Trying to keep things in perspective.
Mar. 4th, 2025 02:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gottawonderThis ongoing thing with pottery is really bothering me.
Partly because I want to make sure that I am not the problem.
I know I can be sort of...the first person to react to things? The first person to have something trigger my defense system?
I might be more likely to interpret something as being "an issue" than other people.
There might be lots of people in the pottery studio who don't care that S is running everything, or that there are ever increasing numbers of new students.
I know that by now, I also just dislike S, and that probably colors my feelings about her, and my general dissatisfaction with her running everything herself.
She asked my yesterday "what do I want". I've asked myself that question too, because I want to make sure I have a rational answer to that question.
What I want is for the studio NOT to be run entirely by one person, whether that person is S, or anyone else. I don't believe in benevolent dictatorship.
I want the whole paranoid behavior of keeping the new potters away from the longer term potters to stop.
I told her yesterday that I wanted to feel like I can talk to the other potters, and not have her jump down my throat for trying to help them. She threw up her hands and said "you're free to talk to them all you want". Really? I've felt like I've been walking on eggshells every single time I've been asked for advice from a new potter, in case it got back to S that I talked to them.
I can't help but feel, every time I think about her or what's going on at the studio, that she just wants to control everyone and everything there, and even if it's being run well, IT'S THE WRONG WAY TO DO THINGS.
So there.
I want all of this to be resolved soon, but I somehow doubt that it will. If things go WELL, this will be a slow, careful process of gently pulling back, one by one, the threads that she's used to tie us all up. To leave her in a position to be part of the studio and contribute, but to have very little actual influence.
That will take time. It will take a lot of people being willing to put in that time, and to shape the policies and create the culture that won't allow one person to do this anymore.
I'm so tired of it.
Partly because I want to make sure that I am not the problem.
I know I can be sort of...the first person to react to things? The first person to have something trigger my defense system?
I might be more likely to interpret something as being "an issue" than other people.
There might be lots of people in the pottery studio who don't care that S is running everything, or that there are ever increasing numbers of new students.
I know that by now, I also just dislike S, and that probably colors my feelings about her, and my general dissatisfaction with her running everything herself.
She asked my yesterday "what do I want". I've asked myself that question too, because I want to make sure I have a rational answer to that question.
What I want is for the studio NOT to be run entirely by one person, whether that person is S, or anyone else. I don't believe in benevolent dictatorship.
I want the whole paranoid behavior of keeping the new potters away from the longer term potters to stop.
I told her yesterday that I wanted to feel like I can talk to the other potters, and not have her jump down my throat for trying to help them. She threw up her hands and said "you're free to talk to them all you want". Really? I've felt like I've been walking on eggshells every single time I've been asked for advice from a new potter, in case it got back to S that I talked to them.
I can't help but feel, every time I think about her or what's going on at the studio, that she just wants to control everyone and everything there, and even if it's being run well, IT'S THE WRONG WAY TO DO THINGS.
So there.
I want all of this to be resolved soon, but I somehow doubt that it will. If things go WELL, this will be a slow, careful process of gently pulling back, one by one, the threads that she's used to tie us all up. To leave her in a position to be part of the studio and contribute, but to have very little actual influence.
That will take time. It will take a lot of people being willing to put in that time, and to shape the policies and create the culture that won't allow one person to do this anymore.
I'm so tired of it.
