Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes

so i came up with this post's title and it reminded me of David Bowie's song. that's the only reason why you're seeing this image here.
now that i think of it, i wouldn't mind listening to some David Bowie's but i think it would make me feel a little too nostalgic and i would end up feeling down, so better not!


there were a few changes this last week, although nothing really that BIG or of great importance in a person's life.

i changed this blog's name and the concept. why?
well, since my first (and only, if any! lol) zine ever is still cooking and will take a while to come out, i was starting to feel that it didn't make much sense to keep calling this my «My Zine Project 2009: the misadventures and perils of making a zine...». also, i hardly ever posted stuff about my perzine project, just a couple of random thoughts and bits. i mostly write about the things happening (or not) in my everyday boring life, so i might as well turn this into a more "personal" blog.
i'll keep writing about zines and books, about the stuff i get in the mail (though i now have the other blog to post specifically about zines i get in the mail), i'll share links about other websites and things i find interesting and worth sharing with you.

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there's a lot of multitasking going on in my life right now: 

- i'm taking e-learning classes on «Entrepreneurship and Business Creation» [blogged about here]. the first class was a bit more complex than what i thought, and that kinda got me down. not being able to read the whole class lesson because it started getting noisy around me didn't help much either. 

i finished the first chapter of the class and then had "homework" to do, which consists of writing about how and here i see myself & my life 15-20 years from now, what i would like to be doing in that future or what i would like to have accomplished. it's mostly writing about myself, my life goals and my plans (dreams?) for my future... and it freaked me out! the "homework" tasks are supposed to be posted in the course's private forum, so that the e-teacher can read them, and it can be discussed with her and other students taking the same class. for obvious reasons, i don't feel that much comfortable about posting my dreams and talk about myself and my life to a complete stranger(s). but i'll have to to it, one way or another, if i want to finish the course successfully and not regret the money i paid for it! 

at one point, i came to realize that i don't like to talk about my life and dreams/projects because i feel i will never succeed, and i also feel that one of my ideas for starting my own business may not be such a good idea after all, and i'll end up broke or something worse if i get myself into it. that is, if i ever get enough money to start it, anyway.

- i'm doing the TAW (aka The Artist's Way) book "lessons", and while i keep procrastinating on doing the Week 1 Tasks, i decided to continue reading the rest of the book, to get a general idea on the whole thing. i want (and need) to feel confident about this book, i want to believe that it will help me make (better) changes in my life.

- i've started a new blog, it's just another Zine Reviews blog!, no big deal, but i felt so excited when i first had the idea that i got down to work and put up the blog in a day. now i need to start writing about the zines i referred to on the first posts, otherwise it will make no sense to keep the blog online and go around advertising it out loud on Facebook or on the We Make Zines community.

- i'm sort of keeping a journal right now; i have been doing it for about a month now. 

it's part of the TAW's study: you have to write (at least) 3 pages of stream-of-consciousness longhand morning writing everyday, if possible just after waking up (in the morning, or in the afternoon, which is more my case), because it's the moment of the day when your brain isn't yet fully "active", the logic part of your brain (the dreaded left side of the brain). don't want to get into too many pointless details about this writing exercises, but if you're interested in learning more about this book, feel free to visit the official website and browse the official forums.

what i'm trying to explain is, with all this journaling-like that i've been doing, i've come up with some really intense texts. sometimes i start writing about something that's bugging me and end up writing about something else completely different. i always find this interesting and a little bizarre (in a good way).

- i've been replying more often to posts on the We Make Zines community. specially when it's a call for submissions - someone asking for contributors to a particular zine project. i wish i could reply to all the call for entries, i would like to be able to write more, to develop my writing style; to learn how to write fiction maybe? but, of course, not all the themes posted appeal to me, i don't always have something to say or a story to tell. and i can't draw or have photographic skills so that i can contribute with artwork, so i'm really stuck to writing and that's it.

* last year, i sent my first submission ever for a zine project; now i'm waiting for the printed results.
* i'm listed on a "worldwide" chain-zine project, and hopefully, i'll be getting to make my page around next month.
* i've edited one text for a collab zine about Mental Health, and i want to transcribe another text for the same project, just to keep my options open.
* i'm waiting to know the deadline for a collab zine about Relationship Violence so that i can send it my work.
these might look like some pretty touchy and/or heavy subjects to write about, but that's just the way it is... These are issues that are -or- were present in my life, and i've written about them, so i have experiences that i can share with others.

what i find harder for me about preparing stuff for a collab, is that most of my writings are handwritten, they're all spread around in various journals or notebooks, and i get a bit lazy when i have to transcribe them to electronic text versions. i usually find typos, small grammar mistakes and such, so it's a hard work typing it all into the computer. but that's mostly because i'm really lazy and i have a major tendency to procrastinate... Shame on me!

- these last couple of days, i've caught the shopping spree virus, again. i know i shouldn't be doing that, but i found new zines that look interesting and having the chance to buy them through their creators is something i really enjoy doing. i made one distro order, though, it was a new distro (to me) that i've never heard of in the USA and they had some zines that looked interesting and weren't expensive, so... it was hard to resist.

next week, i'll be getting zines i've ordered last weekend, so the next couple of weeks i think my mailman will be very busy ;-)

- this can't exactly be considered as something i am doing or have been doing, but it's something that's been on my To-Do lists for quite a while: i owe a letter to a female zinester in Canada (or is it Jamaica, now?), and i owe a trade to a Californian female zinester. i hate my procrastination habits, i'm ashamed of my laziness, really! girls, i apologize for this sad behavior of mine!

- last but not least, i'm still unemployed. like this is some really big news, really... I've stopped being so obsessed with spending my days reading the emails i get with job ads and browsing websites for job ads. but this hasn't stopped my from felling guilty, though. i just don't have the strength/courage/willpower/whatever to do that every day or to apply to every single "shitty" job ad i see. last time i applied to one of these, it ended up being a dead end, tricking people to buy things disguised under the name of "Telemarketing". now i don't mind getting a part-time job on a call-center or a help-desk, if only these replied to my applications... 

getting ready to start an e-learning course next wednesday...

a couple of weeks ago i started browsing around and found a Portuguese e-learning company that has various classes on various subjects. and i found a few classes that look quite appealing to me. on one hand, there isn't much "utility" in most of those classes, when it comes to "professional" utility. on the other hand, on a personal level, those classes include various subjects that interest me, some of them that i was always interested in learning.
and part of me would really like to "get away" from the other things/subjects i've worked professionally before. i was getting tired before i quit my job, anyway, so maybe that was a sign that something needed to change. and when i started reading the «Artist's Way» and browsing the books' online forum, i began to think that maybe i really need to change my path, maybe take the next route, diverge a little from the "original" path. because, in reality, i don't have a career, so i don't have to keep doing the same things over and over and over, do i?


i've signed up for two courses on that E-Learning website, one starting this month and the other in March. i was kinda afraid at first, because the course that seemed to be most useful at this moment, «Entrepreneurship and Business Creation» was one of the more expensive ones from my choices. but after an online chat with an old close friend, he said he didn't think the price was that much expensive, considering the advantages of learning online and all that. so i took the courage and signed-up!
i didn't catch the first "season" of the classes, but a new course is starting again this next Wednesday, i have already managed to paid for it and now i'm allowed to attend the classes as soon as they start.
i hope i do well in this course and that i'm able to finish it with good grades or whatever they call it on e-learning.
after this class, i was thinking about taking their «Introduction to Psychology» course, because i'm quite interested in Psychology, i like to read and learn stuff about it. although, again, it's a totally different study subject from my highschool and "post-highschool" studies and from the various jobs/trainings i had, always connected to graphic design, desktop publishing, photography and such...

(after way too much googling for a suitable pic, here's this)

at the beginning, i had some doubts on how i was going to tell my parents that i was getting into an e-learning class, and how they were going to "accept" it. to me it felt weird, because it seemed like for the first time in years, i had made a decision of my own, without consulting, or at least, informing them first. i delayed the topic for a few days and then "introduced" it in a conversation, and they took it alright. the funny thing is that none of them ever asked if i was planning to pay for the classes myself, given the fact that i've been unemployed for over 2 months now, and that my bank account's money doesn't grow on trees.
i find it "funny" how people try and avoid talking about things that they're not interested in talking, or getting into a discussion about it. the money i spend on my "extras" always comes up when they decide to pick a fight with me after i get something from the mailman... But this time, there wasn't a word about me spending money to pay for these classes.

it's sad that when i try to understand my parents and why they act the way they do, i can only come to a conclusion that hypocrisy as become part of their "values system". i don't remember being taught that. or maybe they've been like this all their life and i was just too stoopid to learn it (fortunately for me?) or too blind to see it (unfortunately for me).

"Make One Hundred Somethings" project

i saw my first refernce to the "Make One Hundred Somethings" project at
http://fraeuleinzucker.blogspot.com/2009/03/germanys-next-role-model.html

wich had a link to the original inspirational idea, from
http://tollipop.typepad.com/tollipop/2008/12/making-one-hundred-somethings-an-open-invitation.html


the following text is an excerpt from Tollipop's blog post (in December 2008) about this project:

make one hundred somethings: an open invitation

«(...) I am extending an invitation to join me and others who have expressed an interest in the Tollipop Hundred Dresses project.  What one hundred somethings could you make?  It doesn't need to be elaborate or worthy of virtuosic skills.  Trust me.  It doesn't even need to be one hundred, for that matter.  But you might enjoy the challenge, the outlet, the deep sense of satisfaction that comes from making something exist that wasn't there before. 

For example, you should check out the lovely Belinda of Witchetty. She is creating her own one hundred wide-eyed, long-lashed girls with delightfully detailed dresses, and stories to go with them as well!  And I've already told you about the talented Louisa of Picture Book Studios. Her little mouselings have me altogether charmed!

So just think about it.  Your one hundred somethings.  One hundred somethings that didn't exist until you created them.  The thought alone brings good energy, a light in your mind.  You may as well get busy and follow it--there's just no telling where you might go! (...)»

..........................................
although this post/project is a bit dated by now, the idea resonates me... i don't know why, but it does.
maybe it's the art-making/creativity/obsessive-compulsive in me hahahha!
yet, at a first glance, i don't know what i could make 100 "items" of, so i'll just leave this project aside, maybe sleep over it and perhaps i'll come up with something... Maybe i'll combine it with some other project(s) that have been in the back of my mind in the last couple of months, when i started getting into the zine "thing".


[mental notes:
europe; europe's countries - there are 48 countries in europe, according to my research on Wikipedia; while the european union itself as only 27 countries...; 
one contributor from each country (rests the doubt: EU countries only or not); two-pages at least, 4 at max; maybe the theme can be divided into 2 parts, being part 1 «my country» and part 2 «europe/the rest of europe/what i think about...»; etc, etc...]

My first submission for a zine?...

not long after i had joined the We Make Zines community, i got a lovely invitation to write a piece for one of the members, a zinester with a lot more experience that me for sure. i was surprised at the invite, because i never did anything like that before but that zinester was really friendly and patient, explaining me what his project is about and encouraging me to write down some stuff.

about four days after the invite, after thinking about it a lot and researching photos (yep, the project includes sending a photo but for documenting purposes only), and after a bit of procratination (i wouldn't be me if i didn't do a little procrastination!) i finally managed to put thoughts down on paper. i had one of those rare epiphany moments: after waking up early and not being able to fall asleep again, my mind started thinking about the project; i had already thought about a few things to write and i knew i had to pick up pen and paper and start writting! so i did, and i ended up with four A5 pages of text, not that bad for a starter.

after lunch, i came to my computer and started to transcript the text, then noticed some spelling and grammar errors, researched the dictionary and wikipedia for translations for some Portuguese words i had never used in English and i got the text down to one A4 page, which is half of the maximum required for the project. so, i should pat myself on the shoulder a bit and feel proud of having actually written something, and probably i might just make it in that project, yey!!

Zine projects in mind

next are a few ideas i had for different zines and/or contents for a zine, topics i would like to receive submissions for and print, if i only had enough time for everything hahaha! now don't go and steal these names, ok?! i will be using them, somehow somewhere, even as a combined project, why not?


Birdcage - that's probably the name i've decided for my perzine thing... the name does mean something to me, it came to my mind in a somehow random way but when i thought about it better i found a meaning.

Paper Scraps - that's the delayed project for an art zine, the first idea i had for making a zine actually...

You Suck at Drawing - don't ask... the title sucks too, i know, but the intention is what really counts :-p

Summer Leaves, comes Autumn Breeze - now this is definitely artsy inclined, since Autumn is such a visual theme. poetry, prose, illustration, photography, comics, whatever has visual & literary content, preferably mixed in the same piece.

Busy doing nothing - how about this? yeah, not very original 'cause i got it from an article on «The 7 habits of procrastinators», but it's the best i could 'come up' with...
Procrastination is a subject that affects me way to often, so i could build from here to make something ziny about it. i've googled it up and there's already a zine in th UK called «The Art of Procrastination (Or How to Write a Zine)», which leaves me a bit limited as using the word 'procrastination' as title.

A Helping Hand - all about Volunteer Work, but i'm more curious about stuff related to animal shelters & animal welfare and about volunteer work made in jails. oh, and when i come to think better, also women's shelters, and literacy programs for children & adults without economic opportunities. i feel if there was more good work done on these subjects, the world would be a better place.

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So far, this is it... all the names are down on paper*, ups, i mean on digital/online form, so to make it more real and appealing. and maybe motivate me a little bit more!


If you have any work you related to any of these themes (except for Birdcage, since it's a perzine project i want to keep all content personal or friends related), and would like to see your stuff published in a zine of mine, i'd be happy if you leave a comment on this post. it can be work you've published before on other zines, but i would really appreciate if it was original work ;-)


* actually, most of the names are written on paper, on my scrapbook where i first put down any ideas and topics i have for zines