Finally completed a “scrum” to halfway satisfaction. After committing to working in mini-scrums, I suddenly found myself more than overwhelmed and decided that it was finally time to take a mini-vacation, as much as it did not seem the time. My body (and mind) appeared to demand it of me.
So I spent a few weeks doing the minimum amount of work I figured I ought to do, and tried to dedicate some time to play. Sadly, after completing some important segments of client-based work, I grew restless and realized that I simply wasn’t going to be happy with myself if I didn’t devote myself to my real job. So I dusted myself off, realized that I’m only going to fix myself if I do it through my writing, and did my damnedest to get back into Issue #002’s feature short.
After all I’ve gone through, I’ve realized that self-repair is definitely part of the job. I’m using the term “self-repair” since the notion of “healing” trauma has become a trope, and I despise it. There’s something infantilizing about the way we discuss psychological wounds, and those who suffer them. I can’t put my finger on it, but there’s this asinine notion that if only we took every dour soul out there and swaddled them in therapeutic technobabble, all would be okay. Never is there the notion that someone might, in fact, be to blame for those injuries. Nor is there much concern for the fact that someone might heal wrong, come back broken in a deeper and more permanent fashion. All those ghastly, inconvenient wounds just have to be bandaged up—never avenged, never accounted for, never made to serve as a creative force. And we must always be open, for all the world to see, even when the world is dead-set on inflicting deeper wounds. Trust is to be given, always, but never earned. Emotional expression is warped in service of the very stoicism it claims to oppose.
In any event, it’s looking more and more as if the upcoming release schedule for Runicfire will approximate the following:
December 15th: December Issue, #002.
December 30th: Holiday Issue, #003.
Furthermore, since, according to the Intercept, the federal government wants to make it illegal to distribute or own anarchist zines, I’m probably going to have to update to cover to promote the fact this effectively Gannon-bans me in Texas.