What I'm Doing Now
(This is a now page, which I was inspired to create by the wondrous netizen Derek Sivers. Get notified for every new update through my free email newsletter)
Updated October 30th, 2026, from my pottery studio and home in rural Minnesota, with my wife Sienna and our young children: Stella (4) and Iris (2). Days are getting colder and shorter, most trees are naked.
2 Day Holiday Sale, In-Person at the Cherrico Pottery Studio in Minnesota:
- Saturday, December 5th, 10am - 4pm
- Sunday, December 6th, 10am - 4pm
We’re excited to welcome you into our studio! Here is our private pottery studio address:
Cherrico Pottery,
29055 College Ave S,
St. Joseph, MN 56374
Enjoy hundreds of brand new Mugs, Bowls, Cups, Plates & Vases. Available first-come, first-served.
Featuring:
- 300+ brand new pots
- Pottery demos
- Studio tours
Come visit our studio, tour our space, meet Sienna and me, get a great deal on a brand new pot. I’ve been creating hundreds of new pots per sale, with low, low prices on most pottery (as low as $25 for remarkably intricate mugs, cups, bowls, plates and more).
These events have been delightfully successful. Pricing lower on this day only is meant to reward people for making the effort to travel here, while saving money, time and materials on packing and shipping.
It is humbling to know that people have been driving from all over the midwest, United States to visit us for these events; Wisconsin, Iowa, Nebraska, Chicago, all across Minnesota…I am honored to know that so many of you are making the effort to come visit us. We are eternally grateful, and it has been so exciting welcoming more people into our studio.
Please come visit us, we would love to meet you.
Morning Ritual
5:55am most days I wake and groggily walk to our pottery studio 30ft. behind our home. Boiling water is started for my pottery pour-over coffee maker, then I pray. I’m not religious, but I start each day the same way, with five prayers: Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory Be, Serenity Prayer and Grace Before Meals. I was raised Catholic and went to Catholic school for about 16 years. The words are so ingrained in my memory that I can say them as a short meditation; a gratitude practice. Then, I read one page of The Daily Stoic, sometimes I journal, then I read a page of The Daily Pressfield. I’ve read this almost every morning for about 3 years straight. Highly recommend this book for anyone struggling every day to make sense of a creative life.
"The Second Mountain" by David Brooks
A "quake book" is a book that shakes up your life in profoundly positive ways. This was a quake book. I was honored to be asked to commission pottery for David Brooks, who came to our community to speak at our alma mater CSB+SJU.
He inspired me to create a goal of handcrafting thousands of Moon and Mountain Mugs with thousands of inspiring quotes.
Mental Health
Spicy comedian Jimmy Carr has a delightful 4-step-approach to mental health:
"A lot of the time, we get hardware and software mixed up. How many of our mental problems are actually physical problems?
- Get 8 hours of sleep per night.
- Exercise.
- Walk in nature every day.
- Eat real food with real nutrition.
...if you do that for a week, let me know where you are after that. It's a hardware problem."
Having Kids vs. Being a Parent
Teaching our kids to use pottery, and to make little snails with clay, has been gratifying beyond words.
Our oldest daughter started pre-school, which we walk to and from, four days per week. We walk in nature as often as we can.
Please forgive me for constantly parroting Ryan Holiday, who I’ve been a superfan of for years. His thoughts on what it takes to be a great parent exemplify the efforts my wife and I make to give our girls the healthy lives they deserve.
“There are a lot more people who have kids than there are people who are parents. People decide to make this a central part of what they do...and try to be really good at it.”
As full-time artists/potters/small business owners we create our own daily schedules. Before joining Cherrico Pottery, Sienna earned a Masters Degree in Montessori Early Childhood Education and taught at a Montessori school, in a classroom of 20 x 3-5 year old kids. Naturally, she wanted our own kids to learn the principles of Montessori foundations. Although we have sent our kids to a licensed Montessori school and also an outdoor school (outdoors even in -20 degree weather) and loved these schools, we decided to instead keep our kids home, then embrace the public school nextdoor, an easy walking distance.
With the high cost of childcare and commuting, the decision to keep our kids home until full-time public school nextdoor has resulted in golden haired cherubs running around the studio and land. Seven days per week, we balance living as artists with caring for our daughters. Sienna’s Montessori expertise shows in her natural ability to give our girls an organized, calm, loving environment.
"Mastery" by Robert Greene
It is impossible to recommend this book too often. I just started the audiobook again this October.
Rarely is there a book that gets better with every reading. I have been re-reading and/or listening to Mastery about once every 2-3 months for about 5 years now. I believe it is required reading for anyone who aspires to succeed in deep, meaningful work. A useful quote:
“Speculation is the heart and soul of human rationality; our way of connecting to reality and seeing the invisible.” ~ Robert Greene, Mastery, Chapter 5: Awaken the Dimensional Mind
Saturn and Uranus Mugs
Still in process...difficult to spend hours on a mug that requires as much time as 100 others, which actually pay our bills because they can be made relatively quickly and affordably. But I'll keep trying to create this style.
One survived the first of two kiln firings. This one mug awaits glazing and the next glaze firing. The newest planet to emerge from my kiln was the "Venus Mug" that I’ve been testing for years, unsuccessfully until May of this year. Gratitude fills my heart as almost all of the mugs sold in May. Next, I’m exploring Saturn and Uranus. Wish me luck, especially with a handle inspired by the planets’ rings.
Archery
Although I’ve shot about 10,000 arrows with my recurve bows (about 80% right handed, 20% left handed), archery took a backseat during the intense sleep deprivation of double toddlers, accompanied by business ups and downs. Perhaps writing this will help me shoot archery weekly or more, with morning coffee, on the land behind our pottery studio. Refocusing eyes to a target 20 yards down, with perfect posture and pulling (instead of pushing) muscles helps to reverse the damage to my often hunched posture that can happen with pottery and computer work.
Social Media @cherricopottery
Deleting all social media scrolling ability from my in-pocket phone has been wonderful. I literally can't scroll, which means I spend more time being present with my family, reading, asking questions to AI (I use Gemini because it is included with my pottery business gmail) and watching documentaries. Years of practicing news hygiene has also helped me be a better person and clearer thinker. I love Ryan Holiday’s idea (sorry to parrot him again!) that one of the worst ways to be an informed citizen is watching breaking news: “We are distracted by breaking news when really we should be drinking deeply from the great texts of history.”
cherricopottery.com/newsletter is the best place to get new pottery updates for free. But if you would like to follow my social media, where I still regularly post random updates, you can find me everywhere @cherricopottery and links consolidated at cherricopottery.com/about.