Somewhere in your mid to late twenties the steady decline begins. You're dissatisfied with your job. Odds are you may have never actually been satisfied with your job in the first place, but when it was bright and new and the paycheck was enough to cover a six pack on top of your loan payments, it felt pretty good. As for your social life, well, if you could bring yourself to leave the tiny bubble you've designated as home base using some haphazard logic about the MBTA, you might actually be able to improve in that area. Your college degree is getting dusty in the closet or your mom's basement. The friends you used to have are posting baby photos online, and the friends you do have are leaving empty beer bottles at the foot of your couch.
These stories are about that time in our lives where we realize we're not doing anything to move forward. They are about acknowledgment, grief, boredom, despair, and the fact that it's so much easier to decide to make a change than it is to do anything about it.
Let's get sad.
Let's Get Sad
a pushin' 30 zine
Do Not Read Comics in association with Sleepy Press are looking for submissions for an upcoming zine! We're looking for creative/ depressed people interested in writing about their experience pushin' 30. We're accepting Fiction, Non-Fiction, Poetry, Essays, Comics, Illustrations, and Photography for a one-off zine to premiere towards the end of the summer. Your work can be realistic, fantasy, sci-fi, funny, bummer, or whatever. We want to hear about your experience coming to terms with the big three-oh, what your twenties have meant to you, or just listen to your meditations on the concept.
The zine will be between 20 and 30 pages so shorter work is more likely to be accepted. All pages will be printed in black and white, so please make sure you're cool with your photography, illustration, and comics being grey scaled. The work will be printed on folded 8.5" x 11" so you'll want to plan on each individual page of your comic or size of your illustration being shrunk down to a little smaller than 5.5" x 8.5".
Since we're working on a pretty small scale here on a project that is likely to be amongst friends, we won't be cutting checks to people. BUT you'll be able to purchase zine's at printing cost, and then sell them for cover cost and keep the profit. Unless someone has a better idea, I dunno. Additionally, you will of course maintain all rights to your work, including ability to re-print or post at your leisure. The comic will be availble in zine-form only for the first six months before being offered for free online.
Due date for submissions is August 5th, one month from this very day.
To submit, email your work to Botsched@gmail.com, or just show it to me you probably know me. If you're sending illustrations or anything that may be high res, you can feel free to send low res stuff and then high res upon being accepted.