A desire to create

I’m not an artist, writer, designer, or photographer—nor have I ever been any good at those things.

The only things I’ve ever considered myself exceptional at are: math (but since leaving school and doing everything in excel, that has faltered), basketball (but since leaving college where I went to play, I have barely picked up a ball, and while I’m still younger than LeBron, these knees¹ would say otherwise), and organizing shit.

I don’t know that I’d say “organizing shit” is really a skill either; most people are just too lazy to do it. But it’s given me a decent career in Program/Project² management (consulting)—of which I find pretty dreadful in practice, if I’m being honest³.

Despite lacking any skill⁴, I have this innate desire to create things and put them out into the world. I’ve had a small internet presence throughout the last decade in various places, mainly around TIV, but ever since dealing with my anxiety⁵ in a serious way, I’ve been a lot more active on these Interwebs—thus foofaraw was born.

Since I can’t write or draw or do much of anything, foofaraw was a way for me to create something without those skills. This is where my superior powers of “organizing shit” came into play. It started with me just making a lot of the work I was doing to organize which shows were coming out and sharing that with the world, but it’s obviously morphed into something more. I get to be the “editor” for people who can write and can draw—becoming the organizing force behind all of these creations.

Then there is my love for print. I’ve always wanted to make a magazine⁶, but never felt I had much to say (or again the skill to make something interesting). However, with foofaraw, I’ve got all this wonderful stuff from wonderfully creative people. I now had “content”⁷ to print. Thus began the “press” part of “foofaraw press”. I already have plans to do two print collections every year of what we publish on the site, along with four chapbook zines, and an annual print-only hardcover anthology.

Still, this dumb little idea of doing a single-page zine as a little letter to send people has been lodged in my brain for years and I’ve finally said, what the hell, it’s time to create something that’s actually just me—not other peoples writing and art—just a little letter of nonsense. Who cares if no ones reads it. With so much “stuff” on the Internet I want to make something I can touch—even if it’s just a single sheet of paper coming out of my B&W printer.

This is definitely not something that will make any money either. At $1 a pop, after you consider the cost of a stamp, envelope, and stripe fees, I might end up actually paying a couple cents to send it out. But that doesn’t matter. It’s about the desire to create something and share it with the world, in as lo-fi and simple a form as I can think of—it’s both tangible and ephemeral in the best way.

This also means I have a ton of print projects on my hands… an annual anthology, a bi-annual collection, and a quarterly chapbook for foofaraw and now a monthly letter for TIV… 

Now I actually feel like I have a reason to get out of bed in the morning and have something exciting to work on every day⁸.

1. And back, and neck, and right ankle, and now maybe even my left shoulder…
2. Maybe one day if I’m lucky, Product Management too.
3. Which I have…
4. or ~Vision~
5. That’s another post in itself.
6. I technically have now! First run of 15 even sold out!
7. Ughh I hate that word…
8. I definitely lost the plot of what this post was halfway through, but I can’t be bothered to try to organize my thoughts any better at this point.