Finishing up the Tiger Zine

It's not so much that I procrastinate. It's more like I get distracted and side-tracked, like a cat that hears a faint rustle in the bushes and must go investigate, forgetting about its intended destination. 

So although I started gathering information and writing articles many months ago for what I have chosen to call my annual zine, meant to be a compendium of informative tidbits I have collected in the process of researching and making the Useful Calendar each year; and even though by April I had completed a few longish articles about research-heavy topics like worldwide efforts to save wild tigers from extinction — because 2022 is the year of the tiger — sometime in May, it just stalled. 

This happens in part because I often sabotage my own efforts by gathering too much information and then feeling overwhelmed by it all. A case of TLDR only for the one doing the writing — too long, didn't finish! When mid-August came around, I was seriously considering abandoning the project, but then I thought about how much time and effort I had already put into it, including creating new artwork just for this zine, and I asked myself, What will it take for me to finish this? 

Well, I decided that I would not write those few articles that I had originally intended to include but had not yet written, even though I had gathered the information and found the subjects worthy and fascinating. I told myself there will always be another zine, I can always find a place for that topic if it's really important to me to write it. 

Then I looked at the draft document and realized that it was exactly 24 pages with just a few small gaps that needed filling either with new artwork or a short snippet of text. Well, any multiple of 4 pages can be made into a booklet, so suddenly the completion of my tiger zine was within reach. I was finally energized to finish it. I did two illustrations for the section on the evolution of cats (above) and a third of catnip (which I have growing in my yard), wrote a very short piece about tigers and catnip (yes, they like it), and selected a poetry excerpt for the last page, which goes nicely with an illustration I already had. Done, and done! 

I'll debut it during the LoLa Art Crawl, September 17–18, and then make it available in my Etsy shop and possibly at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts, if they want it (they usually do want my zines, but last year's annual zine didn't sell very well, so I have no expectations regarding this one). 

It's kind of funny, too, how I can't seem to motivate myself to adopt a daily drawing practice, but when I need an illustration (or two or three) in order to finish a zine, I can sit down and really focus on getting them done without being led astray by distractions. I do enjoy it when I'm in the midst of creating the illustration, and I often say to myself, I should do this more often. 

I guess I just need to make more zines.