Dyslexia

If everyone hasn't noticed by now, I am super Dyslexic with some ADD thrown in there as well. If I had a top 10 list of things I could change about myself, this would be one of them right at number #1. I've said before that something good I think always comes out of something bad and my learning issues ring true for this as well. I'm sure if I hadn't had to prove myself so much growing up and had to work so hard I wouldn't have such a will to work so hard and push to succeed. I have no idea if I'll ever get to the place I'm reaching for but at least no-one can say that I didn't try.

There are some very successful potters who are dyslexic. Micheal Sherrill and Sylvia Granitelli to name two. I think actually there are most likely a lot of creative people who suffer from this. I guess when learning fails in a school setting you tend to be encouraged in those elective classes. My parents encouraged art with me early on because they knew I enjoyed it and possibly thought it was my best chance at a career. I did get my first degree in Interior Design. This was an art occupation that actually would allow me to provide for myself. A real job with steady money, benefits and all that and through all 4 years of undergrad, I hated it. I did do an internship in an architectural firm my senior year and just knew it was not for me. On down that line when I was a manager of a craft gallery I realise that I really enjoyed pottery and took a class. I got hooked and decided I would go back and get another undergrad and graduate degree in fine art so I could teach and be a studio potter.

Back to the dyslexia and ADD, the older I get the more I relies how differently my mind works than other people. All day long I have to remind myself to stay on one task at a time and finish it. I never realised this before about a year ago how much I jump around from project to project. This shows up a lot in my pieces I think. My work is always changing and I'm always doing new things. This has pluses and minuses. At the moment I'm trying to marry the two by staying with 5 basic surface colors and patterns but allowing myself to try new forms. Its hard to do this. Of course the dyslexia is apparent in my writing and speech. I often use the wrong words to describe something I'm trying to say. It also makes me interrupt people a lot when they are talking because I've had a thought that I need to blurt out at that moment or its gone from my thinking pattern. I've recognize a lot of these traits because I had so much tutoring growing up and read so much about the problem. Now that I'm a mom I'm quick to find signs of it in my children. Quaid I think has escaped it, which is rare for boys because they tend to inherit it more than females. The girls I'm not so sure about yet until they start school. One thing is for sure, with all that I have gone through with it and learned about trying to deal with it, I'll be able to help my kids deal with it also.