nuepoca blogs

Around this time last year, I began conceptualizing NuEpoca while living in the garage of my mother's house. At times, her house was pristine, and sparkling with the finish of lavender scented Fabuloso on the floors. More often than not, though, there was rotten fruit, oozing somewhere in the kitchen, and flies circling overhead. Even now, there's often clean and dirty plates on the overcrowded counter, next to the coffee maker that no one uses because it specializes in Roach Brew. 
 

 

In her home, I’ve noticed I always lose control of my life, because it is sucked out  through my eye sockets after seeing the piles of dirty laundry in the washroom. I barricaded myself in the garage, only leaving to eat, or drink water. I focused on the things I could control. 

 

 

I focused on writing. 
 

 

I retreated into the screen, obsessively writing and submitting short stories. There was some delusion involved; a clouded conscience desperately seeking external validation. After all, I had to make money off my words. I’d have to support my life and possibly my mother’s and sister's and brothers’. 
 

 

One day, during my creative writing course, I opened my inbox to an email from a magazine. Status: accepted. I was ecstatic. Attached to the congratulatory email was a google doc, with the title of my story. Please click here to view the edits!
 

 

I clicked to open the document, began to read my story, and realized they had butchered it. My smile dropped from my face faster than a maggot lays eggs. My ego swelled and threatened to burst. I contemplated my next move, knowing that I had been rejected by the magazine before for refusing edits. I asked my professor for advice at the end of class.
 

 

He sat in his swivel chair with a Costa coffee in his hand. I sat at my desk, which was more of an armrest, and explained my dilemma.

 

 

"I don't like many of the edits, and I'm afraid that it will look like I wrote the story this way intentionally, and I just don't like that. But maybe my version is worse, and maybe I'll regret not keeping the edited version." I explained. 

 

 

They had fixed intentional run-on sentences with exclamation points. So! Many! Exclamations! They did everything right, technically, but my story was so flat after. It felt to me that the editor thought, "I am the editor for the school's only art and literary magazine, I must do extensive edits, and I must prove that I am doing my job."
 

 

"So should I reject the edits, or let it be?" I asked. 
 

 

He sipped his coffee, and then offered his insight. 

 

 

"The tricky part is, you don't want to be known as a writer who’s hard to work with." He sipped the coffee again and swiveled slightly in his chair. "But there's nothing stopping you from, y'know, just undoing the edits later. It's your story, you can keep the version you want for yourself." 

 

 

It hadn't occurred to me that I could accept their edits, and reject them at the same time. Brilliant.

 

 

So I sold my story out so I could be published in the school's student run magazine, my only publication to date. That wasn’t the approach I wanted to take with my art, but it wasn’t entirely avoidable. If it meant that I had to sell out with my left hand and keep myself true with my right hand, so be it. After a few weeks of ruminating on these thoughts, I approached my professor again with the question of starting another literary journal at the school. He told me right away that it was going to be extremely difficult to convince the admin bureaucracy, but there was nothing stopping me from doing my own journal. 

 

 

The thought was exhilarating, but risky. Did I really want to put myself out there like that? At the time, the answer was a resounding no. But maybe one day I'd want to. I came up with the name first, and it took a couple tries to get it right. I settled on NuEpoca. Nu being ‘new’, and Epoca meaning 'era' in Spanish. 

 

 

Back at home, in my dimly lit room, upon piles of mixed clothes; I began designing the logo from random images I had taken throughout the week. Fun fact, the U in NuEpoca is an image of hotsauce over sourcream, and the P is a chandelier from the midtown location of Cafe Intermezzo. This was one of my favorite steps of the process because of the creative liberty, and partially, because no one had to know about it just yet. 

 

 

My mother implemented designated laundry days for each one of us. It helped the chronic laundry for a bit, and the piles in my room became clean. I began therapy. NuEpoca took a winter hibernation, shelved in a clunky, offline wordpress site. 
 

 

After the new year, my partner and I began talking about moving out. He'd been staying with me most nights at my mother's. I was ashamed of what he witnessed; my stepdad's week-old lentil soup sitting on the stove, housing several spore faring species; my brother's mental breakdowns in the kitchen, outside my bedroom door; my other brother's run-in's with the law; my estranged sister's random visits plus her strange demeanor ever since COVID, when she had her first schizophrenic breakdown.

 

(y la fantasmas deslizó por la casa, a que nadie sabía de ellas.)

 

I began working on a picture for the website. Meanwhile, on the other side of the wall, my brother was cursing at people who weren't there. 

 

 

"Shut your ass up, bitch ass boy! You're lucky I don't beat your ass up." 

 

 

Other nights, my mother was giving my brother a stern talk about what happens to men who choose that path in life. 
 

 

"¿Quieres ser como tu papá? ¿Sin trabajo, sin dinero, sin nada?" 
 

 

Just once, I was the one lectured. I had invited friends over to my small room to spark up. While we sat playing MarioKart, she called my phone. I stepped out into the kitchen, already knowing I had been caught. She had smelled that stale earth.

 

(O sea, el olor de las lágrimas​​​​​ de niños invisibles.)

 

She tried to lecture me, a cross-eyed burra, but after a few minutes of staring into my red eyes, she began to cry. I stood silent with a tight chest, hating that she was crying instead of screaming at me. I told her that I would never let it get in the way of my life. As proof of my diligence, I cited my short story that got published, and it seemed to calm her nerves a bit. I told her about my upcoming trip to Dublin, and with a relieved smile, she told me she was jealous. 

 

 

Weeks later, during the Winter break, I tried to get a handle on the journal again. All I needed was the actual website. Problem was, I had no idea how to build or run a website. Delete, try again, delete, try again. Delete, delete, delete. 
 

 

On a Spring day, from the other side of the wall, my mom called for me. She bought me a pair of shoes from the Shoe Carnival for my trip to Dublin. They were sage, waterproof boots with a lilypad design going up the sides. They were too small, but I took them anyway. 
 

 

I took another months-long-break over the remainder of Spring. My fiance and I moved by the end of May. I felt like I had space to live again. From there, progress on the journal took off quickly. Over that summer, I found the remainder of my team. I began to promote it at school, at coffee shops, and most importantly, online. I have sent more cold messages than I care to admit. I started anti-depressants, and felt dreadful memories subside considerably. Still, there is no forgetting one thing I am confronted with everyday; I am the only one who got to leave. 

 

(Fuiste la que ella no podía cuidar.)

 

It took time to see any submissions, but sure enough, they began to trickle in. Visits to the site were growing, but submissions began to slow down. Without enough for a full length journal a week before the deadline, I began worrying. I couldn’t help but think that I failed, even after all this effort.  

 

(Fuiste la que tuvo que saltar.) 

 

But NuEpoca came to me in a time of need. It was an outlet for me to be myself and create something that made me excited instead of anxious. I don’t want to change my writing, even if it makes me stubborn. I don’t want to grow a following online solely for the fact of doing so. I don’t want to ‘network’ or ‘collab’ – I want to be a part of people’s lives. Art should move people, inspire change and create genuine conversation. I don’t worry about making money from my art; I am content with having a day job, and pouring my passions into NuEpoca. 

 

 

I want to find like-minded creatives who are genuinely interested in defining our generation of art instead of leaving it up to out-of-touch executives and companies focused on the quickest way to grow profit. 

 

 

I understand that change can’t happen overnight. I’m grateful to everyone who has joined the team or submitted because it proves to me that there are people who share the same values, and want the same changes as I do in the creative landscape. 

 

Hands down, the best part of this entire process has been the people it has allowed me to connect with. I can’t wait to see where NuEpoca can take me; whose art I will see and love, whose stories I will read with tears, whose creations will be a staple in my memories.