Pottery Fantsy - Pottery Reality

I have installed a well-equipped pottery studio in the back room of our house, which we call the "blue room." I have a wheel, a kiln (outside in a shelter), work tables, shelves, tools for working and decorating clay, engobes, glazes - the works. I have essentially quit working as a translator and editor and given up writing projects and ambitions. My main activity in life is now producing attractive, mainly useful forms. Every day I get up and work in the studio, on a variety of projects, both throwing on the wheel and hand-building. I sell the work that I make at moderate prices, and I am not aiming at producing perfect pieces - just pleasing ones.
I travel to ceramic supply shops, to the studios of other potters, to exhibitions.
I read about making pottery and experiment with techniques - gradually.
I take on projects - in order to learn - sets of things - exploring forms.

Suppose I had gotten bitten by the pottery bug back when I was in high school. Would I have been happy as a potter? That's a stupid question, of course. Stupid because I can't go back in time, and stupid because, had I been the kind of kid who was swept up into a craft like pottery, I would have been a totally different person, because I wasn't that kind of kid. So then I'm asking, would that other person have been a happy man? Or, perhaps, I'm asking: would I rather have been that kind of person?

Running (?) Again - at my age?

I swore to myself that I would keep jogging until I turned sixty, even though I was suffering from chronic tendinitis , but after I took that "last" run, I stopped. That was four years ago. I'm coming up on my sixty-fifth birthday, and every time I see somebody jogging, I feel envious. So the other day, I decided I would start jogging again, very gradually and very slowly.

Having a vigorous young dog to walk is clearly another incentive. I used to jog with our two dogs in the Peace Forest, not far from our house. I'd let them off the leash, and we'd have a good time. But one of the two dogs is dead, and the other old one is so lame she can barely walk around the block. But our new, young dog needs a lot of exercise, and so does this aging human. After only 5 jogs, I can already feel the positive effect.

The first 3 times I only jogged for 6 minutes, but yesterday I got it up to 15 minutes, and today to 20 minutes. My muscles seem to remember what it was like to run, though they are still weak. But today, when I started my slow jog, I could feel my body asking for it, telling me, where have you been? I'm trying very hard to avoid injuring myself, to avoid overdoing it. When I jogged regularly, I never tried for speed. I took the advice of that great book, Running and Being, and tried for LSD: Long Slow Distances. The only one I'm competing with is me. If I manage to keep jogging for twenty minutes three or four times a week, that will be fine.

As for the dog, he sticks close to me but takes ten steps for every one of mine, zigzagging around, smelling things, dropping back, racing to catch up, running to the side, observing.