Right now, I have Wednesdays and Thursdays off, which makes me feel like I could get so much done! I don't, but it feels like I could. This is me.

That was me Wednesday this week. But on Thursday, I made a video. It's a tour through my zine archive—not everything, of course, but a curated sampling of book-type things I have made over the last 40 years, starting with a grade 1 assignment, all the way to the calling card zine I made for XOXO 2024 (but never actually handed out, oops).

(After I finished editing and uploading, I remembered that I had made a screen recording of The Print Shop so I could talk about how much time I spent making letterhead and cards, so that'll have to be a whole other video.)

I am a packrat at heart, so I probably would have kept all this stuff anyway. But I keep it, too, as a reminder that this is what I've always done. This is what I'm meant to do. This is what 3-year-old Jessica dreamed about, mashing the keyboard of our Atari 400, wanting to see letters fill the screen. This is what 9-year-old Jessica wrote about in her lock-and-key diary. This is what 15-year-old Jessica thought was possible when she imagined her future.

I hope I'm keeping that dream alive for all of them. I'm a writer. I make books. I always have.