LA Queer Zine Fest May 17th and thoughts on Ikigai
Hi all!
I’ll be tabling at Los Angeles Queer Zine Fest on Sunday, May 17!
One of the zines I will be bringing with me is Beyond ‘Don’t Quit Your Day Job!’ It’s an inquiry into the tension of whether you actually want to make art your day job.
Everyone does things slightly differently, and everyone’s backgrounds, contexts, and circumstances allow for different experiments.
At this year’s Artist Publishing Practicum (hosted by at Louis Place), the speaker A.X. Mina brought in the Japanese concept of Ikigai which translates roughly to ‘reason for being’.
The concept of ikigai was expanded for me during this session when Mina suggested that we could pursue multiple activities to cover the different arenas in the chart to bring balance to our lives. And that these might change over different seasons.
Previously, I had been going for the goldmine of the very center of the venn diagram — but this puts a lot of pressure on finding one right answer, instead of being able to experiment and find meaning in multiple pursuits.
I’m still offering 30-minute connection calls with creatives who are asking questions about any of the following: practice, flow, vocation, navigating capitalism with anti-capitalist values, or sharing your work in our current digital/political landscape. I would love to hear what questions you’re grappling with, what challenges you’re facing, and where you’re finding support or balm during these times.
15 minutes for you to pick my brain and get insight on anything you’re grappling with in your creative life.
15 minutes for me to hear more about your practices, as rooted in our current world. And what challenges you’re facing.
Elsewhere
🔮 Over on Patreon: April comic essay of the month was about Recovery Days in an autistic brainbody. I will certainly need one after LAQZF, and I’m looking forward to it! Hoping to have print copies available at the Zine Fest this weekend! Previously: Spring Equinox studio update.
🙏🏻 Over on Substack: An essay on honoring self-boundaries and Practices for attuning to intuition.
📚 Over at my online shop, zines zines more zines!
🎧 Related episodes of Foment the podcast: Philosophical frameworks for anticapitalist artists, on Play, and Get back in the river.
