This past week, I was in Portland, Oregon, for my first and last XOXO, as it were, as this was the very last time it was being held. I had long observed the festival from afar. Not very closely, mind you, I had no idea what I was getting into, but I just knew it was going to be transformative in some way.
Events like this – explosions of creativity and energy and ideas and people – spark inspiration and cultivate that urge to create. The first time I ever went to a comic convention, I remember just feeling a palpable energy of people who were passionate about something and excited to be excited about it. It was such a boon to my soul and my creativity, seeing other people who create talk about what they do, why they do it and how they want to do it better.
To me, that energy is the essence of XOXO – connections around the joie de vivre of the creative spirit. There is something more ephemeral about it, though, both for the fact that it is an ending, but also because people who create online are often isolated for much of their work, so having and creating these moments of connection, however fleeting, becomes that much more essential.
As for me, the urge to create is always there, but understanding the purpose and finding the focus has been a struggle sometimes. Stopping to ask myself, why am I making this? Creating with intention is something that I find more and more important to me as I get older. Sometimes that intention is as simple as ‘what if I made a frog out of clay and then made a little comic about it, just to practice making a little folding zine for the first time.’
It took me 20+ years to make that first zine. I said to myself, ‘I can’t make a zine until I’ve acquired every skill I need to make a zine like they were Pokémon. I know design. I know printing. I know art. I know lettering and typography. I’ve caught them all. Now, I know everything I need to know to make a zine.’
A foolish perfectionism. The moment I started making the zine I realized I would learn twenty things I’d do differently as soon as it was finished, but I also couldn’t wait to make the next thing. The real learning happens when you’re in it, doing the thing, because that’s also what gives you ideas for that next thing.
The play. The process. The experiment. The XOXO of it all.
