Category: General

We’ve made it over the halfway mark for the Dear Anonymous Kickstarter!

Sneak peeks of Dear Anonymous 4 AND Don’t Call Me Cupcake 3 are up for backers only…

Rather than get myself worked up in regards to zine reviews, I’m declaring this week a little bit of a break (rather than rushing and not giving the zines the proper care and time) for this week. Things will be back to normal review-wise next week, and calls for submissions will still be going up this weekend.

And I will rest, as my body seems to be telling me that I need to do, as well as clean the disaster area that is my workspace.

I meant to post this yesterday, on Wednesday, but things got away from me. As per usual of late. Haha. All of my scheduled posting has run out, and I’m scrambling a bit with everything.

Then again, I’m usually scrambling in one way or another. That’s how I usually do things. 😉

For Mini-Zine March, I decided that I’d do reviews on Wednesday as well as Thursday and Friday so I could feature as many as I could foresee myself keeping up with in a month. Now as March has ended, I’m not sure… Should I keep up with Wednesday reviews as well, or will no one really notice if I take it back to the Thursday/Friday reviews I had going before.

Maybe I’m overthinking the whole thing.

That’s a strong possibility.

Slowly but surely, I’ve sorted out a few admin-type things for my site that were bugging me.

For instance, why I couldn’t reply to a reply in the comments section. Most annoying. Or why I couldn’t like comments.

Well, well, well. We’re all sorted out now. I have some buttons below posts if you want to share anything to various platforms. I’ve enabled reply to replies (I didn’t even know I could control that – the power!), and I’ve also put the like option in for liking comments as well as posts.

I feel so accomplished today. ^_^

I went back and forth multiple times in my head about whether I should post this. I’ve always reserved weekends for other people’s stuff (save the occasional Dear Anonymous call), so it felt a little selfish – even on my own blog – to post something like this.

But reality is what it is. If there is anything I learned from Amanda Palmer’s TED Talk: The Art of Asking, it’s that it’s okay to let people in. It’s okay to ask, and it’s okay to receive.

It’s not a failure to have to ask for help.

I love zines. You know how much I love zines because I prattle on about it in practically every other post here. They are my work and my pleasure in a world that doesn’t offer a lot of work to someone who has what I call my ‘quirks’. They are a mode of expression that has never been stolen from me by depression.

I have two zines (including the long-awaited Dear Anonymous 4) ready to print as well as a couple more on the way. The thing is, I can’t print them – and won’t be able to do so anytime soon.

Things are financially very tight right now (for reasons I can explain if you care to know them), and I don’t foresee me being able to get the ink and paper I need to be able to make Dear Anonymous 4 (and other zines).

If you think you can help me out, be it with a like or share, or if you can spare some change, you can click on the image above, or you can click right here to go to the page.

I appreciate any help in any form given. If there is anything I can do for you (be it in return gesture or in general), please let me know.

I know money can be a sensitive subject. I hope none of you think less of me for asking like this.

Most of all? I hope you’re having a fantastic holiday weekend. 🙂

It still doesn’t feel like all that long ago when I decided to ‘say it loud, say it proud’ with this blog and my love of zines. Like up until that point, it was kind of an occasional side activity. Since then, I’ve been waiting. Waiting for the Black Dog to show up, and waiting to see how I’d handle it.

Too many times I have let depression mess up the things I love. When all you do in the world is produce words and art, people stop paying attention to you pretty quickly when you’re not producing words and art. In darker moments, I wonder if I could be selling more books if I could just power through. If I could have more zines produced, more cards made, more journals sewn.

But this, this blog. I’ve been both fascinated and terrified at the prospect of facing depression since I’ve really jumped into this blog.

Alas, here we are.

It’s been a while, so I didn’t really recognise the signs. For me, I was just working hard, and who wouldn’t want to escape into some gaming at night after working hard all day. That I was falling behind with comment replies and blog follow-ups… Well, more were coming in. It didn’t seem that bizarre to be falling behind in the face of more to do. I suppose what should have really alerted me was how easy it was to forget the world outside my office room. Losing yourself in your work is one thing, but losing the outside world?

This weekend I received some bad news about a friend. The doctors found cancer. It’s all about the family now, and I get that, having been ‘touched’ by cancer as they say. (I’d say ‘bombarded’ or ‘scarred’ would be a better word, but that’s another line of thought for another day.) But it broke something in me. I kept my tears to a minimum, but at home with Wanderer, I cried as much as I needed to. Said the words I needed to say for the simple act of being heard by someone. But that news made everything so much clearer about my mental state and what I’d been doing to myself to cover it up.

My black dog has come to stay for a while, and that’s okay.

There’s nothing harder for me than to have to stand back and keep my mouth shut when I want to help. But it’s been made clear to me that friends can be incredibly close, but friends are not family – and this is a family matter.

There is a light to be found, as there often is. My black dog is here, willing me to stay in bed, to stay in the land of sleep where I don’t need to think. It’s on my chest, making it hard to breathe, in and on my head, and wrapped around my shoulders.

But here I am. Writing. Self-soothing.

Go figure.

“Headless chook mode” is the term I use for when I’m feeling like I’m running around like crazy but not getting a lot done. It’s definitely a headless chook mode kind of day.

The truth of the matter is that I’ve been working hard on transitioning into making most of the content for my zines in InDesign. (InDesign luv 4ever!) But I have been falling behind in other ways.

Since I really started pursuing zines/zine-making/this site because it really makes me happy, I have made a point to follow up every like and every comment. Reply to comments, check out the sites of the people who liked my content, etc. I do the same thing on Instagram with everyone who likes/hearts/follows.

The thing is – and I am NOT complaining – those follow ups are taking up more and more of my time. It’s fantastic! But I could be transitioning better in regards to keeping up with it all. I’ve been keeping up with emails for the most part, but if there is anything else that falls into one of those categories, I’m working on it.

Side note: I’m also nearly done with Dear Anonymous 4, so if you want to get in, email those letters soon!

PS. This is going to be a big weekend for calls for submissions!

I’m partly sharing this because she is featured holding Don’t Call Me Cupcake (squee!), but it’s also a great article featuring someone who built a zine space from nothing in New Zealand.

Ultimate freedom, self-expression, and creating books about anything in the universe sums up the Featherston Zine Club, which is having its first meeting on Thursday.

The workshop creating zines – self-published pieces of work on anything you want – will be held at the Featherston Community Centre on the third Thursday of each month.

Zines, often A5 in size or smaller, date back to the 1930s and are publications of either original or appropriated texts and images, usually reproduced by photocopier.

Behind the club is Featherston resident and zine producer Sam Dew, who says the workshops aim to encourage people to feel confident to express themselves.

Read more HERE

Do you know what this is? This is the culmination of SO MUCH (yup, bold and all caps kind of ‘so much’) scanning, converting files, adjusting files, compiling files, and exporting files.

Dear Anonymous I, II, III, Don’t Call Me Cupcake, and Don’t Call Me Cupcake 2 will all soon be available in PDF form on Etsy!

I know that this can be a sticky subject for some people, given the heart and soul of zine culture is cut and paste. Physical form.

But the fact remains that I live in Australia, and a heck of a lot of people don’t. A lot of those people who don’t live in Australia can’t afford the postage involved in getting my zines on a plane and into their hands.

I want those people to still be able to check out my zines. So the cheaper option is a PDF.

I’m not quite done with everything, but I am close. I’ll announce when they’re listed at some point next week.

Woo!

Woo! I have business cards!

If there is one thing that I realised at Festival of the Photocopier, it’s that I needed business cards.

Don’t get me wrong. Love of the paper flier is true and strong, but business cards are still more popular. Completely understandable. I realised that I didn’t have one place that included all the spaces I’m active in like Twitter and Instagram as well. All the info in one place. All the zine stuff, anyway. If I had tried to include the author stuff as well, it wouldn’t have been good.

Bubbles!