✷ hey y'all ✷

it's the last perzine newsletter of 2020! i cannot fucking believe we're at the end of december. i hope everyone has taken a moment to pat themselves on the back for muddling through this undoubtedly difficult year. i wanna spend january looking ahead, so here are some headlines from my 2020:

✷ survived a global pandemic
✷ quit my day job to try my hand at full time self-employment (semi-successfully)
✷ scanned my whole zine catalog for patreon, and made 5 new zines
✷ did a lot of drawing 
✷ navigated being the sole support in a major family emergency
✷ got en-gay-ged
✷ learned more about gardening and saved seeds to share
✷ managed to maintain my closest friendships
✷ weathered some truly scary mental health stuff
✷ somehow didn't reach for cigarettes or alcohol
✷ read an inordinate amount of books (for me)
✷ learned a lot about myself

it's okay if all you did this year was survive. if i had continued going to work at my day job, all of my downtime would have been spent curled up in a ball while hyperventilating. nobody is resourced right now, and there are so many different flavors of pandemic difficulty to choose from. you don't need to have big plans for 2021, either. i hope there are a whole lot of folks with "heal my trauma from 2020" on their list of resolutions. lord knows it's on my short list.

✷ music news ✷

after hearing bud tapes new release, "20 song game," i remembered that i can put music out into the world off the cuff instead of putting a ton of pressure on myself to make something "good." so i recorded a voice memo demo and threw it up on bandcamp. i sent it to emmet (good bud and proprietor of bud tapes) and i'm excited to say i'll be joining the bud tapes family in the new year. keep your eyes peeled for a limited tape release!

✷ zine news ✷

i am in the process of printing preorder copies of "how to support your non-binary family member." my patrons will get their zines a little ahead of the preorder folks because of my eternal gratitude. in case you missed it, the preorder is open until january 18th. i've stopped hyping it at this point because i've never printed something this big before and i goofed. it turns out it costs me $7.07 to print one copy and i was trying to charge $8 for them (that $1 profit becomes zero after transaction fees). overestimating the shipping cost is the only thing generating any profit from them, so i'm treating the preorder like a limited time only sale. i'll be charging $10 + shipping for them in my shop after the preorder is over. if you want the cheaper option, get the preorder while ya can. it comes with a free sticker i made just for the release, y'all are the first people who get to see it:

major lesson learned. it's difficult to be an artist who makes things that are generally expected to be cheap. i want everything i make to be priced in an accessible way, but unfortunately that means i end up undervaluing my labor, and this is my sole income now. i put a lot of effort into offering quality wares, and i'm trying to accept that there are gonna be folks who have cheaper prices than me. maybe they get a special deal i don't, maybe they have a full or part time job and can afford to sell things at a lower price. not all sellers are created equal. the rise of amazon makes it even more difficult, because fast and free shipping has become the expectation. this is a reminder to other artists to not sell yourself short (and if you are undercutting the market rate for things, be transparent about how and why you can do that).

✷ shop updates ✷

i decided to get some "being kind is punk" stickers made, which can be found in my etsy shop. i quietly added the new nonbinary stickers too, shhh.

redbubble finally removed my "be gay do crimes" burning cop car design. stickers and pins of that design are now only available through my website. i'm pretty bummed because it was my best seller, and it barely sells on my website comparatively, but so it goes. i recently added a bunch of new designs to redbubble, and some of them will end up being new button designs in my etsy shop, too.

✷ fucking hooray ✷

shoutout to snacks, baths and facetime. this was a very odd month for me. normally i would be in pennsylvania right now, visiting with family and friends. this year i facetimed, called and/or mailed little love letters instead. this year was also my first year being totally self-employed for the holidays. i hit my target income for the first time since quitting my day job. i loved the holiday rush, and i honestly felt petty bummed when it dropped off (especially since it coincided with finishing the nonbinary zine, i suddenly had nothing on my plate). i'm hopeful that i'll get even better at being my own boss as 2021 rolls around, but for now, i'm happy to be alive and keeping my head above water.

ordinarily i'm not a big fan of christmas, but this year kyle and i upheld a few family traditions to mark the time and have something to look forward to. it turns out that in the absence of steep expectations to behave a certain way around family and enjoy myself at all costs, christmas was a bizarre but very pleasant experience. regardless of what you do or don't celebrate, i hope y'all are holding up okay, and that there's at least a tiny pinhole of light at the end of the tunnel. we got this, even if it ain't pretty.

see ya next year!

love, alyssa

~ past perzine newsletters ~