I only have one week left to finish everything.

But in addition to the incredible uncertainty of the kiln outcome, I also just found out that I may have to leave the country directly once I finish. No lecture to Basel (sorry, Reto!), no week in Berlin (sorry Stephanie, Georg, Ben, Jeremy, Merrill!), no week of meetings in Amsterdam+ Rotterdam (sorry future!) or last couple days in London (sorry Armstrongs!) See you all in 6 months during HIGH SEASON. Yeah right.

So yes, it is dark both outside and in at the moment. I suppose I am putting this all down for you, me and everyone because I still have hope that the little bit of sunlight we get here brings the best possible of outcomes for such uncertainties. Or the very least, that dinner will be tasty, the next episode of the Wire riveting, and sleep arriving shortly thereafter and staying as long as it needs to so that I'm able to relocate my good humor and blustery optimism tomorrow.

In the meantime, know any good jokes?