Hello! I know, it's been a while. Not much I can say about that really.
I wanted to record a dream I had a few nights ago, that I only just remembered about. (Don't worry, it's short!)
I was hanging out with a friend, not anyone from real life, but in the dream it was someone I'd known for years. One day she decided to tell me that she wrote zines. She showed me a tiny little zine she had written. I guess she must have carried a copy around with her, because it was a bit dog-eared and stained. I looked at it and I almost couldn't believe it! I said, "you wrote this? I have this zine! I bought it a few years ago and it's one of my favourites!" I'd been admiring the author all that time, not realising it was my friend!
It's fairly obvious to me where this dream comes from. In my discussions over the year or so, a thread has popped up occasionally but regularly: that I'm careful, even desperate, to keep my online self and my real-life self separate. In some spheres it's more pronounced than others. I'm starting to become OK with people knowing my craft blog, a little uncomfortable, but OK. I'd be highly embarrassed if people that read my beauty blog knew what I really looked like (from head to toe). But when I wrote zines, I would have died if people knew that the author of them was me! I remember going to a meet-up for Etsy shop owners one day, an event at which I felt highly inadequate. I mentioned my craft zine and internet alias and one person said, "oh yes, I think I've heard of you." I felt highly uncomfortable and started to think of ways to make sure my online presence and real life stayed separate.
Lately I've been asking myself why I stopped writing zines 4 years ago. I don't think it was because I was lacking in inspiration or ideas. I remember having ideas. So what was it? Was it because the pressure and fear surrounding hiding my true identity became too much? The fear that, if people met me and saw the real person who wrote those things, they would instantly lose all value in their eyes. They'd be shocked that some fat, boring public servant with a boring life had the audacity to try and do something that the cool kids were doing? The more weight I put on, the more I felt that way. Then when I realised I hadn't made any sales in my Etsy shop in 6 months, I closed it. (I had an Etsy shop? Wow, I must have had balls back then!! Was I even the same person?)
There's a catch-22 in writing zines. If you don't have any way of distributing them, then there's kinda no point in writing them. I could have sent them to zine distros, I could have teamed up with someone and had a stall at a zine fair, I could have walked into Sticky and arranged to have them sold in the shop. But that involves interacting with people, and the problem of omfg, what if they find out who I really am??? reared its ugly head again. So I dropped the whole thing. So I stopped writing. It's a sad story.
I've realised recently though - I never actually stopped writing! Look at this blog! Look at my other two blogs! Look at the 1 1/2 journals I've filled since I started writing my Pages! My writing isn't elegant or poetic; I don't imagine I could write fiction with any merit. (I've tried, it really sucked.) But I just can't help myself: I have a compulsive need to vomit out words onto a screen or page or little booklet! And dammit, I love pens! I was even making mini zines at work last week with scrap paper. Cutting them smaller and smaller, to see how tiny I could make them. They're still blank, but you never know!
Anyway, this post is waaaay longer than intended, but it's something I've been struggling with for a while and perhaps I just needed to make commentary on it. It's amazing how a little dream can make you think so much.
Cheerio!
