Why “theMaykazine?”
If you’ve known me for a couple of years, you probably know that I’ve been blogging for a long time. I was LiveJournaling long before “emo” broke into the high school American lexicon, and my LJ is now about seven years old. That’s the same age as a second grader.
Since my first “Weblog entry” and now, I’ve been around the block a couple of times with blogging platforms: Xanga, Typepad, WordPress, Vox… Oh, and Twitter and Tumblr, too… But all that experimentation didn’t necessarily improve my quality of writing, and as I was wading through my extended existential exploration that is the first year of “the real world,” I didn’t feel motivated in trying to “grow” my high school LJ. I got too big for my britches. Perhaps it was me just being a commitmentphobe, ultimately refusing to settle down and focus on “the relationship,” but what it really came down to is one point, last year, during my pop culture power hour, where I decided I need to stop writing such vapid filth. I read some old entries from high school and thought “Good god, I was one of those.” In my mind, I’m way overdue for some maturation in self expression.
Normally I overthink everything (Hello, subheading.), so it was a surprise to me when I knew, almost instantly, what I might want to name the thing. The blog. The pronouncement to the Internet that I’m not as annoying as I once was. This revelation comes straight from an entry in my LJ from 2005.
Setting: Schwertlilie, Camellia (She doesn’t get a code name because she wrote herself out of our quartet’s lives.), and I road tripped down to Los Angeles to rescue Hooligan* from her MCAT.
Welcome to my Maykazine!
Aug. 21st, 2005 at 11:31 AMthe night before we stayed at [Das Musikal's] & drank [which means i ate ice cream]. [Das Musikal said my LJ is like reading a zine, hence the headline of today.
] Das Musikal’s cat & camellia’s cat can make the fat cat club. the next day we hung out poolside after eating chinese “kari out” leftovers. camellia & Das Musikal read. Schwertlilie swam. i laid out. & yes, i actually have tanned.
Daaaaamn! ::bites fist:: That’s annoying to read.
So there you have it. someone said “zine” to me and I capitalized on the catchy malleability of my first name. (Maykawaves, Maykaphone, “My-kar,”…)
Why is “theMaykazine” all squished together like that?
To be different. It’s a cheap throwback to 2.0 – which, instable as trends are and dependable as the lifespan of any meme on the Internet, was the defining age of when I came into my first job. It’s very Flickr, and I like Flickr, so why not? Also, when writing titles into essays or articles, I always get annoyed by the pause as I try to convince myself of whether or not it should be The Times or the Times, the TSC or TSC. How about I just be weird and make one word and play with funky capitalization, too? Yes, yes, that sounds good.
So there you go. That’s my branding. And this is my (temporary) “zine.”
