This is just going to be a stream of consciousness, fuck editing, fuck punctuation if it doesn’t suit me.

I have too many things in my head and I’ve been feeling weirdly guilty and isolated watching all these people do amazing things, keep making zines. I feel like I wanted to get involved, I really wanted to take on something cool and give something back, but I guess I’m just really not cut out for it because as soon as the water rises and the river starts rushing I got out and hit pause. Now everyone’s doing it and they’re already better than I ever was, and yeah yeah no comparing with other people yeah yeah collaboration not competition whatever, but this isn’t about achievement this is about the fact that other people seem so much more capable of putting work into things along with their jobs and whatever and I’ve been putting things off for almost a year now, which was even more than I was putting them off before. I haven’t even fixed coding my damn website, I haven’t moved to a site that works for me, I re-coded stuff in April and then left it alone, how did I even do all that in April I was still working full time and I was in school, wasn’t I? I think. Although there was still so much I wanted to do. I should make a project plan. I should give up. I should make a zine. I should actually photocopy a zine. I should put less pressure on myself. I should start over. I should quit entirely. I should delete myself from the internet. I should disappear into the ether and cut off all ties and let people wonder if I’m okay. I shouldn’t be so cowardly. I should just make a decision so there’s one thing I can control about my relationship with the world of people outside since it seems to have decided so many things about its relationship with me.

I’m still making zines, it’s the work part of it I haven’t been doing. The scanning, the copying, the uploading, the sharing. Is it still a zine if no one else sees it? I want people to see it. I want people to come over to my house and read it instead of me having to put the work in to share it. I want to be a weird hermit artist who everyone is fascinated by, instead of having to be gregarious and social and outgoing in both my job and my hobby. I do like people, really, but what zines were doing for me while I was isolated and homestuck (no I never read homestuck sorry) and doing online school is now being done for me with coworkers I love and with any luck my new milk snake. So all I want to do when I get home is hang out alone in my art room, or in bed, or play video games with my partner because my whole job involves people and I guess I’m an introvert after all, or whatever. I’m just a Libra. I need balance with social vs. antisocial and right now my job is tipping the scales. I’m sorry to anyone who ever cared about me online, or in person for that matter, because you should know I will drop things on a dime with no word even when I don’t mean to if my scales have been tipped.

I dunno. I’m feeling like I need to make some sort of sweeping Decision but I don’t want to cut off my future options. So I’m stuck in limbo land. I’m watching all the amazing zinesters and artists keep going and doing and sharing, and I’m watching the newspapers tell us about all the horrible things that will happen starting in January, like where was all this a month ago? My town is on fire and I mean that literally; I thought I escaped the wildfires when I left California. I’m so good at coping that at first I think it genuinely doesn’t affect me, these things, but after a little while I realize I’ve been getting worn down from the inside and I feel strange. Like I should be shaky but I’m still tense. “That’s an anxiety response” great, now make it go away

My union is protesting at a town meeting and the Teamsters loaned us a giant inflatable rat.