The header photo is called I stayed for you, taken by oakarrow.

I'm procrastinating on other stuff, AKA the perfect time to compile a newsletter. Maybe with a sufficient list of tasks that I'm trying to elude, I can psyop myself into doing them all promptly, through a sort of avoidance domino effect? It's never worked before, but that's not a serious impediment!

Anyway. Before we Get Into Things™ I want to share a couple of simpatico zine excerpts. (Recently I started buying zines again. They are great for distracted perusal in between the umpteenth rendition of Little Blue Truck.)

It gets deeper

_ "We thought, here's twenty or thirty people from all different parts of the world talking to each other, and putting out magazines, and so forth. It sounds grandiose, but we had the hope that somehow we were going to change world culture that way."
_ And you do, I told him. You did.
_ "And you do," Dan agreed. "But you only move it an inch."
_ A good inch, I said.
_ "Exactly. That's what the prism of old age teaches you."

— Dan Georgakas, cofounder of Up Against the Wall Motherfucker, interviewed for Cometbus #59: Post-Mortem
Both sides are true! Meme by @trent_vanepps.
"Like, I'm into pinball. And pinball is just a game. But when you get more than one person doing it, and you're talking about it, and then you're writing about it, and then you're going to events based around this one shared interest, it becomes more and more layered, more enriched. It gets deeper."

— Billy McCall of Behind the Zines, interview with Basic Paper Airplane, published in #15, Zines That Never Existed

Same old angst

I have ideas about myself that I've discovered are silly. Pretensions to being an artiste, mostly. I am not living up to that coveted label. (Yes, we're talking about this again.)

Around age 25 it slowly dawned on me that I was no longer being judged on potential, but rather on what I had actually done — or had not done, in fact. This was a disconcerting realization.

Now I'm 30 and I haven't done much more since I aged out of being precocious. It's sort of pathetic that I can't let this go. And why not, why am I so bothered? Because I come from a stock of ambitious, driven, and more-than-a-tad-arrogant people who long for accomplishments to boast about. The feeling of inadequacy, paired with the need to express one's will, is a dual force that can counter the inertia of daily life.

Just a false narrative, if I'm honest. Much to my chagrin, I find that beating myself up doesn't make me more productive. I feel like it should, like I deserve to punish myself for floundering and therefore it ought to be effective. But I get much further being kind and gentle with myself.

Of course, I have a toddler. Plus another baby on the way. I am not in the quote-unquote season of life for hard-charging go-getter-ism! No matter how nice I am to myself.

What can a girl do? Keep on keepin' on, I suppose, and hope my self-esteem catches up to reality. In two ways:

  1. Stop thinking of myself as a temporarily embarrassed auteur.
  2. Internalize that I don't need to be exceptional or distinguished to be worthy of love. In particular, my own.

Let's go now

My son doesn't talk very much, but he makes his wishes known with an insistent tugging hand. Mama read to me. No, not that book, this book. This book again. Dada wear this hat. I take the popcorn from Nana's bowl and put it in my bowl. Grandpa come watch me play basketball. Excuse me, stop talking to Mama when you are here to watch me!

His caprices are utterly charming because they are his, and he is my little golden monkey. Of course, one must not indulge too far. When he clambers up onto the dining table, I pluck him down and admonish him. That's dangerous! He scampers off, unfazed. Sometimes he giggles. It is fun to be seized.

[I wrote those paragraphs quite a while ago. Eventually we figured out that my son was climbing on the table because he didn't know how to dismount from the chairs. Once we taught him how to do that, the problem disappeared. It was clever, on his part, using our swift concern to get down when he wanted to!]

Three pieces I wrote for work that came out well, I think:

This whole process is recursive people-watching. You're observing people to see what they'll do, so you can make your own moves accordingly. However, so are they! What they will do is also determined by what they see others doing. This situation offers a first-mover advantage to savvy mavericks who can make the crowd dance. But it's just as easy — easier, in fact — for a bold contrarian to step into the arena, then immediately fall on their face. (He just like me fr…)

Also, semi-related: "The internet is a machine you can climb into."

I created an experimental artcoin called $petal, and documented the project, with followups here and here. I will play with this more in the future, once another good idea strikes me.

And now, our feature presentation! Links that other people wrote / made:

A hefty list! I hope you will enjoy something from it.

As usual, I'd love for you to hit reply and let me know what you are up to, or what you're reading, or what-have-you.

Until next time,
Sonya