What happened to pottery class?

I've been thinking a lot lately about hobbies and identity. When you are a child, your life is consumed with extracurricular activities. When I wasn't playing with friends or whatever, I was at a million dance classes, art classes, singing lessons, acting classes, you name it. Except sports. Don't name that (I was not and will never be the athletic prototype).

So recently I have felt this longing for a piece of my childhood, or not to feel like such an adult with the weight of the world on my shoulders. I couldn't put my finger on what would make me feel better... more like "me" before I lost myself to the daily grind of working full time and spending the weekends being a foodie.

A friend of mine told me that she was signing up for a ceramics class on Monday nights, and it got my thinking how amazing that was. Amazing, yet I couldn't see the logic in me spending the money to do it. It made me sad. I took every single art class my high school had to offer. I used to sing, dance, act... the whole enchilada. What happened to that part of me? Did I lose it somewhere between studying for college finals and going to frat parties? Maybe. But I'm determined to get it back now.

In college I took two semesters of Italian and loved it. After the first week I decided I wanted to be fluent and have my future children be bilingual. But because of other scheduling conflicts I had to stop taking it. For some reason, I thought I would actually sign up for some kind of community center class or buy Rosetta Stone. Yeah, that didn't happen. Once I moved to Chicago I thought I would take these courses that meet every Saturday morning, but it was so expensive, and there was a conflict every few Saturdays for me to do that so I sort of gave up on the whole idea. Until recently. I kept realizing this void in my life, and finally stumbled across these language course podcasts. As soon as I started listening to them I felt like a different person. It was like some part of me had been trapped for four years.

But how many of us just give up these things that made us so happy for no reason at all? Maybe you played a sport in high school but "can't find a rec league." Or you used to sing all the time and perform in the musicals but haven't actually searched for a local chorus to join. Why do we freely drop these things that make us happy, that makes you you? How come our activities of choice now are not the ones that really make us happy, like going to the gym? Who says you can't do whatever you loved growing up.

I now realize that it's these little things that keep us going, that make you feel like a kid again, that make you feel that your identity doesn't have to be compromised just because you're getting older.

I don't know about you, but I'm finding an art class.