Hey Look! I made a thing!

 

Cover of the first zine I've made in decades...

The last couple years have been rough. Everything going on in my personal life, with my work and also the ongoing shitshow of world events... wow. Understandably, i've been a bit off. Not feeling creative at all, no motivation, no inspiration, no nothing. Not a place i like to dwell in, it's not fun. 

I've been trying... really TRYING... to get myself back on track. Went on a vacation. It was great, but then i came home. I cleaned up my space, make sure i exercise, get outside, be around people (within reason, of course... too much peopling makes things worse). it helps. I guess. Kinda. The best thing for me is to make stuff. This I know about myself. I get into a zone, and  time slips away and I emerge feeling a little bit better.

hand-stitched single pages

But it wasn't sticking. I'd do some little crafty thing for a bit, and then I'd slide back into my funk. I couldn't see the point. I make stuff, and then it sits in a box, nobody sees it and eventually it gets thrown out. I needed a reason. I also needed to work out all the shit swirling around in my brain before i got buried under it. So I took a couple leftover sheets of painted paper, cut it up into pages, and made myself a Journal. 

This isn't a regular journal. I write in it, sure, but then i paint and draw and collage.  I know some other artists journal with images. I've tried it before but i was always a little hesitant to let my true feelings out. Pretty sure because in the back of my mind, I figured it would eventually be made public. Deciding straight off the bat that that wasn't going to happen made it easier to just let myself go. I have to admit, it isn't pretty. It's angry. And it's dark. And it helped. I may not be cheery and optimistic... I have never been cheery and optimistic... but at least I feel like i can tolerate a few more days without losing my shit. 

To make this book I first created all the inside spreads, then put them in some semblance or order. Since I was binding single sheets and not folios, i didn't need to worry about making sure the right side of one page worked with the left side or another. I just put them in an order that would tell a bit of a story. I hand-stitched the pages together, and went to work on the rest of it. 

I have to admit it was easier to work through the pages once it was bound together. I'm still working on the remaining pages. Once I have those done I will put a cover on it, name it and add it to my growing pile of books I've made by hand. 

Assorted inside spreads in progress

Just because I could, I scanned in a few early pages and put them together to make a small zine. I had made some zines in the 90s, but they were small and crappy, I didn't know what I was doing (nobody did, we were making it up as we went along), and I didn't have a cheap way to duplicate them. I also didn't hang on to them. I'm sad about that now... I'm sure they would show a snapshot of what it was like to be doing DIY publishing in Toronto in what I now consider the golden age. It was the time before technology took over our lives and proceeded to make us all miserable. 

And yes, while I know i am also to blame for allowing my stupid cellphone to hijack my life, a big part of the problem is that today's tech is engineered to be addictive. Our brains are not built to know everything that is going on in every corner of the world every minute of the day. Of course it's overwhelming. I see the trend of "going analogue" online and I think maybe they're on to something. I won't give up my smart phone (mainly because GPS has made driving infinitely less stressful. I haven't gotten lost in decades and I'd like to keep it that way), but it needs to be something in the background of my life so I can focus on doing something more meaningful.