from ❤️🔥 Jess: music for a live stream, not a sushi restaurant
I made my last zine at the end of February, and since then my work schedule has been a mess. I don’t work a lot of hours, but they’ve been creeping back up to pre-March 2020 levels—only now they’re meted out across the whole week, such that I don’t have a single day off. Even if it’s just a single one hour class, I’m teaching every day of the week, and it’s been exhausting.
So it was very easy to give myself permission to stop streaming, to stop making zines, to stop doing all the extra stuff. But it’s the extra stuff I love to do.
Last week, I spent all of Saturday thinking, I should stream, I should stream, I should make something on stream. But I didn’t do it. Instead, I spent the day doing nothing, which was the definitely right choice at the time. Obviously, my body and my brain needed that time off.
But it’s the extra stuff I love to do.
I’ve been missing making zines and streaming, too. I started doing crosswords again on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, and tomorrow—Saturday afternoon—I’m going to make a zine. I’m announcing it across the internet to keep myself accountable. I hope you’ll join me when I go live.
(But if you can’t, I edit my zine streams into videos that live permanently on YouTube. I’ve recently been going through the earlier videos to add timestamps, and they’re not as bad as I remember! I’m pretty proud!)
My zine streams are always chill times, with a little flailing as I try to fill all the pages with words, so if you have any questions about making zines, or even live streaming, join me in the chat. I'm always happy to see people show up. One of the main reasons I started streaming is because it's been hard to weather this pandemic alone. But then I'll stream a crossword as I drink my coffee in the morning, a couple of strangers will help me out with the clues I don't know, and that connection will carry me through the day. It's more than I ever hoped it would be.
So if you want to join in, you can sign up at twitch.tv and follow me @jessmakeszines. Turn on the notifications so you'll know when I go live. (I have upstairs neighbours, so cross your fingers for a quiet afternoon.)
💘 Jess
Jess Driscoll
Your internet penpal
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