Vlog: Let’s Talk About Depression

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sYArgtUDgU&w=560&h=315]

Hello, hello. Today I’m straying away from the usual topics to talk about depression – what’s been happening in my life, depression in general, and some rambling thoughts.

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My PO Box:

Jaime Nyx
PO Box 378
Murray Bridge, SA 5253
Australia

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You Can Find Me At:

seagreenzines@gmail.com

Sea Green Zines: https://seagreenzines.com
Link Tree: https://linktr.ee/seagreenzines

Off Topic: Silence Not So Golden

Hello, zine friends!

Wow does it feel like it’s been an age since I typed that. It’s funny how our perception of time can be so different from the reality of it.

You may or may not have noticed that I’ve been a little more quiet around here than I usually am. I wasn’t able to film the Happy Mail Monday, The Zine Collector has been delayed, I didn’t wrap up Mini-Zine March on the first – that sort of thing.

If you know me, you know I don’t like delaying things, but this was absolutely necessary.

I’ve been doing something very difficult but ultimately something that has made me a better, stronger person. By extension, I will be able to bring more to how I live my life and what I do here.

So what am I on about?

I’m just recently back home after spending two weeks doing an inpatient anxiety program in Adelaide. It’s been an incredibly difficult, enlightening, and revealing experience that has been worth it in ways that I am still processing.

As much as I wanted to share the whole experience with you all as it was happening, I realised pretty quickly that all of my energy and focus needed to be on what I was doing. Posting a few duck videos here and there on Instagram as well as usual review-day activities was about as much as I could manage – and most of that was thanks to being able to schedule posts and videos.

I want to talk more about the whole thing. The inpatient experience, what the anxiety program entailed, so on and so forth. But I’m also not sure what people actually want to know. There’s so much I can tell you about my experiences and my personal program. I don’t want anyone to feel bored or

If you do have questions, feel free to put them in the comments or message me on Tumblr if you’d rather be anonymous. I don’t promise to answer everything, but I promise to answer everything I feel I can. For what I can answer, I may also bring the questions and answers into a zine I’d like to make about the whole thing.

Thank you for your patience, regardless of whether you really noticed any absence or any other lack. I’ve always appreciated this and everything related in my life, but I have a slightly different view of things now and appreciate it all the more.

I need a gentle step back into life after everything, but it is still my plan to put up reviews tomorrow and Friday as well as have videos go back to regular scheduling starting with a happy mail video on Monday.

That’s me for now. Here’s a card that still makes me smile that the amazing Keira sent.

Off Topic: If You’ve Had a Bad Day

I’m having a bad day. It started around… 1am and just is managing to bloom into an awful flower of problems and hurt feelings.

There’s so much going on, and I’m melting into puddles on a regular basis.

It’s so easy to fall into this pit of awful darkness and feel like nothing is right or ever will be right. Nobody cares and people will always be awful.

But here’s the thing – reality doesn’t exist in absolutes. This, too, shall pass.

So instead of wallowing here, trying to keep my head on straight while bemoaning the state of the world, I decided to reach out. In the virtual way, of course.

Shit happens. Frequently. Mean, awful people exist, and quiet, sneaky awful people exist. Things get stressful, and there are times when ‘stressful’ just doesn’t cut it as a descriptor. Sometimes everything goes wrong and you can’t seem to get your act together enough to put up some zine reviews.

Here’s a virtual hug for you.

Whether you’re having a bad day, a good day, a night to remember, or a night to forget, here’s a hug to you.

I care, and I hope you have a good day. Because in the end, even when you feel like you can’t do much, you can usually still spread a little sunshine.

It’s Etsy’s Fault

I’ve been debating a bit whether to post today. Not because I don’t want to but because, well, I’m just so grumpy – and it’s only Tuesday.

Nothing has been catastrophic, but it’s one of those times when it wouldn’t take a lot of convincing to believe that the world really does just like messing with me. Things have been that way for a while, but this week started with an email from Etsy…

We’re writing to let you know that Australia has introduced new goods and services tax (GST) rules that will apply to cross-border supplies of digital products and other services to Australian consumers beginning 1 July 2017. You can learn more about the new Australian regulations here.

What this means for your shop

Beginning 1 July, Etsy will begin charging GST on seller service fees and Etsy Payments processing fees (“Seller Fees”) for Australian sellers unless they are registered for GST and have submitted an Australian Business Number (ABN) to Etsy.

Do you sell digital items?

In addition to the changes above, if you sell digital items in your shop, Etsy will be responsible for collecting and remitting the GST on those items. Etsy will automatically include applicable GST in the purchase price, and you do not need to collect GST on those items separately. If you’re wondering what this means for your business, we encourage you to contact a professional advisor.

I like Etsy, but by my research so far, it was already the most expensive way to keep a shop front with listing fees (that expire and need renewing), transaction fees, processing fees, so on and so forth. Now this? Now it’s even more expensive.

On top of that, they’re automatically increasing prices on my digital items, which pisses me off.

It’s not just me bearing greater fees – it’s people who want to buy my zines.

Thanks, Etsy. Thanks a lot.

“It says you can register for GST, Nyx. Don’t be grumpy.”

Yep, I could register for GST, be spared the fees and ignore the fact that people have to pay more for digital products. That’s business, right?

Here’s the thing, though: GST registration is a requirement for businesses that have a $75,000 turnover. I have absolutely no doubt that there are Australian sellers making that much, but I am far away from being one of them.

So what’s the big deal? That I don’t know if it’s a big deal. That I need to make an appointment and pay $80 to someone who knows whether it’s a big deal. If I do register for GST, it could mean quarterly reporting, which means paying someone $80 four times a year to deal with the whole GST thing.

This all when I’m operating at a loss as it is.

The big deal is that Etsy is popular and it knows it, so it doesn’t give a damn about the small sellers who are hoping to better their lives and get out of their current financial situations by offering something to the world.

There is a culture of non-profit and trade within the zine community, and I’m okay with that. What I’m not okay with is being stuck with more – not new, not the first – fees on a website that touts itself as being so wonderful and helpful to creators.

Oh, I know the response I’ll get about how it costs money to run a website, have staff, so on and so forth, but that is no comfort when there were already listing fees (that expire), transaction fees, and processing fees. They’re piling on fees with absolutely no thought as to the ramifications of people who were hoping to be granted the promise that Etsy so temptingly waves in the faces of those who are able to do little more than make their handmade creations in an economy and a society that doesn’t value them or what they do anywhere else.

That, my friends, is why I am grumpy today. I’m tired of forever ‘surviving’ and then being told to ‘just do better’ when I stop being okay with merely existing.

Changing the Way I Look at Things

I didn’t intend to take off yesterday, but here we are, and there it is.

I’ll get to the TL;DR part first so anyone who wants to skip out the rest can. I have to adjust how I do things. I took of yesterday, and I’ll be taking off tomorrow to get myself on more solid ground. I’ll be back on Thursday and Friday with reviews… probably. I will definitely be back this weekend with calls for submissions, and next week will resume the normal way of things.

No biggie, yes?

I apologise if it seems like I’m getting into theatrics with this, but I honestly want to share this but don’t know how to go about it. I’m not looking for pity, and it only has a relation to zines rather than being about zines. In the end, though, I want this to be a conversation rather than a random spit out of information and reviews (as fun and lovely as that is). I want to tell you about the not-necessarily-zineish things that are going on in my life.

The past few weeks have been an assortment of tests and appointments with my doctor. After plenty of discussions, we were both all but convinced that I had lupus. That’s what everything pointed to, so we waited until I had a ‘flare’ of symptoms so we could do the relevant blood tests. Blood tests that came back negative. (With the exception of microcytic anemia, but that’s not an indicator of lupus.)

So we went over my history again and came to the conclusion that I need to start doing what I can do for fibromyalgia, ME (myalgic encephalomyelitis – commonly known as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome but is so much more complicated than that), and restless legs syndrome.

Fibromyalgia and ME have come up as possibilities many times in the past ten years or so, but they are “diagnoses of exclusion” and I have never pursued the relevant testing. (I don’t always stick my head in the sand, but when I do…) Turns out that it took a mere ten years, and we’ve done all the testing to come around to the conclusion anyway.

What does all of this mean?

It means that, while these symptoms have been with me for many years, now they have a name. No I know it’s not just all in my head, that I’m not just lazy, and that I can’t keep operating as if it will all go away.

In many ways, this is a relief. I’ve never been good at taking care of myself, and having names for the faces, so to say, means that I feel less guilty about self-care. I’ve been going slower, going to bed earlier, sleeping in, puttering rather than mad rushing, and educating myself about the conditions. (And let me tell you, just keeping my feet and legs warm at all times has made a heap of difference.)

If I have my way, nothing will change here – other than I will endeavour to stop apologising for late posts or days when I don’t post. What will change is how I look at things, how I organise my time – especially my rest – and how I go about my days. Mostly things you won’t see or hear about.

Like I said, though, I want this space to be one in which we have conversations. Conversations that include what’s going on in my life even when it doesn’t focus on zines.

I wish you all the best for your week. I’ll be back with reviews on Thursday and Friday (99% sure that’s going to happen), calls for subs this weekend, and next week I will have a fresh happy mail post for you.

Until then…

Now for Something Completely Different – Kitten Academy Livestream!

It’s 4.20pm, and the day has completely gotten away from me thanks to a dodgy internet connection and tasks that I have to do whether I like it or not.

Grump grump.

So here’s something different. Because life can’t always be about what you want it to be, but you can livestream kittens while you’re living it.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPv9yKC76hE&w=425&h=315]

And Now For Something Completely Different

zine-ninja-loves-adelaides-parks

Blair at The Shameful Sheep posted up some fun questions, and I thought they’d be fun to post here. This is absolutely and completely unrelated to zines – I’m sorry if that annoys you. The way I figure it, you need to switch things up sometimes, so here we go.

So what I’m going to do is post the questions Blair posted and then add a few of my own. You can answer them in the comments OR you can switch things up at your blog by posting all the questions and adding few of your own. Keep the randomness going. 🙂

Here we go (the first four are Blair’s questions and the last two are mine):

You’re stranded in the middle of nowhere with the cast of Friends. You can’t find any food, so your only way to survive is to turn into a cannibal. Which two do you eat first, and why?

1. Ross. He’s whiny and not at all funny. 2. Monica. I know she can cook, but I feel like she’d go bonkers in the middle of dirty, dirty nowhere.

If you had to pick a theme song or movie that best represents your life, what would it be?

When I was younger, I would have said ‘And So It Goes’ by Billy Joel, but I really don’t know now. Can I pick an instrumental? If yes, then it’s Rhapsody in Blue.

What did you eat for dinner last night?

Corn on the cob (giving up sugar has actually made that taste decent – who knew?), zucchini, mushrooms, bacon, sweet potato, and a sausage.

Do you have a favorite blog post that you wrote and want to share? Post the link!

I still love Your Zine Is Awesome – Stop the Negative Self-Talk

If you had to eat one food for the rest of your life, what would it be? (Calories don’t count, you can’t gain/lose weight by eating this thing.)

Salmon sashimi.

If you could do whatever you wanted to do for the rest of your life and be guaranteed a livable income (actual, not government determined), what would you do?

What I’m doing here on SGZ. Seriously. It’s that blasted need for money to get by that leads me away from this place.

Enjoy! Please link below if you’ve put this on your blog.

I’m Dreaming… Of An Organised 2017

I must admit that, this holiday season, I am more excited about the new year than I am about the other stuff.

I’m not usually someone who ‘gets into’ a new year being a new or blank slate, I don’t do resolutions, so on and so forth. But perhaps it’s the desperation of a bad year after a series of bad years (I’ve been counting, and life started to get gradually more awful in 2011) that has me grumpy enough to be more active in making things happen in my life.

zine-organising

I’ve been working on various charts, lists, and the like not only to be more organised in 2017 but to be able to get rid of a lot of the extra stuff that is floating around my office. Papers, notebooks, stationery, odds, ends, knick knacks… I want to get rid of most of it, and the way for me to do that is to condense what I do need into a few spaces.

The picture above is part of my zine organising. Everything in one place. One step closer to being a better Sea Green Zines. I’m doing better than I have in the past, but there are still things – podcasting maybe? YouTube videos maybe? more than two reviews a week? – that I want to do but haven’t been able to because I’m still often one step behind.

As you may have guessed at this point, this is a bit of a prattle on post, mostly because this is all I’ve been working on. I do get fixated on things and have to do it ALL RIGHT NOW. (Breaking up tasks isn’t my strong suit.) I would love to see what you’ve been working on, what you received if you celebrated with gifts, what your hopes/plans/goals are for the new year. Are you a resolution type person?

Let me know in the comments. 🙂

Carry On Carrying On

WaterLily

Today is an emotional day for millions upon millions. To say the least.

It physically and emotionally hurts to see so many people who are angry, scared, downright terrified… I feel utterly inept at being able to say anything that could provide even the least little bit of comfort.

After waking up to my Paypal account hacked and my bank account (personal – not the one we pay the rent with, thank goodness) empty, I felt unable to even emotionally comfort myself, let alone those who felt the the entire world just took a dark path.

I debated with myself most of the day over what to do. After all, wouldn’t it be understandable just to take a day off, for crying out loud? Of course it would have.

Even so, I’ve come to the conclusion that sometimes all you can do is keep doing. Do what you need to do for self-care, and keep doing what you do whatever that may be.

Here, that means I’ll be putting up a Thursday zine review soon and carrying on with another Friday review tomorrow.

So why even post this up? Because I want you to know that if you’re hurting, if you’re scared… I hear you. I wish you weren’t hurting, and I wish there was something I could do about it. Above all, I hope that knowing my wishes can somehow give you some small comfort in all this.

Asimov

Well, it’s 5.45pm at the time I’m starting to write this, and it occurs to me that I haven’t posted my happy mail post today. Or even polished the photos I took this morning for the happy mail post… Yep!

post-op-asimov

First off, happy Halloween to those who are celebrating. It’s not a real big thing in Australia – nary a costume to be seen this weekend.

So this ^ is a picture of my cat, Asimov. A disappearing act last week, refusing food when he came back, and a call to the vet on Sunday led this little guy to needing a little surgery on Sunday. (Or procedure. I’m not entirely sure where the line is drawn.) The vet suspected he had a small bone lodged in his throat, and he needed some sleep juice so the vet could scope it out and get rid of the bone.

As it turned out, he decided to be like Wanderer. There was no bone, but there was an abscess in there. Though completely unexpected, the vet handled it very well (shout out to vets that work on Sundays) and is confident he’ll be just fine barring any complications.

I put a little shout out on social media about the situation and how any/all orders would greatly help at this time, as the vet bill was… a bit of a kick in the wallet. Getting mail ready to go is part of the reason I’m running so late with everything today. It’s a most excellent sort of work to have, and I wholeheartedly thank everyone who has ordered zines, cards, and/or copies of my novel. It really helps take the sting out of the sizable unexpected vet bill.

I know this doesn’t have much of anything to do with zines, or with the usual happy mail Monday post, but I do like being able to share at least snippets of my life with you. Especially when it impacts my ability to post. I promise I’m getting more organised with everything ‘Sea Green Zines’, so this sort of thing will happen less in the future.

Phew. Coffee break and then back to it. I hope you all are having an excellent Monday!