Coping Skills: Because Sometimes Life Is Some Serious Bullshit
Dr Faith G. harper
http://faithgharper.com/

When Wanderer’s emergency happened, I found that I couldn’t tolerate TV, videos, or anything I’d usually do to distract myself. However, I did have this zine, and bit by bit, it did help…

This zine is one of a series called ‘Dr Faith’s Five Minute Therapy’ and just goes to show how effective a catchy title is. I didn’t know exactly what I was getting into when I ordered this zine, but I couldn’t resist getting it with a title like that.

Lucky me, it was a bet that paid off.

Dr Harper has created a list (love a list) zine all about things you can do to cope with what’s happening in your life. There aren’t really specifics applied to this like ‘coping with a car crash’ or ‘coping with the fact someone ate the last doughnut’. It’s like the title says – because sometimes life is some serious bullshit.

Coping Skills is written in the voice of a friend rather than a doctor (or parent or ruling force in your universe). Coping Skills is all about coping, but it reads as something closer to a conversation you’d have while out for coffee rather than one you’d have in a psychologist’s office. When it comes to stuff like this, it’s so important to hit that point of telling someone what they can do rather than just telling them what to do.

I must say that I have to admire that Dr Harper was so ‘meh’ about prayer and meditation one one page but then turned the perspective to a whole new light (that I hadn’t thought of before) on the next page.

I really love that there are suggestions for things to do that you actually can do. I’ve read too many lists and articles that suggest things that require money or other means when ‘money’ or ‘other means’ can be things that add to the stress of the situations in the first place. The suggestions in this zines are general enough that you know what she means but can apply them as you please.

I read this zine during a time when I was incredibly stressed and not sure how to function, let alone cope. It wasn’t a miracle, but it did help. That being said, I think this zine is a great zine to read for any kind of coping, be it more or less stressful.

Comics & Beer
Rory
www.createorperishshop.etsy.com

I’ve never been so excited to see that this was an ‘issue 1’ (implying there would be more) and so disappointed to find there were no more. That sort of stuff happens in the zine world, but I would be all over a sequel to this, no matter how many years later.

Comics & Beer is about life. Rory’s life. From the get-go, you know this isn’t going to be the ‘usual’ sort of perzine thanks to the intro being more of a multiple choice reaction quiz than a ‘hi, my name is X and I’m X years old’.

Rory has a great writing voice that has liberal pinches of sarcasm, dark humour, and disillusionment. It’s what grabbed me from page one and kept me reading. There are little pieces of humour that you might not catch upon first read. There’s even a mini-zine within the zine with short movie reviews. As far as added touches go, this is an excellent one.

That’s not to say there aren’t serious moments. In the piece about TV and our (humanity’s) relationship to it, this quote really got me:

I have shared probably 100 times as many emotional moments with a stupid plastic box as any other living person.

I love what I love and often read in those areas, so it can be a lot of fun when something like this comes to shake up my reading a bit. When it comes to my own perzines, I’m so stuffy about things and try to have themes and whatnot. It was really refreshing – and reminds me to loosen up! – to read a perzine that felt so wonderfully random in picking snippets of life. Even better, I love perzine that leave me wanting to read the next one in the series straight away. Alas…

The contact site listed doesn’t work, but that very well could be because (sigh) this is the only zine in this series. I was sad to find that out when I hunted down the Etsy site. At least you can still get copies of this zine, though. You should, too.