A sting I did not see coming

The Goodbye Problem Nobody Warned Me About

People I sat and talked with for months just vanish one day. No note, no goodbye, nothing. It turns out that gets to me way more than I expected it to.

By Dan Pearce, founder of The Clay Hole. This one started life as a script for a video. It got longer.

Illustration of a studio owner saying goodbye to a member holding her finished glazed pot and a set of keys in a busy pottery studio

Wanna know one of the hardest parts of running a giant pottery studio with hundreds of members?

I really should have seen this one coming. I didn’t. And if I’m being honest with you, it stings.

The people who join this place.

The people I sit and gab with night after night.

The people I start to genuinely think of as friends.

They disappear one day. Like, forever.

No goodbye. No thanks for the good times. No hey, life is happening, I’ve got to go. Nothing at all.

And I’m not talking about somebody who came twice and decided pottery wasn’t for them. I’m talking about people who were here for months and months. People I’ve had dozens of real conversations with. People I’ve shared actual human moments with, the kind you don’t get at a normal job.

They silently quit. And then they silently vanish.

It’s probably my own fault.

I built it so anybody can quit whenever they want, online, in about four clicks. No contracts. No phone call. No retention specialist trying to talk them into three more months. Nobody ever has to look me in the eye.

That might have been a crazy way to build a business. I’d do it exactly the same way again tomorrow.

Because I don’t think a single human being should ever feel trapped in a thing that stopped serving them. Not in a gym, not in a phone plan, and definitely not in a hobby that’s supposed to be the good part of somebody’s week.

Life happens. Money gets tight. People lose interest. A knee gives out. A baby shows up. I understand every bit of that.

People canceling has never once bothered me.

It’s the vanishing.

They cancel. Then they sneak in the back to clear off their shelf. Then they sneak right back out.

That’s it. That’s the whole ending.

It was never the canceling. It has never once been the canceling.

This never happened at my first studio. That place was tiny. When somebody left there were hugs and a card and the whole class making a fuss about it. It was an event.

So is this just what happens when you go big?

Do people walk in here and feel like a number? One of hundreds, interchangeable, not really seen?

Because if that’s it, that one’s on me, and I need to fix it.

I wonder sometimes whether my members have any idea how much I actually care about them as individual humans.

I mean, let’s be realistic.

Will every one of us be best friends? No. Impossible.

Will every one of us have some deep, life-altering bond? Also no. Also impossible.

But.

Can I care about every person who walks in here, as a human, on a personal level, even when there are hundreds of them?

Can every single one of them genuinely interest me?

Can I have real love and respect for somebody I’m never going to be close with?

I don’t just think that’s possible. I know it is. I do it every day and it’s the best part of the whole job.

Which is exactly why the disappearing act hits me the way it does.

It makes me feel like a vending machine instead of a person. Like I’m up on some stage with a rope in front of it, separated from all the people who have been showing up for me.

I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it. It’s hard not to take personally, and I take it personally.

I don’t know what to do with any of this except one thing.

Be better at telling people what they mean to me. Out loud. Before they go.

And then hope the connection was enough that they’ll swing by and say goodbye.

Because here’s the truth of it. A goodbye means as much to me as the showing up did in the first place. It means the time we spent actually mattered. It means I wasn’t just the guy who ran the place.

So what do you think? Should I care about this? Or should I grow thicker skin and accept that this is how it goes once the room gets big?

I’m actually asking. Come tell me.

And if you’re one of my people and you ever have to go, come find me first. That’s all I want.

I’ll be over by the wheels, covered in slip, pretending I’m not sad about it.

Dan Pearce

Founder of The Clay Hole, Fellow Human

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Dan Pearce, author, artist, and potter, at work on pottery at The Clay Hole studio in Draper, Utah

About the author

Dan Pearce

Founder of The Clay Hole · Draper, Utah

Dan Pearce is an author, artist, and the founder of The Clay Hole in Draper, Utah. Before pottery, he spent a decade as one of the most-read bloggers in the world. His blog, Single Dad Laughing, ranked #2 among personal blogs worldwide and drew more than a billion reads before he retired it in 2020. He has published six books, including the memoir The All-Important, Well-Fed, Giant White Man, and built an audience of more than three million followers. He has also worked professionally as an animal artist, illustrator, body painter, and poker player. Not in that order, and yes, all of those are real.

In 2022 he launched Dan Pearce Ceramics, known for one-of-a-kind pieces he has never once duplicated, and every sale went toward building The Clay Hole: 10,000 square feet, more than a million dollars invested, and a community of hundreds of members built from the ground up to put people first. Of everything he has made in twenty-five years of chasing creative work, he considers the community the best of it.

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