I was just sitting here — again — watching the light drain from the sky, looking out the office window. This little pottery studio across the street. Always busy, even this late. The wheel spinning, the kiln glowing. It’s… a different kind of industry, isn’t it? The kind that makes things you can hold, things with shape and weight. Unlike what I do now. Or what I did, anyway. This latest gig wrapped last week, a content refresh for a mattress company. Pillows and sleep quality. It paid the bills, barely. And now I’m back to refreshing my LinkedIn profile, staring at those empty days ahead. I remember my own studio. Not grand, just a corner of a shared space in a warehouse district, that smell of turpentine and clay dust. It was my whole world, for a time. Had a small show, sold a few pieces. Not enough, never enough. My parents, bless their hearts, they tried to be supportive, but their concern was palpable. That look they'd give you — a mix of love and sheer, unadulterated fear. "You can't eat art, sweetie." They never said it directly, not those exact words, but the subtext was always there, a thick, insistent hum. The art school loans were piling up. The health insurance, a concept I only vaguely understood, was non-existent. So I pivoted. They called it "strategic repositioning" in some seminar I took. I called it giving up. Marketing seemed… logical. A way to use what I had—the visual eye, the understanding of human impulse—but in a way that produced a PAYCHECK. A steady one, for a while. The corporate ladder. The benefits package. It was a trade-off. My soul, for a dental plan. Is that too dramatic? Probably. But it felt like it at the time. A part of me just… atrophied. Like a muscle unused. The joy, the messy, tactile joy of creation. Gone. Replaced with analytics and quarterly reports. Now, at 76, freelancing from my tiny apartment, constantly hustling for the next small contract, I look out at that pottery studio and feel this deep, hollow ache. It’s not regret, not exactly. More a sense of what might have been. A divergent path. The road not taken, as that poet put it. I have no benefits now, haven't for decades. My income is a fickle beast. The "stable salary" I chased evaporated years ago. And here I am, still looking for the next gig, still trying to prove my worth. But for what, exactly? I look at those people, hands covered in clay, making something real. And I think, did I make the right decision? Does anyone ever really know? This melancholia… it’s a constant companion these days.