Here’s exactly how to cancel.

More people leave over this than every other reason combined.

There is nothing embarrassing about it, and we would much rather help you spend less here than lose you entirely. Five real options, in order of how much they save:

• Drop a level next month. Every level gets the same 29 wheels, the same four instructors in every class, the same tables and the same people. What changes is glazes, tools and shelf size. Purple to Green saves $55 a month — $660 a year — and you keep your seat. Downgrades start the following month and are arranged by text.
• Share a shelf. Any two people — friends, siblings, roommates — can take a Shared Shelf Pass and save 20% each. Couples can go further with a Shared Membership.
• Check the Heroes Discount. Teachers, military, students, seniors, healthcare workers, first responders and nonprofit staff. It costs nothing to find out.
• Pause instead. One fee of $25 to $50 depending on your level, rather than a full month, and your shelf, classes and rewards all stay exactly where they are.
• Ask about a trade. When there’s work available, Dan sometimes trades a month or two of membership for help around the studio. There’s only so much of it to go around so we can’t promise anything — but the offer is real and you only have to ask.

Then the honest answer might be a smaller membership, not none.

Two very different problems hide inside this sentence, and only one of them needs a cancellation.

If you’re paying for six classes and using two — that’s a pricing problem, not a pottery problem. Drop to a level that matches how you actually come and stop paying for classes you were never going to use. Green is four a month at $145. Text the membership manager and it starts the following month.

And your unused classes aren’t gone. They never expire while you’re a member, so they’ve quietly been stacking up this whole time. Canceling is the single thing that burns them. If you’ve got a pile banked, a pause keeps them and a cancellation doesn’t.

But if the real answer is that you don’t want to come — that’s a different thing entirely, and no discount fixes it. Cancel, with our blessing.

Being busy usually isn’t the problem. Having no fixed night is.

A membership here isn’t a schedule, it’s a standing option — no assigned night, no curriculum, nothing that expires. That freedom is the best thing about it, and it’s also exactly why it’s the first thing to fall off a full calendar. Nothing forces it.

The people who stay busy and still come almost all do the same thing: they pick one class, the same one every week, and put it in the calendar as a repeating event with an alarm on it. Monday morning at 10:30, or Thursday at 6:30. Deciding once beats deciding every single week when you’re already tired.

And if you look honestly at the next few months and there isn’t one night in there — that’s what pausing is for. It costs less than one month and holds everything in place.

This is the one we see most, and almost nobody says it out loud.

You missed a week. Then three. Then the charge landed and it felt like proof you were wasting money, and now the fastest way to stop feeling bad about it is to cancel. That isn’t quitting pottery. That’s quitting the guilt.

So let us take the guilt off the table, because it’s built on things that aren’t true. Nobody here is keeping score. Attendance isn’t tracked or policed, nothing gets scanned, and no instructor is going to ask where you’ve been. Your shelf still has your name on it. The classes you didn’t use didn’t burn — they’re banked.

All we’d ask is this: come once before you decide. One class. If you come and still want out, you’ll cancel on the 24th with real information instead of a feeling. And a fair number of people walk out of that one class having quietly forgotten they were canceling at all.

Everyone hits this wall, usually somewhere between month two and month four.

Pottery gives you a thrilling few weeks and then a long flat stretch where nothing seems to get better. It feels like proof you don’t have the knack. It’s a stage — and it’s the exact stage most people quit at, which is precisely why so few people are good at this.

The fix is almost always smaller than you think, and it’s this: ask. Four instructors are on the floor in every class and they teach one on one rather than lecturing. Ask one to watch you throw for a few minutes. Then ask a different one — a second pair of eyes catches what the first pair stopped noticing. Dan is often in the studio and is happy to take a look too.

And if it’s the wheel specifically that’s beating you: around 80% of people arrive here for the wheel, and most of them end up in love with the other side of the studio instead. Hand-building, sculpting, 248 slab molds. Switching isn’t giving up. It’s what most of the best work here is made of.

Running out of ideas is not the same as being finished.

There’s no curriculum here, which is the best thing about the place right up until the day you sit down and can’t think of a single thing to make. Then all that freedom is the problem.

Things that reliably break it: pick a specific person and make something for them, with a date attached. Work through the slab molds for a few weeks instead of the wheel. Open the Glaze Bible, pick one glaze you’ve never touched, and build a piece around it. Make the same form five times in a row and watch it quietly get good. Enter whatever contest is running.

Or say four words to an instructor: what should I try next? They will have ten answers and one of them will irritate you enough to go and prove them wrong.

You came for the pottery and hoped for the people, and the people haven’t happened yet.

It doesn’t happen automatically, and it isn’t a personal failing. There are actual numbers on this: researchers put it at roughly 50 hours together to turn an acquaintance into a casual friend, about 90 for a real one, and 200+ for the kind you’d text at midnight. Two months of coming once a week puts you at maybe twelve. The math simply hasn’t run yet.

What shortens it, specifically: come the same night every week, so you see the same faces instead of a new room each time. Sit at the big hand-building tables rather than at a wheel facing a wall — that’s where the conversation is. And tell an instructor you’re trying to meet people. They know everybody in the room and they will put you somewhere good.

One thing worth hearing before you go: for a lot of our members, this is the hangout. It isn’t a waiting room for a friendship that happens somewhere else later.

Please don’t make a permanent decision in the middle of a hard month.

A move, a baby, a new job, a diagnosis, a death, somebody who suddenly needs looking after. When that lands, the first thing most people cut is the one thing that was just for them. It is usually the wrong thing to cut, and it’s almost always the thing they most want back six months later.

This is exactly what pausing was built for. One fee, up to three months a calendar year (two at Black Level), and your shelf, your unused classes and your rewards progress all sit there waiting. When it ends, billing resumes on its own and you do nothing at all.

Canceling is the version where you also have to clear your shelf and lose your progress in the same month you’re already underwater.

Then cancel — and we mean that warmly.

Nothing to sell you here. Just the four practical things, so nothing of yours gets lost on the way out:

• Cancel in the portal by 11:59 PM on the 24th, or you’ll be charged for one more month.
• Clear your shelf by your last class of the month.
• Pieces can be collected during class hours for two weeks after they come out of the kiln.
• Anything left behind gets cleared — pottery is tossed or given to other members, and clay, aprons and tools become studio property.

Then go and find a studio wherever you’re landing. The genuinely hard part — walking into a room full of strangers and putting your hands in wet clay in front of them — you have already done once. The second time is nothing.

Pausing is almost always the better tool than canceling here.

We’re not going to pretend to know your situation. What we can tell you is the mechanics: a pause holds everything in place while you deal with it, and canceling means clearing your shelf now and starting again from zero later.

One thing worth knowing if it’s a physical limit rather than a time one. Clay is not only the wheel. Hand-building, the slab molds and glazing all happen sitting at a table, at whatever pace you have that day, with people around you. Some of the best work in this studio has been made by members during a stretch when they couldn’t do much else.

And if what you’re facing needs months rather than weeks, cancel with a completely clear conscience. Nothing here is worth adding to your plate right now.

Every potter hits this. It’s a strange sort of milestone.

The cupboards are full, everyone you’re related to owns a mug, and making another bowl has started to feel faintly ridiculous. That’s fair, and it’s more common than you’d guess.

What people do about it: give it away — handmade pottery is the best gift most people ever receive, and the holidays are always nearer than you think. Make things that get used up rather than things that sit: planters, serving dishes, bowls for the neighbors, replacements for whatever breaks. Or stop making more and start making harder — one ambitious piece over three weeks instead of six quick ones. That’s usually where the biggest jump in skill has been hiding.

And if you’ve plateaued on storage rather than on pottery, pausing for a couple of months while you work through the backlog is a far smaller decision than canceling.

Please tell us before you go.

If you’re leaving because of how someone here made you feel — another member or one of our own team — that is the reason on this list we’d most want the chance to put right, and the one we’re least likely to ever find out about on our own.

Text us at 385-241-5528 and we’ll help you sort it out. If it’s too sensitive to put in a text, ask for the general manager or for Dan and talk to either of them one on one instead. That conversation stays where you put it.

And so you know this isn’t just something nice to say: we have removed members over how they behaved before, and we would do it again. This is a room full of adults being watched while they’re bad at something new. Protecting that is basically the whole job.

Then cancel — and thank you for actually trying it.

Most people never do the thing. They watch the videos, they say “I’ve always wanted to try that,” and that’s where it stops forever. You showed up, got your hands in it and found out. That’s rarer than it sounds and it counts for something on its own.

One caveat and then we’ll get out of your way. If it’s the wheel that isn’t for you, that isn’t the same as pottery not being for you. Roughly 80% of people arrive here wanting the wheel, and most of them fall for hand-building, sculpting and the slab molds instead. If you’ve honestly tried both sides of the studio, then that’s a real answer and we respect it completely.

Then what you want is a pause, and it is a genuinely different thing.

A pause is one fee — $25 Green, $30 Yellow, $35 Purple, $50 Black — for up to three months a calendar year, or two at Black Level. You keep your shelf and everything on it, your unused classes, your rewards progress and your spot in the studio. When it ends, billing resumes on its own and you do nothing.

Canceling is the version where the shelf gets cleared, the pottery on it is tossed or given away, your rewards go back to zero and every unused class disappears.

One deadline detail that catches people: setting up a pause for next month has to be done by 4 PM on the 24th, which is earlier than the 11:59 PM cancel deadline. If you’re reading this late on the 24th, cancel is still open and pause isn’t — text us before you do anything permanent.

Pausing covers up to three months a year. That’s most seasons.

Snowbirds, a summer away, a long stretch of work travel, a semester somewhere else. A pause holds your shelf, your unused classes and your rewards for one flat fee and picks itself back up when you get home — no re-enrolling, nothing to remember while you’re away.

If you’re gone for longer than three months in a calendar year, or two at Black Level, pausing won’t stretch that far and canceling is the sensible answer. Come back when you’re back. The only things that don’t survive it are your shelf and your rewards progress.