Dan Pearce
Current and previous lives include: author, blogger, potter, artist, and poker player.
I know, I know… Tell you I have ADHD without telling you I have ADHD.
Some of you have been following along my journey since 2010, when my blog Single Dad Laughing first took off. Everything I’ve made, written, fired, or walked away from is somewhere on this page.
Join me at my mega pottery studio in Draper, Utah
With more than a million dollars invested into making it state of the art, and built from the ground up to be a “community first” business, I’ve built what I believe is the world’s most incredible pottery studio here in Draper, Utah.
If you’re in Utah, in-person is where it’s at. Come be part of The Clay Hole. That’s my latest, greatest, grandest adventure yet.
New member deals reset on the 1st of every month. See what’s live right now.
For better or worse, chasing my passions is the only thing that makes any sense to me at all
I’ve lived one helluva life, always chasing the next big accomplishment. But nothing means more to me than humans. For example…
- My kidMost epic kid in the world. He’s grown now, but damn was it an honor to raise that one.
- My friendsGod, we have so many fun shenanigans.
- My studio membersHundreds of them.
- My followersMillions of them.
Good, bad, happy, sad… Humans, and all the experiences that come with them, are my favorite ongoing endeavor.
Below you’ll find links to some parts of my life and journey I’m still happy to share.
There’s a lot here. Let me point you at one thing.
Two taps and I’ll send you to the single thing I’d actually hand you first.
Pick an answer above and I’ll narrow it down.
Let’s hang out online together
Some of you have been hanging out with me since 2010. Whenever you happened to find me, you’ve gotta admit we’ve had a lot of fun together. From my writing days, to my artwork and sticker business (RIP), now to pottery, and everything in between. Thanks for stickin’ with me.
BTW, I’ve got more than three million followers across all my platforms. Pick whichever one works for you. Spoiler, I post the same stuff on all of them…
A few of the viral videos I’ve shared since shifting my following to pottery
Swipe, or use the arrows.
One thing after another, in order
People ask where a certain thing went, or when a certain thing happened. Here it all is on one line, wins and faceplants together.
- 2001 – 2004I drew animals for a livingMore than 1,200 different animals on commission. Then one day I picked up a pencil and could not bring myself to draw another one. The business was good. I just had nothing left for it.
- 2010Single Dad Laughing goes off like a bottle rocketFor a lot of years I had the #2 personal blog in the world. Never could catch up to Pioneer Woman. I have made my peace with this. Mostly.
- 2011The Real Dad RulesThe first book I ever published, and still one of my favorites. A list of rules I wrote for myself when my son was born, so that single fatherhood never turned into bad fatherhood.
- 2011 – 2014I get extremely good at losing at pokerMy opponents nicknamed me Donkey Dan. I would love to tell you that was unfair. It was not. I played hyper-aggressively, had way too much fun, and donated a small fortune to strangers for three straight years.
- 2014 – 2019I got really good at poker, anywayTurns out that if you study something long enough out of pure spite, you get good at it. Five years playing professionally. The nickname stuck regardless.
- 2015I finally get tested for ADHDThey told me I could not possibly have tested higher for it. My own doctor followed that up with, and I quote, “no wonder you can’t keep a relationship!” Thanks, doc. Really. Wonderful bedside manner.
- 2015The All-Important, Well-Fed, Giant White ManMy first memoir, and what I like to call way too much information. Published the same year as the diagnosis, which in hindsight explains a great deal about the book.
- 2016 – 2017My brief, expensive career as an app developerSix apps developed. Six apps failed. That is a perfect record, technically, just pointed the wrong direction. Total loss, a quarter of a million dollars.
- 2017Just the TipAn adult coloring book, and my lowest-rated thing I may have ever made. I still maintain the poetry wrapped around each page was genuinely epic and thought-invoking. Nobody read the poetry.
- 2017 – 2021I become a body painterFour years painting on the hardest canvas there is. Rounded, bumpy, angled, and it will not hold still. Every piece washed off a few hours after I finished it, which turned out to be the part I loved most.
- 2017 – 2022I become an illustratorAlmost all of it on an iPad with an Apple Pencil, and much more for fun than for money. I still dabble from time to time, purely for the pleasure of it.
- 2019He Who Cannot Die, and Awesome Kid CouponsA novel I published so quietly that almost nobody knows it exists, and a coloring book I originally made for my kid one Christmas when money was tight. Exactly one of those two sold well. It was not the novel.
- 2020I retire the blogThree million published words and ten years in, I shut down the Single Dad Laughing servers and moved a few fan favorites over to Blogger to rest in peace forever.
- 2021My artwork and sticker businessI lost one hundred thousand dollars trying to sell stickers. Stickers. Who does that? This guy does that. RIP.
- 2021Donkey Mud Studio opensMy first pottery studio. Two small classes and a name that told you exactly how seriously I was taking myself. It ran for four solid years, right up until the day The Clay Hole opened its doors.
- 2022Dan Pearce CeramicsI started selling my own ceramics online and, in a genuine plot twist after the sticker incident, it worked. It worked well enough to pay for The Clay Hole. Every bowl I sold is basically a brick in that building.
- March 2025The Clay Hole opensTen thousand square feet in Draper, Utah. More than a million dollars invested, built from the ground up to be community first. Hundreds of members later, it has turned into a genuinely epic community, and after everything above this line, I think I finally did something really right.
- 2025My kid graduates high schoolAnd just like that, “single dad” stopped being my whole identity. I handled it with enormous grace and maturity for roughly ten minutes, then had a small and extremely well-earned mid-life crisis. He turned out epic, though. Best thing I have ever made, and I have made a lot of bowls.
- Manifestation
- 2026 – 2027A million extra dollars randomly falls in my lapJust lands there. No notes, no explanation. That was pretty cool. Thanks, universe.
- 2028 – 2029Clay Hole locations two, three and four openThree more studios open for business, with several more planned and already in the works.
- 2030The doctor was wrongFound the love of my life. Kept the relationship. Suck it, doc.
- 2035One hundred Clay HolesA hundred locations across the United States, hitting every mid-size market and a few of the big ones, plus the first tests of a smaller Clay Hole format.
- 2040Three hundred Clay HolesAll over the USA and Canada, from small population centers to massive ones. Tens of thousands of people love this place, and anywhere they go, they have somewhere to stop in, play with clay, and meet somebody new.
A life, summarized in figures that mostly embarrass me
All of my previous and current ceramic art, available for sale
I launched Dan Pearce Ceramics in 2022 to sell my own work, and it did better than I had any right to expect. It is genuinely the reason The Clay Hole exists.
I strive to create breathtaking, high-end ceramics you will never find anywhere else. I’ve never actually made two of the same of anything.
I find the absolute most joy in experimentation. Experimentation with colors, designs, and patterns, I’m always chasing that next epic look. Whether it’s decorative, ornamental, or functional, I want my ceramics to always be worth the price tag I put on them.
I launched this shop in 2022, and it is the reason The Clay Hole exists. Every piece that sold went straight into building the studio.
I spent four years as a body painter
People are always curious what that actually means, so here it is. I painted on people. For four years.
I loved it because bodies are the most challenging canvas there is. They are rounded and angled and bumpy, and they are constantly moving. Nothing sits still and nothing is flat.
I also loved having an art form that was gone a few hours after it was finished. Nothing to eternally monetize. Nothing to turn into a bigger business. You make it, you photograph it, it washes off.
And I found it incredibly powerful to desexualize nudity through art, having been born into a culture that demonized and weaponized both of those things my whole life.
These are just a few samples of the many, many body paintings I did.
I spent five years as an illustrator
Much more for fun than for money. Almost all of it drawn on my iPad with an Apple Pencil.
I still dabble in it from time to time, purely for the pleasure of it. Here are fifteen of them.
Before any of the rest of it, I drew animals
I was a professional animal artist for three years. I drew more than 1,200 different animals on commission.
Then one day I picked up a pencil and could not bring myself to draw another one. The business was good. That was never the problem. I just had nothing left for it.
Here are ten of them.
Single Dad Laughing, est. 2010
Once upon a time I wrote one of the most popular blogs in the world.
Remember when people used to read blogs? Seems like a lifetime ago. For a lot of years, I had the #2 personal blog in the world. Never could catch up to Pioneer Woman! All told, it pulled in more than a billion reads over its lifetime, which is a number I still have a hard time saying out loud.
The blog was about being a dad, yes, but really it was about all of life. Adventures in love & dating, figuring out my shit, finding my authentic path, and ridiculous collaborations with my followers. We had a lot of fun in those days.
Anyways, 3 million published words and ten years after I started it, I shut down my Single Dad Laughing servers and moved a few of the fan favorites over to Blogger to rest in peace forever.
I also wrote a few blog posts when I retired it and a few since. You can find all that here:
The ones people actually read
My ten most popular posts, in order. They open on the old blog.
01
16 Ways I Blew My Marriage
02
Memoirs of a Bullied Kid
03
I'm Christian, Unless You're Gay
04
You just broke your child. Congratulations.
05
Weird Boobs and Little Wieners
06
The disease called “Perfection”
07
One Final Blog Post & Message as Single Dad Laughing
08
Stuck Beside a Crying Woman (a Poem by Dan Pearce)
09
Looking for a Seriously Goofy Woman
10
How much did YOUR kid cost?
My books
Six of them, written across about eleven years. Tap any cover for the back-cover synopsis.
Memoir · 2015
The All-Important, Well-Fed, Giant White Man
This is my first memoir and what I like to call, “way too much information.” When I sat down to write this book, I wanted the reader to end with this giant, ooooh, that’s what this was really all about moment. Only you can decide if I pulled that off.
Back cover
The All-Important, Well-Fed, Giant White Man will make you laugh as often as it makes you squirm (in all the right ways) as I share my sidesplitting life stories, moments of incredible stupidity, colossal mistakes, and the awesome (albeit sometimes strange) lessons learned through it all.
This engaging collection of narratives shines a light on some of the most difficult and most liberating dynamics of the human experience. Odd religious mandates, betrayal, childhood bullying, a struggle to feel lovable, morbid obesity, self-harm, family and societal pressure, relationship struggles, compulsive dishonesty, dealing with infidelity. All of it led, and often in such comical ways, toward getting healthy and eventually accepting and loving myself as the overly ridiculous, always-faulted, usually-laughing human I am.
Fatherhood · 2011
The Real Dad Rules
This was the first book I ever published, and still one of my favorites. If you don’t know, my son was adopted (at birth). This was the list of rules I sat down and wrote for myself when he was born to make sure I was always his “real dad.”
Back cover
What is the difference between a dad and a real dad? A big one. This book discusses the path that real dads take, the personal strength every father has, and the poignant realities of fatherhood.
It’s full of simple, powerful, and effective parenting discussion that can be read cover to cover or pulled off the shelf for that occasional burst of motivation when it’s needed most. From a real dad’s healthy touch, to powerful labeling, to the way a man treats the women in his life, this book covers it in a way that makes sense.
It doesn’t matter where a dad starts in his journey. What matters is that he starts. With special bonus chapters dedicated to single dads and stepdads.
Novel · 2019
He Who Cannot Die (Book One)
Just before I retired my blog, I very quietly self-published this novel. I never really told anyone about it. I never really shared it. A few people have read it and it seems they enjoyed it. At the end of the day, this book was so intensely personal that I felt like the quiet way was the way I wanted to go.
Back cover
According to stories passed down in holy writings, Cain was mankind’s first murderer, cursed to wander an inhospitable Earth, unable to die. Murder doesn’t just happen, though, and stories get twisted as they are handed down through time.
Cain wasn’t actually the first to kill another. He was, however, the first human to truly love another. After slaying his brother to protect the woman he loved, he was tried and marked by the witch Tashibag, cursed never to die and to lose any woman he would ever come to love.
It is now modern-day, and Cain has only days to finally figure out how to break his curse before he must suffer the heartache of losing yet another woman that he loves.
Poker · 2022
The Poker Stop-It List
I played a lot of bad, losing poker for a while, then I learned how to dominate the game. This was the book I wrote as my farewell gift to the poker world once I decided to leave playing it professionally behind.
Back cover
The Poker Stop-It List wasn’t written by a mega pro. It was written by a fellow human who just loves (and now crushes) the game. Many years ago, the nickname my opponents gave me was “Donkey Dan.” I rightfully earned it. I was so bad at the game.
I must have read more than 50 poker books in those days, and in the end I felt there was one very important book missing. It did not matter how much I learned about the game, I was still somehow a losing player. It was only when I stopped focusing on the things I should do, and started focusing on the things I shouldn’t do, that my game really took off.
Coloring book · 2017 · NSFW
Just the Tip: Volume 1
My lowest-rated thing I may have ever made. I just wish I could have gotten people to read the ridiculous and poignant poetry that wrapped each coloring page.
Back cover
Adult coloring just reached a whole new level. All of us grown-ass adults who love coloring can do so with new purpose. We can do it with meaning.
Just the Tip Vol. 1 brings art, satire, and adult-only topics together. Laugh. Think. Agree. Disagree. It’s all good.
Coloring book · 2019
Awesome Kid Coupons
For Christmas one year, I made my kid his very own coloring book, filled with epic coupons that he could cash in whenever he wanted. It turned out so epic, I published it so that any parent who wants a copy can order one.
Back cover
Being a kid isn’t always easy, and most kids don’t have a lot of control over what happens in their day-to-day lives. But what if the room didn’t always have to be cleaned? What if bedtime didn’t always have to be at a certain time?
Awesome Kid Coupons offers your children 18 different coupons they can use in the moments they choose to use them. Each coupon has a fun and unique illustration (by me) that your kids can color before being able to use it. In the back of the book they also get three different drawing challenges.
Looking for your favorite Dan Pearce quotes from back in the day?
I pulled these quote images that others have created and shared online. Click on any quote to see it bigger or uncropped.
Goodreads, where I can’t control anything anyone says or posts about me and my writing
This is the Goodreads page where people and readers post their favorite quotes, thoughts, and comments about my writing.
If you’re in Utah, in-person is where it’s at
Good, bad, happy, sad, humans are my favorite ongoing endeavor. Come be part of The Clay Hole. That’s my latest, greatest, grandest adventure yet.