Stressed & Overwhelmed: Good Habits for the Exhausted Overachiever
Elly Blue
https://microcosmpublishing.com/catalog/artist/elly_blue

I wasn’t sure what I would be getting when I started reading this zine, but, as someone who is often stressed and overwhelmed, I had to check this out. Honestly, it didn’t have me by the first section either. I’m not the person described on the first pages, but I stress out like I am, so I kept reading.

I’m very glad I did.

Stressed & Overwhelmed is a zine that takes you through ways in which to change your behaviour when it comes to work, stress, and the like but also presents ways in which you can work smarter (and healthier) rather than harder. I’ve read plenty of the like in articles and such, but this zine proved itself a bit different from my usual reading by starting off with something that really made me sit up (figuratively) and pay closer attention (literally): Stop Punishing Yourself For Your Successes

How many times have you finally hit send on a big project that’s been hanging over your head for weeks, and instead of celebrating you’ve moved immediately to dreading and beating yourself up about not yet being far enough along on the next big project?

Ding, ding, ding.

This and other things (that I won’t quote at the risk of retyping most of the zine) struck me right where I needed it in regards to this subject.

I like that there is a mixture of direct suggestions – this is Pomodoro and how it works – as well as more indirect suggestions – step back and look. IHaving that mix caters to the different mentalities of just wanting someone to tell you what to do/where to start as well as not liking being told what to do.

My old thorn of no contact details has popped up, but I can almost forgive it because of the wealth of things that I can look up thanks to all the info. You all know how much I love the option of being able to do further research.

As much as the title might be ‘big’ and overwhelming in and of itself, you don’t have to be completely stressed and/or overwhelmed to find benefit from reading this zine.

SlowQuest – A Choose Your Own Adventure Zine – Quest I: The Goblin Guard
BodieH
@bodieh
www.slowquest.com

Sometimes you see a zine, and you instantly know that you want to get a copy. This is one of those zines.

SlowQuest is a choose your own adventure zine taking you on an adventure for glory and riches! Standing in your way? A goblin guard…

I love this zine so much. On the aesthetic side, it’s superb. It’s well made, the art is incredibly detailed and invites you to inspect it closely, the cream-coloured interior paper suits very well, everything is so nicely put together, and even the corners are rounded. The whole thing is not only fun but speaks to a dedication to making even the tactile experience of the zine a good one.

I have talked a little bit about zine re-readability in reviews, but this is re-readability of a different sort. After I found out that my ‘natural instinct’ adventurer days would be about as monetarily rewarding as my actual life (hahaha), I immediately went back to trying all the different possibilities. The size of the zine is deceptive in that there were even more options than I expected there to be.

I felt like a kid again, and it was awesome.

Also, two thumbs way up for clear contact details:

This is one of those zines that I’m probably going to have to get another copy to loan out because I don’t want anyone messing with my copy.

PS. Shout out to Zine-O-Matic for having such good taste in zines and for granting a wish on my zine wishlist. 🙂