Hobbies, zines, and '90s nostalgia
Seeking the tactile pleasures of arts & crafts as an antidote to too much typing.
I’m having another one of those weeks, where the obscure-ish thing I’ve been thinking about is suddenly popping up everywhere, and the coincidence or serendipity of it is inspiring me to act.
I started reading War and Peace in January for this same reason, and I can honestly say that the slow-read on Footnotes & Tangents has improved my life.
Now, follow me on this tangent, I promise it’s all connected. Over the years, I’ve heard Colin give a sort of mentoring pep-talk many times, to young film programmers. There are some great bits about the perils of turning your passion or hobby into your career. It can be amazing, the best thing in the world (and these days, exceedingly rare), to get paid to do what you love. And, it can be a real challenge to suddenly find yourself amongst people whose work you used to admire from a distance. Now, they’re your professional peers, and you have to engage with them differently, or at least be more tactful about trashing their work.
This is all good advice. But the part of the talk that has stayed with me isn’t the part about the wonders of hobby-as-job. It’s this:
When your hobby becomes your job, you need to find a new hobby.
I think it’s perfectly great to have hobbies that you never intend to commodify or monetize. I envy and admire people who belong to lawn bowling leagues, or build model rollercoasters.
But, sometimes you do want to do your hobby more professionally, and that’s fine too. When it happens though, you really do need a new hobby. Spending all your time and effort feeding the capitalist machine is bad for you, for all of us. Writing (a lot more than I have for some years) has had a wonderful effect on my creativity. The flow of my creative juices has gone from drip to waterfall. But, it has also felt more like work than it ever has in the past, and I’ve been sniffing around like a truffle pig for a new thing. A thing to do just for fun. A thing I will never jobbify.
A post in
’s highly enjoyable Social Media Escape Club this week pointed me to Carolyn Yoo’s zine, “how to keep your hobby from becoming a job.” I ordered a physical copy immediately (but you can also download the digital version for free). Seth’s post also included a link to an interview with Lynda Berry, whose Making Comics I got from Queen Books recently, and have been obsessed with.Last fall, my kid learned how to make a mini comic out of a single sheet of paper. Austin Kleon posted this good explanation of the method, if you’d like to try it.1 The kid and I have been folding and making mini-comics ever since, and Lynda Berry’s book has just freed me up completely from the limiting idea that I need any technical proficiency in drawing in order to keep doing this.
The truth is, I have been wanting to make a zine for months. Maybe the zine will be part comic, but whatever it is, it’ll be made by hand. I’ve been discussing it in the group chat I have with my writer-mom-creative-besties, and bringing it up (lightly, only lightly!) with Colin (because I am constantly like “OKAY, I have this idea, I’m going to create a miniature world out of cardboard and felt and then make a short film in it that’s half animated and half live action, starring our toddler child, but he’s going to be dressed in a suit and behaving as an adult2” or “OKAY, I know I’m eight months pregnant and can hardly walk to the bathroom and back without toppling over, but let’s go cross country skiing!3,” or “OKAY, I know I’m currently in the middle of writing a novel and it’s been a big struggle, but what if I also did NaNoWriMo and wrote a second novel, except in one month!4” and frankly he’s tired of my harebrained schemes).
I think my actual new hobby might be drawing, but I can’t let go of the zine thing. I’ve been in a real swell of nostalgic love for the late ‘90s, when I made zines, and helped friends make zines, and made all kinds of stuff all the time, because social media didn’t exist to distract any of us. I’ve been trying to live as though it doesn’t exist now, for approximately 20 hours per day, thanks to the Freedom app. It’s kind of working.
Back in the late ‘90s I drew a lot, and journaled, and taught myself how to write with my non-dominant hand for no reason. I starred in video art installations and let friends cover me in bubble wrap for art. Obviously, I was was ridiculous. I went to parties where people got high and cut pictures out of magazines and collaged, or talked about memes. We talked about memes a lot, in a pre-social media, pre-smartphone, pre-Google, pre-All Your Base Are Belong to Us time, which hardly seems believable now. I’m not sure I could define a non-internet meme anymore, but back then, the cultural transmission of ideas was hot. People were culture jamming. People were ad busting. People were smoking cigarettes indoors and collaging.
Now, my eight-year-old is obsessed with a meme where someone says “backflip” in a southern accent, and so we walk around the house saying “backflip” to each other.
In 1998, I spent so many late nights in the 24-hour Kinko’s on Bloor Street that is now a FedEx, photocopying things I had hand-drawn or hand-written, or cut and pasted together with scissors and glue, wasting endless 0.04¢ copies on getting the alignment of my pages just right, or on messing up my pagination.
I know the experience is unlikely to feel the same, this time around. Memes have changed. I’ve changed. The world, well, you know. But still, I have the itch.
This idea might be too impractical and laborious to execute more than once, but I feel sort of committed to making at least one zine, just for fun, because I want to cut and paste things with scissors and glue again. I don’t have a topic, or theme, or idea, or title, but I do have a deadline: my birthday, which is in mid-July. Having a gift to share with the world on my birthday sounds fun. The date is far enough away to feel doable, but close enough to add a frisson of excitement to the project. Will I manage it, in only three or four months, during which I also have a number of other massive deadlines, including finishing the second draft of my novel?
Time will tell. (Sorry, Colin.)
In fact, even Austin Kleon wrote this week about being “from the 1900s” (😭💀) and leaning into it. Coincidence? Serendipity? Something about Pluto in Aquarius?
I’ve been talking about this for years. Our child is no longer a toddler, but I still think it could work. I just have to build those cardboard sets…
I really thought I could do it, until we arrived in Quebec City for our “babymoon” and I realized I could barely keep my enormous, lopsided body upright in the snow and ice, and that putting it on skis would be wildly dangerous. Colin knew all along, but was kind enough to keep it to himself.
Me in November of 2023. It was a nice thought, anyway.
Yes yes YES make a zine. And I'd pitch in for shipping too (I hit the wrong button in your poll).
I've been getting back into PHOTOGRAPHY, and love love love it.
I am now just waiting for your zine. And saying BACKFLIP to myself. Which I thought I was going to hate, and in a way do.