Gratitude Zine
I chose a zine by Austin Kleon titled “ My Gratitude Zine”. Kleon got a powerful message through in a couple pages using his artwork to either format an exercise or to show the meaning of what he’s trying to say. I think he made it most likely by hand. By simply writing out his thoughts on paper and designing it as he goes. I like that style a lot within the zines that I have seen, the simple but powerful ones. He shows a couple of exercises to help him cultivate gratitude. He starts by explaining that one can both have everything and feel nothing as well as being alive but also feeling dead. “Being alive but feeling dead” is a phrase that I have heard more than I want to but honestly is true with some people. Walking around looking like themselves but beneath the surface is a losing battle. He then creates a list of everything he is grateful for to remind himself of what he can be happy about in life. I believe he thanks other people to remind himself that he is not alone in the world, that he has people willing to help and teach him. Naming activities that you can honestly say you enjoy doing can show you what you haven’t fully realized. What you find out you enjoy doing now can potentially show you how you will spend the rest of your life. If you can’t name anything that you like to do, how will you enjoy anything later on in your life? Gratitude and optimism can be hard to reach but fulfilling once achieved. It is very hard to pull yourself out of a negative cycle, so take a step back, breath and focus on what you want to do with your life and how you can be happy doing it.
I really enjoyed reading your blog post about the zine you discovered revolving around the topic of gratitude because it really radiates a positive vibe for me personally. When you started writing, you mentioned that the author of the zine you were inspired by, made his zine by hand which you liked and said that it was simple but powerful. I can agree with this because anything can have a powerful meaning even if it is simple. In my opinion, nothing has to be extremely intricate for it to show a sense of power. The point that stood out the most to me was when you mentioned “being alive but feeling dead”. I’m sure a majority of people have felt like this before and it’s sad because it is so common nowadays. Personally, this really hits home because even though you are still living and moving and breathing, you can still feel numb and dead inside due to whatever circumstances that have happened. I have learned to treat everyone with respect throughout my life because you never truly know what is going on in someone’s life. You could be that one person that can make a difference in someone’s life by being nice to them and you never understand how far that goes for other people. Personally, I feel that gratitude is extremely underappreciated and I can say that at times I underappreciate it as well. Within the past few years, I have lost many friends from tragic events including teammates and one of my best friends. A perfect example to prove my point is the unexpected death of the Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Dwayne Haskins today who died at the very young age of 24 years old. The point that I am trying to make here is the fact that life is a very precious gift that people don’t value as much as they should until they realize how precious life really is when they lose people they know. Everyone only gets one life and another day is never promised and I think that we should be more conscious about that.