Making Healthy Work Boundaries | Molly Stevenson | Episode 985

Molly Stevenson | Episode 885

Molly Stevenson is a ceramicist out of Denver, Colorado. Molly studied art at The University of Colorado at Boulder. After Dabbling with clay as a kid, Molly decided to pick it up again and get back on the wheel as a pandemic hobby. Then Molly became completely obsessed with pottery. Each piece is made by hand with care. Perfection is never the goal, so each pot is unique in it’s own way. When she is not throwing pots, Molly is hanging with her cat Nacho, caring for her plants, or taking photos.

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How would you define work life balance? Healthy work life balance?

Yeah, I think a healthy work life balance is where you feel like you are doing enough work where you feel fulfilled and accomplished but not too much work to where there are deficits in the other parts of your life that bring you joy.

Had you gotten to the point where things were getting out of control and not balanced?

I think you don’t even have to think about it until you realize that you are out of balance. So before I left my full time job, I was doing my full time job for 8 hours a day, coming home and doing pottery until I went to sleep and then doing pottery on weekends. So trying to two things at once is when I realized I am not seeing my friends, I am not seeing my family, I am not going outside or exercising. And that’s when you start to be like, Okay, I don’t feel great. And I’m a super big advocate for mental health so I think it’s always good to stay in check with that and making sure you are taking care of yourself.

Some people think if they just keep working, working, working, they will get more done but do you feel like if you have better boundaries you’ll have better productivity?

Oh yeah, especially with potters. We all have days where we are on the wheel and we are just not feeling it. You are not making good work and it might coincide with a day where you are putting a lot of pressure on yourself. Like I have to get this many things done, they have to look like this. And sometimes you just have to pull back and say, Today is not going to be the day. And let’s do another task and let this go.

How do you balance the idea that you have a schedule but so does clay?

That’s a hard one. I think clay is so time sensitive. If we can we are always checking on the dryness, where the kiln is at, and all of that, so in some ways we do have to tend to schedule of clay because that’s just the medium. But you know, sometimes it’s good to double and triple wrap some pots in progress and take a few days off.

Do you set an actual work schedule?

I have a little calendar on my wall that is just dry erase markers so it can change at any time but I do like to loosely plan out my weeks and I try very hard to take Saturdays and Sundays off.

Do you have to resist perfectionism in order to keep to the schedule?

Oh yeah, I think perfectionism in itself is one of the greatest things that artists struggle with. Because art is not supposed to be perfect so how could an artist’s life or schedule be perfect.

I like the idea of healthy work boundaries. Is there room for flexibility?

I think you always have to be flexible. Unless you are the type of personality that needs super structure. I think there’s a great balance between having loose structure and then allowing things to just fluctuate. That’s another huge part of pottery, you don’t know if there’s going to be an error in the kiln or something is going to crack or any other state of the pottery so you may think you are glazing on Thursday but that may actually not happen so that’s just the reality of it. You have to write every thing with a dry erase marker and be prepared to erase and rewrite.

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