I did a most absolutely uncharacteristically Abby thing today: I left it until the last minute. Anyone who knows me knows that I am never that I’ll-do-it-later person, whose deadlines creep up until they’re on the floor hyperventilating due to the very real threat of a failed assessment, angry parent, or disappointed friend. I know a number of people who seem to do this on the daily, and they make it work. I get that it is just how some people operate, and they do it well. I am not one of those people. I’m on the opposite end of the spectrum: the I’ll-do-it-2-weeks-in-advance kinda gal. However, today was one of those rare days where I felt the terror of where did all my time go?
Initially I had planned to sell a zine at ZineFest tomorrow. I hurriedly finished the final two pages on the train, but I had it all sussed out. The printing place closed at 5pm, and as long as I ordered my copies before 4pm, they would be able to print them same day. After all, my train was due to arrive at 12pm: I had plenty of time. My delusion dwindled when I turned up at the printers at quarter to two and discovered I needed to provide them a digital copy – in other words I couldn’t hand in my original, collaged pages.
I frantically bussed home and set about arranging my zine on InDesign, a surprisingly long process that I grossly underestimated. To make matters worse, a couple of the collaged words had fallen off and been lost while I was at the printers, so I needed to fix that digitally. I also have very little expertise with InDesign so struggled to do fairly simple tasks. By 3.53pm I had finally sent of a pdf file by email to be printed. Following this I rang to check it had been received, and then had a lengthy email thread to discuss the finer details of my order. Eventually, I was told this print would come to a total of $170.50 – over eight times the price of the figure that was originally quoted to me when I enquired earlier in the week. By this stage I was so over it, and withdrew my order completely – only after speaking with a very apologetic guy on the phone who assured me the person who gave the original quote would be given a talking to. Not that I cared at that point, but the sentiment was there. Frankly, I’m pretty exhausted by the whole saga.
Regardless, I have decided to post my finished zine (and any future zines I create) on my new Zines page here. I hope you enjoy, and I’d love to hear your thoughts on my creation.
bohemianhumanist.com 