The Zine

I’m not sure how to start this. I love the zine, I properly love it. I just wasn’t expecting to as bratty as that might sound.

Starting out with the project, it was originally just for the writers. While we didn’t have a lot done, we had a name and a theme that went along with Halloween. So, after I missed a day of school, I came in and suddenly everything was different. It felt like the rug had been pulled out from under me and I was immediately a bit unrightfully offended. Things change. But that was how I felt in that moment. That first day when I found out it was suddenly a group project and I went to write, I got nothing done. It wasn’t that I actively wasn’t doing it out of rebelliousness, but I’m not going to say that something wasn’t brewing under the surface that I wasn’t aware of until looking back.

The next time that we worked on it, I felt better about it. More comfortable. I let myself go and wrote some poetry that I ended up using in the Zine that I liked enough that I put it on my portfolio blog almost immediately.

My favorite part of the entire process was probably the putting together of it all. I love and feel proud that I was able to be the one putting it all together and in order. I felt like I had control in a way that I hadn’t felt since I wrote out that page of shots last year that, when I showed it to people, they were kinda floored by how much I loved the organization of it all.

I love having that kind of control. I’ve taken my entire library in my room down and reorganized it twice in the past six months, and I have over 200 books. I haven’t counted. In middle school, I used to clean other people’s lockers for them and when they’d try to pay me I’d never accept. Even if I found money in their lockers, I’d give it to them immediately. Now, I have trouble being personally organized, even though I just did a major cleaning of my room because Lex is having a party in three weeks. I feel a different kind of comfort in either situation, clean or messy. Right now I feel cleaner and more clear headed with the clean room, while when my room is messier I’m more artistic and think in a less conventional way.

Anyways, the Zine. Seeing the finished product, and having it now, I know I’m going to keep it for a long time. I still have the Metamorphosis playbill and the edition of OPUS that I was in from freshman year. I keep these kinds of memories. I need them.