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Everything is embarrassing anyways so just submit your writing somewhere people can maybe see it. This is my little horror vignette about a demonic possession in a Connecticut gas station! It's not at all perfect in my eyes, but it's also one of my favorite things I've done because it lives in the world and not just in a draft. And as a bonus I get to enjoy the design a cool editor invented to accompany my story and see it through their eyes on the page.
I love zines!!! Share your art with your community and scene, be a part of the world!!!
Dec 18, 2024
Related Recs
Dec 28, 2024
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Entropy is a small magazine I created. For the first volume, I focused on the transition from teenage years to early 20s. It featured 20 contributors who submitted work reflecting on said topic, sharing their perspectives and the navigation of self during this crucial period of discovery. Here's a short blurb more about the theme:
Entropy: Lack of Order. Displacement, losing, finding, learning, thinking, claiming, creating, coming into your own, still finding it, give me a moment, better yet, a few years, or erase the few before now. It all seemed to blend together.
Processing the now, this moment right now, can be compared to the sporadic cycle of R.E.M. We fall under its spell each night, and the visions we produce influence, evoke, and seek out the manifestations that follow in our waking world. It's quiet again in my mind because I carefully extracted my inner workings and hand-painted them onto the pages of this book. Mustering up the words together to express adolescence - a beautiful and tormenting phenomenon.from an array of youth creatives. The 20 contributors submitted work reflecting on said topic, sharing their perspectives and the navigation of self during this crucial period of discovery.
Now, I'm starting on volume 2 of Entropy and want to focus on balance.
How do you balance your 20s? Over-indulgence and consumption is all we are exposed to, especially in the city. I'm looking for new faces to be featured, interviewed, and involved! Feedback during this time is also very appreciated. Thank you for reading and please reach out via my website (email on homepage): jennaferayo.com
Sep 18, 2024
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I donāt personally know Alissa Bennett, but I think she is a brilliant and funny person who has clearly lived a vibrant life. A friend of mine once said about himself, āIām not a journalist; I just live this shit.ā I think this mantra (with the tweak, āIām just really interested in this shitā) applies to Bennettās writing and various projects ā from her burner IG @regret_counter and podcast, to the next-level zines she publishes. Those zines though, wow! The writing is so intimate, confident, and, well, perfectly imperfect (sorry, sorryā¦).I like that every other paragraph has a typo, that she will frequently and flagrantly use cap-locks, and that she essentially unpacks the indiscretions of fringe tabloid figures in order to exhume her own demons and make sense of her past and present. Itās got a very āwarts and allā vibe, and I respect that sheās willing to air her own dirty laundry in service of establishing a spiritual connection to the subjects of her texts. Thatās not to say she goes easy on them, but it all feels empathetic instead of exploitative or solipsistic.Ā Rarely do I audibly laugh while reading, but Bennettās work consistently makes me LOL. Generally, I prefer when people write the way they talk. Her essays feel like the coolest girl at the bar is whispering (and occasionally shouting) a very good story directly in your ear, but she also doesnāt really care whether you like the story or not. She already knows itās good.Start with āBad Behavior,ā which is a series of essays/love letters to various semi-public figures who engaged in specific, scandalous acts. Then hit āPretend Youāre Actually Alive.ā Most of the zines are sold out, but Iām sure sheād send you a PDF if you ask nicely. Thereās also a new one on the way.
Sep 8, 2022
Top Recs from @bumbythefool
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Iām sick of feeling powerless so my new coping strategy is to not let a stupid system bully me into quiet despair. Iām learning how to use my stateās General Assemblyās online bill tracker and Iām subscribing to email updates for the agendas and the public hearings of the legislative committees Iām most concerned about. Iām memorizing all my legislatorsā names and emailing and calling regularly.
Also: Check to see if your stateās Legislative Library has Libguides that explain in laymanās terms what bills are passing in your state and other educational/legislative resources you have freely available to you!!!
Nov 20, 2024
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Iām up in my bank account every week writing every transaction out in a spreadsheet and Iāve never been better with money in my whole life. Also helped me notice asap when a whole mess of fraudulent transactions slipped in while I was occupied moving and otherwise wouldnāt have seen them for a while. Itās absolutely more effective than a Mint budget tracker because you have to confront EVERY purchase and contemplate what actually has value to you.
Jan 6, 2025
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You will make about 60k if you're lucky unless you become a manager, and you will have 35k of debt or more from grad school (online grad school is cheaper sometimes and no one cares where you get the degree anyways). And sometimes you work for a university (which is essentially a corporation) or the government. But in general everyone in your field will believe in a code of ethics that raises the dignity of humanity above the mire of misinformation and censorship. And you help empower people with the information literacy to move through the world as confident capable individuals/professionals/scholars. Community college libraries are my favorite environment I've worked in so far because the students are cool, driven, and diverse in age and background. Public libraries also do amazing social work in 2025 to provide services to their communities like harm reduction, networks of resources for unhoused people, language teaching, professional development, basic technology training, literally just being a third space, I could go on forever. It definitely is a career that exists because of neoliberalism I'm not going to lie, like American public libraries only exist because robber barons in the 1900s donated a mind boggling amount of grants to towns across the country to build them (not sure about other countries' history with this to be fair). All that being said I decided I wanted to be a librarian when I was 16 and I've been committed to that path for 11 years with no regret.
To add a personal note to this rec and emphasize how meaningful this work really is, I'm going to indulge in a story because I could genuinely cry thinking about all the kind, interesting people I've met who have chosen to be vulnerable with me about their needs and goals. A couple years ago I helped an older man for multiple hours to remember his email login so he could get a copy of his birth certificate from his son-in-law who had emailed a scan of the physical copy which was in another country. The stakes were incredibly high and the task seemed virtually impossible because we didn't even have an email address to start. He was having trouble reaching his son-in-law to ask for help because of the time difference, and he needed the scan ASAP. We were together for so long I learned a lot about him. He talked to me about Islam and Christianity and angels. And then we got it! It's probably one of the defining moments of my career and to me is one of the most impactful things I've ever done.
So there's my job rec lol!
7h ago