Making Waves

When I started Making Waves, I didn’t set out to tell a neat, polished story. I wanted to capture the way life actually feels: uncertain, full of questions, sometimes heavy with regret, and, if we’re lucky, softened by acceptance.

The metaphor that came to me was an old one—messages in bottles. In this zine, each stage of life sends a message at its moment of greatest need: Where do I begin? Please don’t let me fail. Did I make the right choices? These bottles drift out into life, and for the longest time there’s no reply. The sea does what it always does—it simply exists.

That led me to something I learned in Zen practice. We often think of ourselves standing on the shore, watching time and life pass by like a boat on the horizon. But Zen reverses that perspective: we are the boats. We’re the ones moving, carried by currents, sometimes resisting them, sometimes surrendering. There’s no “shore” we need to reach—just the journey itself.

One Zen parable that resonates deeply here is the Empty Boat: a man is rowing when another boat collides with his. He shouts in anger—only to realize the boat is empty, drifting freely with the current. His anger evaporates. Life, like that boat, often has no intention or reply; it simply flows. This zine leans into that idea: our messages don’t change the sea. Instead, they change us, until we reach a place of letting go and moving forward.

This zine was also influenced by Scott McCloud’s ideas about comics: the space between moments, where readers create their own closure, and how transitions invite participation. Making Waves uses those principles to leave room for you, the reader, to bring your own stages and your own messages into the story.

That’s why the last page of Making Waves is left for you. There’s a blank space to write your own message—whatever stage you’re in, whatever you need to send out. Then, if you choose, leave the zine somewhere for someone else to find. Like a message in a bottle, your words may drift into someone else’s life when they need it most. In that way, your voice becomes part of a common journey, shaping how we move through life together.