Här kommer en avslappningssaga som passar bra att läsa när barnen behöver varva ner.

Den röda pandan och den mjuka vinden

Högt uppe bland de gröna bergen, där bambun vajade sakta i vinden, bodde en liten röd panda som hette Mio.

Mio hade en mjuk, rödbrun päls och en lång, randig svans som var så fluffig att den nästan såg ut som en liten filt.

Varje kväll brukade Mio klättra upp i sitt favoritträd.

Där, mellan två stora grenar, fanns en alldeles perfekt plats att vila på.

Mio kröp ihop.

Han kände den mjuka grenen under kroppen.

Han kände den svala kvällsluften mot nosen.

Och så hörde han vinden.

Svisch...

Svisch...

Den rörde försiktigt bambubladen.

Svisch...

Mio tog ett långsamt andetag.

In...

Och ut...

Sedan slöt han ögonen en liten stund.

När Mio öppnade dem igen såg han något långt borta.

En liten gyllene prick lyste mellan träden.

Det var månen som steg upp bakom berget.

“God kväll, månen”, viskade Mio.

Månen svarade förstås inte med ord.

Men dess mjuka ljus föll över träden och gjorde allting stilla.

Mio lade sin fluffiga svans runt kroppen.

Som en varm filt.

Han lyssnade.

Någonstans långt borta porlade en liten bäck.

Plipp...

Plopp...

Plipp...

Och vinden fortsatte.

Svisch...

Svisch...

Mio kände hur kroppen blev tyngre och tyngre.

Tassarna vilade.

Benen vilade.

Den lilla nosen vilade.

Till och med öronen kändes trötta.

Då hörde Mio ett litet prassel bakom sig.

Det var en nattfjäril.

Den fladdrade långsamt förbi och landade på en bambustjälk.

“Vart ska du?” frågade Mio sömnigt.

“Jag ska hitta en lugn plats att sova på”, sa nattfjärilen.

Mio log.

“Jag tror att jag också ska sova snart.”

Nattfjärilen flög vidare.

Mio tittade upp mot månen en sista gång.

Sedan tog han ett långsamt andetag.

In...

Och ut...

Han lyssnade på bäcken.

Plipp...

Plopp...

Han lyssnade på vinden.

Svisch...

Svisch...

Och han kände sin varma, mjuka svans runt kroppen.

Allt var lugnt.

Allt var tryggt.

Och i trädet bredvid bambuskogen somnade den lilla röda pandan.

Medan månen lyste mjukt över hans sovande lilla nos.

Och vinden viskade:

“Sov gott, Mio.”

Svisch...

Svisch...

Och hela skogen sov.

Du hittar fler avslappningssagor här.

Freundinnen & Freunde der Weisheit! Im Alltag ist es oft schwierig, ambitionierte Ziele konsequent zu verfolgen. Viele herkömmliche Methoden setzen zu hohe Anforderungen, die schnell überfordern und demotivieren. Der MTO-Ansatz bietet eine praktikable Alternative, indem er realistische Ziele definiert und den individuellen Alltag berücksichtigt.

Anstatt ein Ziel nach dem binären Prinzip zu setzen (entweder erreicht oder nicht erreicht, ohne Zwischenstufen), unterteilt MTO (Minimum, Target, Outrageous) jedes Ziel in drei Ebenen. „Minimum“ ist das, was du basierend auf deiner bisherigen Leistung sicher erreichen kannst. Das „Target“ stellt eine leichte, aber machbare Herausforderung dar, die etwas über das hinausgeht, was du bereits geschafft hast. „Outrageous“ hingegen beschreibt ein Ziel, das momentan unerreichbar scheint, aber als langfristiger Ansporn dient.

Ein Beispiel: Anstatt sich vorzunehmen, täglich zwei Stunden zu lernen – was schnell überwältigend wirken kann – könnte das Minimum-Ziel 20 Minuten pro Tag sein. Das Target-Ziel fordert dich etwas mehr heraus, etwa 30 Minuten, während das Outrageous-Ziel zwei Stunden beträgt. Diese Staffelung reduziert den Druck und fördert gleichzeitig kontinuierliche Verbesserungen.

Denkanstoss zum Wochenbeginn

„Der Ziellose erleidet sein Schicksal – der Zielbewusste gestaltet es.“ – Immanuel Kant (1724–1804)

ProductivityPorn-Tipp der Woche: Entscheidungen minimieren

Zu viele Entscheidungen ermüden das Gehirn. Reduziere die Anzahl der alltäglichen Entscheidungen, z. B. indem Du eine feste Morgenroutine oder eine standardisierte Kleiderwahl etablierst.

Aus dem Archiv: Drei evidenzbasierte Schritte, die Dein Lernen messbar verbessern

Manchmal genügt ein einziger Satz, um alles wieder zu vergessen: „Dies ist nicht prüfungsrelevant.“ Was vorher konzentriert gelesen oder sogar verstanden wurde, ist plötzlich wie weggeblasen. Wissen, das keine Anwendung findet, verflüchtigt sich erstaunlich schnell. Umgekehrt ist es gar nicht so schwer, neue Informationen länger im Gedächtnis zu behalten, sofern Du weisst, wie. Drei kurze Schritte reichen oft aus. Alle basieren auf neurowissenschaftlichen Studien und lassen sich in weniger als fünf Minuten umsetzen. Ergänzt Du sie noch mit einem guten Schlaf, so wird daraus ein erstaunlich wirksames Lernen.

weiterlesen …

Vielen Dank, dass Du Dir die Zeit genommen hast, diesen Newsletter zu lesen. Ich hoffe, die Inhalte konnten Dich inspirieren und Dir wertvolle Impulse für Dein (digitales) Leben geben. Bleib neugierig und hinterfrage, was Dir begegnet!

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EpicMind – Weisheiten für das digitale Leben „EpicMind“ (kurz für „Epicurean Mindset“) ist mein Blog und Newsletter, der sich den Themen Lernen, Produktivität, Selbstmanagement und Technologie widmet – alles gewürzt mit einer Prise Philosophie.

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Disclaimer Teile dieses Texts wurden mit Deepl Write (Korrektorat und Lektorat) überarbeitet. Für die Recherche in den erwähnten Werken/Quellen und in meinen Notizen wurde NotebookLM von Google verwendet. Das Artikel-Bild wurde mit ChatGPT erstellt und anschliessend nachbearbeitet.

Topic #Newsletter

I spent a pretty good chunk of today just learning how to crochet and doing that while watching TV. I actually enjoyed that a lot and I didn’t feel like my day was wasted. This felt like a more productive use of my time and one where I don’t feel like I have nothing to show for it afterwards. I also did do some cleaning around the house because I realized a lot of tidying wasn’t done and that was probably taking a pretty big toll on me.

I just got back from the Muse concert, and I got a lawn ticket A few days before to try to get the cheapest price. I decided I wanted to See if I could get down to the pit, and eventually two of the employees told me to have fun and give me the wristband! I got to dance and see muse, upfront and close, all because I kept trying, and I was willing to try. And I kept thinking about how a closed mouth does not get fed. It really just does take courage and asking, and you really can get way more than you think.

8. Partir

La France avait définitivement perdu la guerre. Le Viêt Nam n’était plus une colonie. Petit à petit l’armée française se retirait, avec elle les administrateurs, les gendarmes, les fonctionnaires, on évacuait. On évacuait les petits enfants, les Eurasiens dorénavant indésirables ici, déclarés pupilles de la nation. Leurs mères tentaient une nouvelle vie malgré l’opprobre, elles avaient couché avec un Français, l’avaient aimé sans doute, avant d’être abandonnées.

 1955. Il était temps de partir. On fit les bagages en désordre, congédia les domestiques, comme se conduisent les colons : sans élégance. Je m’accrochais à ma nounou comme un naufragé à une bouée, je ne voulais pas partir, il n’était pas question de l’emmener, qu’elle reste donc avec les autres niakoués. Je devais soudain m’habiller de vêtements peu commodes et, pire, porter des chaussures, elles me blessaient. Toute mon enfance j’ai eu mal aux pieds. Adieux à la maison.

Le projet était de la brûler, la maison, au dernier moment la pluie battante découragea l’entreprise. On prit la route dans la Traction au toit surchargé. C’est sous des trombes d’eau, sous lesquelles d’ordinaire nous nous ébattions en joie, que ravalant mes sanglots j’abandonnai ma petite enfance. On entendait chanter les crapauds familiers qui, de leur voix grave, appelaient en français «Où’il est p’apa, où’il est p’apa…» en réponse au chœur des grenouilles.

Embarquement sur un navire surpeuplé. Cabines minuscules, désarroi de la grand-mère qui pour la première fois de sa vie n’était pas servie. Elle ne sait rien faire, à peine s’occuper d’elle. On mange mal, on dort mal, mes pieds me font mal, j’ai interdiction d’ôter mes chaussures « pour ne pas me faire mal », j’ai les talons en sang. La nourriture me semblait immangeable, commença un long calvaire alimentaire qui durera jusque vers 12 ans. Je comprenais à peine le français.

#ngolai

As much as I love the craft of writing, it doesn't give me the same kind of satisfaction as a more literal type of craft, where you're producing something tangible that you can hold. I think that's why I love bookmaking. It combines storytelling with something that is truly hand-crafted, turning written works into physical objects that can be works of art in their own right. One of my current projects in progress is a series of single-sheet litzines inspired by Rinky Dink Press, which puts out beautiful little micro-chapbooks and sells them for a buck a pop. 

Rinky Dink's mission is to “get poetry back into the hands (and pockets) of the people,” and that's the spirit I love about zines in general. They're an accessible way to share thoughts, words, art, or whatever else you want to print and distribute to the world. If you're not familiar with the term, a zine is a small, DIY book that's printed or photocopied in small batches. The term is a shortened form of “fanzine” and has its origins in the 1930s, when it described sci-fi magazines like The Comet and The Planet. Zines started to take on a more subversive spirit in the '50s and '60s, when they were used to share ideas and art that commercial publications would reject or censor, and were adopted by the punk subculture in the '80s for the same purpose. 

Exactly what qualifies something as a “zine” versus a “hand-bound chapbook” is nebulous and depends on who you're talking to. But whatever you call it, this kind of DIY book is very easy to make. For the most basic versions, all you need is an idea, some planning, and access to a copier.

Types of zines 

A zine can include basically anything. Comics, poetry, manifestos, sketches, stories, photos, collages, an aisle-by-aisle rundown of your last trip to the grocery store—literally whatever you want to publish and share with people. While a zine can be anything, though, there are a few common flavors that you'll find, like:

• Perzines - Personal zines, ones that focus on the creator's daily life. This could be their mundane day-to-day in a diary style, ruminations on a specific event or topic (like a DIY memoir), or focused on the author's opinions and thoughts.
• Minicomics - Handmade short comics that are typically both written and illustrated fully by the creator
• Art Zines - Main content is the creator's visual art (drawings, photos, collages, etc.)
• Compzines - Compilation zines. You can think of them like a DIY literary journal, containing art and writing from multiple creators, usually focused around a single topic or idea
• Fanzine - Non-official publication produced by and for enthusiasts of a genre, fandom, or other cultural phenomenon
• Litzines - Literary zines, with content that's fiction, poetry, or personal essays

I've also noticed some online publications that call themselves ezines or digital zines. This doesn't quite compute to my brain, based on my personal definition of the term, but in this context “zine” usually seems to mean something that's distributed for free and has a DIY/counter-culture spirit. 

Steps to make a zine

Step 1: Choose a size/format and create templates.

The reason you want to do this first is that it's going to dictate every other step, like how much stuff you can include and what supplies and materials you'll need. Just like with the content, there are a near endless variety of ways that you can create a hand-bound book. But there are 3 formats that are going to be the easiest to make using standard 8.5” X 11” paper:

• Half-page fold – Pages are stacked together then folded in half and bound with staples or string. Each piece of paper creates four pages with an untrimmed measurement of 5.5” X 8.5” 
• Quarter-page fold – Each piece of paper is folded twice, then nested inside other folded sheets and bound together with staples or string. Each piece of paper creates eight pages with an untrimmed measurement of 4.25” X 5.5”
• One-piece zine – Made from a single sheet of paper that's slit in the middle and printed on one side, then folded to create 8 pages that are 4.25” X 2.75”. There is also an alternate version of this that is printed on both sides and creates a 16-page string-bound booklet.

One-piece zines can't be nested, so your page count options are either 8 or 16. With the other two styles, you can add pages in multiples of 8 (for quarter-page) or 4 (for half-page) up to around the 40-page mark. Once you get over that, the booklet is going to get very thick to the point it can be difficult to keep shut, depending on the thickness of paper that you're using. With a thinner paper you can sometimes get away with up to around 48-56 pages before the book stops acting book-like.

Once you've picked your size and page count, you can create a template for the pages. Getting the pages in the right order can be tricky with folded zines. It's relatively simple with a half-page fold, and some software programs even have a setting that will print documents paginated for a folded booklet without you needing to re-order them. With single-sheet and quarter-page folds, though, some of the pages will need to be laid out upside-down, and the order isn’t as intuitive. My suggestion is to fold (but don't bind) a dummy version using blank paper. Number each page while it's folded, then unfold it and use that as your guide for how to lay out the pages. 

Step 2: Create or curate the content.

Which, again, can be anything, although there are some things that tend to be best-suited to the zine format. Given the low page count, only shorter form things will fit, like poetry and stand-alone short stories or personal essays (you could serialize something like a novella or memoir, but it's likely to take a lot of installments). The format also lends itself well to work that incorporates visual elements and non-traditional forms and layouts. 

There's a tone factor to consider, too. Zines tend to live along the fringes and margins, sharing voices and exploring ideas that don't get much attention from mainstream publishers. This doesn't mean that what you publish in a zine needs to have overtly “fight the man” type energy, but it's a format tailor-made for work that's raw and rough around the edges. 

Step 3: Layout and format. 

There are two ways you can do this. The old-school approach is to physically arrange your content IRL, either by creating directly on the paper you'll photocopy or by cutting and taping/gluing the pieces collage-style onto a master sheet (note here: if you're taking this approach, cardstock is a sturdier base than regular computer paper). Once the master sheets are prepared, you can xerox them to create the copies you'll distribute. 

The other option is to use a software program for the layout. If you're making a half-page zine, you can do this pretty well even in a word processor like Microsoft Word just by turning the layout to “landscape” and making it two columns. I wouldn't recommend trying to do anything more complicated than that in Word, though, and even for a half-page zine Word isn't the best option for things like art books or comics. There is a free program called Affinity that works very well for book layouts, and is worth checking out if you're interested in making zines or other books.

Step 4: Buy supplies and materials. 

For a zine that's all or mostly text, standard printer paper will work fine. If you're including artwork, especially if that art is in color, then a heavier paper will be better so things don't bleed through. Something in the 24-pound weight will still be thin enough to fold and nest together but stand up better to heavy ink. Note that this doesn't matter for an 8-page single-sheet zine since only one side of the page is going to be printed on (though of course you can still use fancier paper if you want to). 

It's common for zines to use standard paper covers. If you want to have a separate, sturdier-feeling cover, cardstock in the 80-100-pound range tends to work the best. This is stiff enough to feel substantial but still flexible and easy to fold. Once you get thicker than that, it's actually less durable because the fibers along the spine can crack from repeated folding. 

The other thing you'll need for most zines is a way to bind them. Staples are the fastest, and you can use any standard stapler for the job (provided it's long enough to get the whole way to the fold). You can also get bookbinding kits for about $10 that include a few different colors of twine along with an awl to poke the holes and large needles to pull the twine through. 

A couple of other optional supplies—if you're making a one-sheet zine, it's helpful to have an X-acto knife and metal ruler for putting the slit in the page. You can do the job with scissors if you have to but it takes longer and isn't as clean of a cut. It can also be very helpful to have a paper cutter for trimming up the edges of the pages when you don't get the fold exactly right, or making the post-binding cuts on quarter-page zines. You can get a basic guillotine-style one for $30-$40 that will work fine for something short like a zine. 

Step 5: Print (or copy) and bind. 

If you have a home printer, you're all set. Most home printers don't have automatic double-sided printing. None of the ones I've ever owned have, at least, which just means you need to go page by page manually. I do them in batches—so if I'm making 10 zines, I print 10 copies of a page then put those copies into the tray and print the back, and so on. I use a similar assembly-line style for the rest of the stages. Once everything's printed, I go through and paginate it into separate copies, then bind them and cut them. 

Small piece of advice here: if it's not immediately obvious how your printer pulls paper through the machine, do a test print first. Before you print, mark the page with which side is facing you and which end is “up” (however that’s defined in your paper tray). This will keep you from accidentally double-printing on the same side or printing one side upside-down.

If you don't have your own printer, you have some options. The standard Kinkos isn't too expensive for black-and-white copies and you can bring and use your own paper. They also often have tools like paper cutters there that you can use for free. If you want to do color, Kinkos is a pricier option—the last time I went, those cost upwards of .70 per copy, which means 1.40 for every two-sided paper in the book. Depending on how many copies you want to make, that could add up fast.

You can also check if there are any maker spaces or coworking spaces in your area. They usually have things like a copier or printer available for members, and maker spaces especially are likely to have other tools like awls or heavy-duty paper cutters. Granted, this usually isn't a completely free option, either—most of those places have a per-hour or monthly membership fee, and you might still need to pay for color copies, though likely less than you would at a Kinkos.

Like I mentioned in the intro, I'm in the process of creating some litzines and I've reached that final print-and-bind step, which I plan to do the first run of this week. I'll take some pictures along the way and share them next week to give some more step-by-step instructions on how to do both the basic hand-bound book and a couple of more complex options that I've used. 

See similar posts:

#PublishingAdvice #Zines #Bookmaking #SelfPublishing