The First Time I Felt Joy Doing This

There’s this moment in Santa Fe, right before sunset, when the sky turns this impossible shade of coral, blending into lavender with streaks of gold. It’s cinematic, like the kind of lighting you’d see in a movie where the lead character suddenly realizes what they’re meant to do with their life. I had one of those moments a few years ago, standing in my parents’ gallery, holding a truly hideous piece of pottery. But let me back up.

The Accident That Started It All

When you grow up in an art gallery, you don’t overthink the creative process. Art is just always... there. It’s the background noise to your life, like elevator music or the distant sound of traffic. My parents’ world revolved around curating and showcasing other people’s talent, and while I appreciated it, I was convinced I’d never step foot in the family business.

That is, until one summer afternoon, when eighteen-year-old me decided to help reorganize a shelf and—horror of horrors—dropped a pot worth more than my college tuition. It shattered like a bad breakup, and I thought for sure my mom would banish me to the desert. Instead, she laughed, handed me the shards, and said, “See if you can piece it back together. If not, make something else out of it.”

Looking back, it’s poetic, right? But in that moment, surrounded by the wreckage of someone’s painstakingly handmade art, it felt more like punishment.

My Awkward First Date With Creativity

I’ll be honest—I didn’t know what I was doing. I picked up the broken pieces, shuffled out to the back patio, and stared at them like they might magically reassemble themselves. (Spoiler: They didn’t.) Slowly, I started gluing and arranging, and it looked... terrible. Imagine if Picasso and a third-grader did a pottery collab—crooked edges, mismatched colors, the works. But something funny happened while I was making my glued-together monstrosity: I was having fun.

I cranked up some old flamenco guitar tracks and got lost in the rhythm of it all. The perfectionist in me—a trait I’d grown increasingly frustrated with, especially during stressful pre-college years—finally loosened its death grip. I wasn’t crafting a masterpiece for a gallery; I was just making something because it felt good.

And as the sun dipped lower, painting the horizon in those fiery desert colors, I looked at my crooked little pot and realized I felt... joy. Not the polite kind you fake at a family reunion, but the real, warm, buzzing kind.

How This Ties Into Dating (Because You Knew I’d Go There)

Here’s the thing about passion—it’s messier than we make it out to be. You don’t find it all polished and perfect, neatly arranged under good lighting. Passion is awkward. It’s like a first date where you spill salsa on your shirt while trying to impress someone. It’s fumbling for the right words, laughing too loud at their jokes, and wondering if they’re noticing your nervous knee bounce under the table.

Finding joy in life isn’t so different. I used to think happiness looked like being laser-focused on my goals and achieving them with precision. But as it turns out, missteps and cracked edges often hold the real magic. I didn’t find joy by following a TikTok-worthy morning routine or reading yet another guide on manifesting the perfect life—I found it by ruining a perfectly good pot and figuring out what to do with the mess.

What Ceramics Taught Me About Brokenness

Over the years, I kept experimenting. I eventually got better at pottery (read: fewer disaster pieces, but plenty of lopsided bowls). I even started adding my work to small exhibits in the gallery. Something unexpected happened, though: people gravitated toward the imperfections.

Once, a woman bought a tiny, wonky vase of mine and told me it reminded her of her own life—a little bumpy but still beautiful. Another time, a man said my pieces reminded him of the Japanese art of kintsugi, where broken pottery is repaired with gold, emphasizing the cracks as part of its story.

And isn’t that just like love? We all have cracks. Past relationships leave their marks, and even the strongest bonds hit rough patches. But that doesn’t make them less valuable. If anything, the messy parts tell a better story.

How to Find Joy (Even If You’re Not Gluing Things Together in the Desert)

If you’re looking for a little spark—or wondering what to do with your own figurative broken pottery—here’s what worked for me:

  1. Start Without Expectation
    Whether it’s a creative hobby, a new friendship, or a big life change, let go of the need for everything to go perfectly. Sometimes joy comes when you’re not trying so hard to find it.

  2. Embrace the Ugly Stage
    Remember how you were a hot mess in middle school? (Looking at you, braces-and-blue-eyeshadow era.) Everything good in life has an awkward phase, so why should your passions be any different? Give yourself permission to suck at something before you get better.

  3. Trust the Process
    Joy isn’t always instant gratification. You might not feel like you’re doing great right away, and that’s okay. Show up anyway—whether it’s for the hobby, the date, or the new adventure.

  4. Find Beauty in the Imperfections
    The world already has enough curated perfection on Instagram. The cracks in our pottery—or in our lives—are where the light gets in. (Yes, I just stole that from Leonard Cohen, but it’s eternally true.)

  5. Let It Be Playful
    One of my favorite things about that first disastrous glue job was how silly it all felt. Joy doesn’t have to be so serious—it can be playful, experimental, and wildly imperfect.

The Legacy of a Wonky Pot

I’ve come a long way since that first glue-it-or-dump-it afternoon. Today, my pieces look a lot more polished, but I still try to hold onto that beginner’s mindset—the one where joy leapt out of trying, not achieving.

I think of relationships in the same way. Whether you’re flirting at a rooftop bar or celebrating your fifteenth anniversary, joy comes from choosing your own version of messy, imperfect, and real. No filter required.

So if you’re reading this, standing in your metaphorical gallery of broken pieces, take a deep breath and lean in. Don’t be afraid to pick up the shards and start gluing something together. You might just find a little magic in the mess.