I started Fun-A-Day, and then I quit (but everyday has nonetheless continued to be fun!). Like I said before, I’m not good at daily projects. I get excited about them and then I don’t keep up. I don’t feel like a guilty-fucked-up-failure about it anymore; I just know that that particular trick of creativity & self-care doesn’t work for me, but plenty other tricks do. I’ve been away from home for a little while, on what I’ve chosen to call a vacation. Instead of reading zines everyday, as I’d intended, I’ve been writing in my journal, writing letters, hanging out with friends, and reading books (Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson, and The Power of Place: How Our Surroundings Shape Our Thoughts, Emotions, and Actions by Winifred Gallagher). The usual things.

A lot of things have been on my mind lately, but I haven’t had the time to write about them: I realized that if the 21,600+ people who’ve ‘liked/reposted’ my weirdo manifesto on Tumblr each bought one zine, I could put a down payment on a house (and so I shall continue my conversation on art & support & money another day); still thinking lots about how feminists need to be better allies to genderqueers & trans folks; thinking lots about how good it was to do a reading where I wasn’t the only damned genderqueer in the room; daring myself to learn my way around cities that I have never felt confident or competent enough to navigate on my own; thinking lots about friendship and lots about the people who inspire me (famous or not); writing more fiction because I miss it; and on and on and on… But those are all things I’ll write about another day.

In the meantime, here are a couple links worth reading:

In Transition: “How can the media keep up with a community so changing, so evolving, so in transition? As the number of visible trans people grows, media outlets are dealing with subjects and stories they don’t have the knowledge or experience to cover… From pronoun mismatches to inappropriate questions regarding a subject’s body parts and surgery plans, there’s clearly a lot of misunderstanding surrounding how trans people should be both spoken to and spoken about.”
Anarchy in the Archives: POC Zine Project Brings Punks of Color to the Academy: “But because zine culture is so closely correlated with punk, a predominantly white subculture that’s more inclusive in theory than in practice, zine communities in many cities are also predominantly white… Sharing your thoughts in writing, and the process of even writing it down, is so cathartic and so healing. Making zines is kind of like giving art therapy to yourself for free if you can’t afford a therapist.”
What Hannah Read: Telegram: “This is a beautiful, inspiring, absorbing book… book’s pages are much prettier than that of an “ordinary” book, with text written on typewriters, computer and by hand and cute hand-drawn illustrations and embellishments, as well as cut-and-paste images. The text is the collection’s main focus though: Maranda Elizabeth puts a lot of time and effort into crafting their words – and it shows…”

Illustration by me and Clara Bee Lavery.

The past week was spent in Toronto, this week I’m hanging out in Lindsay, and on Friday, I’ll be in Peterborough for a book/zine launch & reading at The Spill. I’m a little nervous, since this is the closest I’ve ever come to doing an event in my hometown, and y’all know I feel weird about my hometown. But whatever. I would like to feel supported, and I know it’ll be good no matter what, and ever if nobody shows up, it’s gonna be fun. But I’m worried about being misgendered by people who haven’t seen me in a long time, I’m worried about crying/puking/fainting, blah blah blah… But I also think it’s really fucking rad to escape this town and return just to bragg about my book and all the rad things I did once I learned how to let go. So there.

Back to my tea and journals now.

cozy punx forever,