Le snore and le glory: I am a very late bloomer

(le snore white plate and le glorious frog plate by Gary Rith)
I just read an extraordinary article in the New Yorker about LATE BLOOMERS. We assume genius is expressed early, when in fact, a lot of innovators plod along their whole lives experimenting with creative ideas before getting anywhere. I am a plodder. I am an experimenter. So, creative innovation can come either way: your extraordinary young genius or your late bloomer.
Case in point. There is a fellow in town here who picked up clay just a couple years ago and his teapots have been featured at the Smithsonian (the biggest honor in the US for craft) and in a current exhibit here in town, my 95 dollar teaset (the piggy thing on the right of the page here!) is next to his THREE THOUSAND TWO HUNDRED DOLLAR TEAPOT which doesn't even have cups, let alone creamer and sugar.
So, I shake my head at that. I have been fiddling around OVER 25 YEARS and slowly moving down the creative road, and this guy just blazes onto the scene. It is most reassuring to know that it was true of Picasso and Cezanne---Picasso's great work came early, Cezanne's LATE. Hallelujah!
OK, these plates here are an example. I glazed the white and blue one, and said 'hmm, this is OK, but what if I experimented here, added a frog, and then a puddle of blue surrounded by GREEN?'. That is really the kind of sloooow plodding steps I take, but look what happened, look what I learned!