Happy New Year 2023 and hello after another break from blogging. I tell you, blogging is a lot more challenging when running a zine and social media is such a comfy space to quickly share but there really is nothing like a good old blog post and zines. Speaking of zines…
Some wonderful things happened last year for Cyclista Zine, like releasing issue seven, Bike Joy. Bike Joy shares stories, illustrations, images, poems, puzzles, and stories all relating to our intersectional experiences of finding bike joy. Whether that’s biking during balmy nights with friends, pedaling towards self-acceptance, making space for BIPOC joy, creating outdoor joy to honor our ancestors, or partaking in pleasure bike activism. I really wanted this issue to be all about building a toolkit for radical self love and seeing bike joy as a tool for liberation. That freedom we feel on our bike is powerful in other spaces in our life. Bike joy has always been medicine for me, a meditative practice, a form of self-care, a connection with the Land. This form of liberation is powerful in many spaces in our lives and hopefully this message will help many of us become more free from the binaries that entrap us.
Last year, CZ has had a couple of exciting works come to fruition like a piece in the Get Rad’s second issue, Creating Space Through Zine Making, a feature piece in Sierra Mag on bike zines, Spoken Word: Inside the Rogue, Homegrown World of Bike Zines and an interview with the Wheel Suckers Podcast on Crumb Culture & Bike Medicine. And last summer, I dropped Bike Talk perzine #2 and participated in an article interview for issue 96 of Broken Pencil Magazine, “Zines Take On Tiktok” about developing the zine scene on TikTok.
I ended the year doing a zine workshop and a collaborative zine with participants of Sisters in Action, a program with Bikes Not Bombs for FTW safe spaces with bike mechanic skill building. The zine is still in the works but I look forward to sharing a few stories from that experience.
Personally, it’s been a very busy year of seeing all my family and friends after 2 years since the beginning of the pandemic. I mean I literally saw everyone! From Mexico, California, and the UK. And I did a trip to the Galapagos which was trip of a lifetime. However, not long after, I started to struggle with burnout and I mean severe burnout. It impacted my sleep, my immune system, and left me feeling in such a low mood. I wouldn’t say I was depressed, I had the ability to do my daily routine and interests. But this has been coming on a while. I had felt it in past trips, coming home exhausted and depleted, needing weeks of bed rest and alone time. Always on the verge of a meltdown cause I was energetically depleted. But this time was different. The long short of it is now I have to make special accomodations for my needs and take things at a slower pace. What that means for me in the year of 2023 is that I won’t be doing trips or projects that ask a lot of me. I will be doing more solo work and less travel. Which all sounds great!
Recovering from burnout is a long process and I am very lucky to have access to therapy which is helping me work through my new normal so I could understand, accomodate, and communicate my needs. And as someone who grew up very independent, it has been a challenge.
So, I’m looking to the year 2023 to be a year for healing and balance, for rest, more riding and more reading. I hope your year is looking flexible and full of possibilities too.