about
My grandpa’s answer to everything, big and small, was “no problem.”
That was the first thing he ever gave me. Friends died when I was young, no problem. My parents split, no problem. A business partner steals all of our money and destroys everything we built for years, no problem. Things kept coming at me and instead of working through any of it, I brushed it off, said I was fine, and kept moving.
Fast forward to 2023, we’re on the other side of COVID, the house I’d put every dollar of savings into was gone, I’d been to more funerals than I could count, and the relationship was over. “No problem” stopped working.
That’s when my therapist told me to get a hobby. So I took a ceramics class.
I made some really shitty mugs and bowls for a while. Then one afternoon something I was working on grew a face, and the face had an expression I recognized, a face of pure panic. WTF is this?? I kept going. Within a few months I had a storage unit full of monsters big and small. Some anxious, some sad, some scared, some that just wanted to play.
They were me. The parts that showed up every time I said “no problem”. And that’s when I realized that they’d been running the place for years. Making decisions for me. Taking my silence for permission. I had never met them, so I couldn’t even argue. But at the studio, I got to meet them, learn their names, understand their stories, and hear where they came from.
I knew the world I wanted to build, a world where we could all meet the gremlins that are running us unconsciously and turn them into friendly monsters that could be a part of our story in a much better way.
It’s starting out with clay, and who knows where we’re headed.
We are all carrying an enormous amount right now, large and small, and nobody handed us any tools. Every incentive we have says push it down, keep moving, stay in the cycle, be fine.
F that.
Face your gremlins. Play with your monsters. Get back to being a kid about it. There’s still plenty of time.
That’s Popsy Wolf. That’s the whole of it.
Brandon Kaufer
aka Popsy Wolf