You Must Not Quit Yourself

"When I was in high school I was advised that it's difficult to have an occupation doing something you like, and that it's good to do something you somewhat like. I went against this advice, and now I'm glad that I did. If I only somewhat liked this work, I'm sure I would have quit by now. Doing what you like equals yourself, and you must not quit yourself." - Takehiko Inoue

Seal here.


Today I wanted to share the words of wisdom from one of my favorite manga writer/ artist, Takehiko Inoue. He is best known for the successful manga/comic sagas: the basketball manga Slam Dunk and the wandering swordsman manga, Vagabond. They have both been made into anime, tv drama series, and life action films.

Often times, Seal is racked by her past "failures." Mainly that it took me so long just to acknowledge that my true dream was art, and that I was an artist, and to finally pursue it wholeheartedly. Somewhere a couple of years ago, in the middle of a job that was not art, rising to the top in a career that society approved of, but feeling empty inside, I realized: you can fool everyone else, you can convince everyone else but you can never cheat yourself.

Have you followed a dream to end of the line? Have you given yourself permission to pursue it? What does it look like when you've crossed the line and completed a dream?
So what is your true love? If you can allow it, what is your dream?



Monkey here.

When I was growing up, all I wanted to be was a comic book artist.  I loved to draw, and, with no knowledge of the pay-per-page rates, the tight deadlines, or the crazy amounts of research and practice involved, I declared I wanted to be a comic book artist.  Something about being able to make awesome art that told a cool story filled me with joy.

I quickly forgot all that as I started public school, focusing more on the academics that came easily to me and that brought me praise.  I ended up going to a prestigious university as a Freshman, and quickly came to realize that given total freedom, I was not a Chemical Engineer at all, but an actor!  I ended up running an Asian American theater group for a while, competed in some poetry slams and theatrical readings, and met Seal. 

Seal bought me my first sketchbook (that wasn't a black and white composition book).  I graduated, found a high-paying recruiting job, and promptly quit after a month to go back to art school.  There, I realized how much blood, sweat, and tears becoming a technically proficient visual artist requires.  I started out as a graphic designer, then an illustrator, then finally took my senior classes in fine art.  Somehow I graduated with a hodge-podge of random classes that are part of no single degree program.  There, I realized that I was not into what the school was teaching.  While I was and still am extremely grateful for the skills I developed there, I realized that the path of the fine art students doing senior shows and the illustration students doing concept art and editorial illustrations was not mine.

Fast forward three years.  I slowly but surely create and self-publish my own comics.  Some are drawn poorly.  Others are more like illustrated short stories.  I've come to realize that more than any job title, or what you do to make a living (retail wage slave for 5.5 years, baby!), who you are is something powerful that is absolutely essential to find if you want to be happy.

No amount of money, power, or love is going to make up the void left in you if you are not being true to yourself.

It is, of course, not mutually exclusive to be rich, powerful, and have important loved ones in your life and be true to yourself, but all those other things don't make up for finding your essential self and embracing it.

I am a storyteller.  Whether that takes the form of theater, spoken word, short stories, flash fiction, comics, paintings, t-shirt designs, blogging, or even just telling long-winded jokes to friends over beers, I've realized that the thing that first pushed me towards comics is a love for stories.

As 2012 comes to a close, have you found who you are?  If not, what's holding you back?  I know the truth might be scary, or intimidating, but really, the truth will set you free.

The Freedom to Be Happy

**First off, we wanted to take this opportunity to let you know that Monkey + Seal will be taking a short leave of absence. We'll be heading out of the country for two weeks on our first (longer-than-two-days) vacation in four years! We'll be taking lots of reference photos and trying to keep up with the art, but we won't be having any new posts for the next two weeks. We will be re-posting some of our older, favorite posts from the archives, but no newsletter! Thanks for sticking with us and we'll see you when we get back! End of announcement.**

You are most likely to have, at some point in your life, been disappointed, hurt, scared, worried, angry, frustrated, or all-around in the dumps. We can get frustrated at co-workers, or angry at ourselves for losing a wallet or purse, or worried that no one will like our art. Often times these negative emotions will build up and will suck us into a vortex of bad mojo.

No more! We say. We believe that everyone has the freedom to be happy, and we want you to find that freedom. We'll say this up front - being happy is a bit of work, but it is doable.

Part of reclaiming your freedom is realizing that "you don't have to go there." "There," being that place of doubt and fear and shame and worry. You can only affect your environment so much. Sometimes we'll do everything that we were told to do in order to succeed, and sometimes things will just go wrong. You'll set an alarm to wake up extra early, but then you end up forgetting something and you run late. Life doesn't always go perfectly to your expectations, and you can't control the actions of others, but you CAN control your own response.

Part of the idea of the Freedom to Be Happy is that happiness is something that you are free to become. It's not necessarily given to you, but it is something that you can CHOOSE to be. While there is a lot of grieve about, and we want to respect and honor your feelings when things go tremendously wrong, but in the end, you can choose to wallow in those feelings and let them debilitate you, or you can choose to acknowledge them, accept them, and then move on.

It can be a hard process to take ownership of your own feelings, but once you do, life seems a whole lot happier. You can worry about whether or not someone will like your newest sculpture, but is the worrying really going to help anything? You can stress out about whether or not the interviewers are going to like you, but is that stress going to make you magically more personable? Don't you think all that worry and stress is just going to make you more nervous? Most likely if you're worrying about the outcome you don't want to happen, the worrying will probably be a detriment to you rather than assist you.

Monkey + Seal have both been dealing with frustrations in their own lives, but time and time again, as we'll be venting to each other and getting frustrated or sad or angry, we ask each other "Is worrying going to solve the problem? Can you change it by getting angry?" It helps to take the emotional aspect out and it allows for you to approach the challenge in a rational manner which will help you to tackle the problem with actions rather than reactions.

Reactions are punching that person who insulted you, or are shredding your dumb boss' important documents. They may make you feel better momentarily, but do nothing to actually improve the situation or your mood in the long run. Actions are deciding to just ignore and avoid the toxic person who is upsetting you, or to speak with your boss or their boss or the HR person to figure out what they're doing wrong and how to go about changing that.

So if you have a new product, say, a new print, and you set up a presale and are worried about it selling, ask yourself, is worrying about the presale outcome going to change anything? By worrying and stressing and checking your email minute after minute to see if anyone bought anything going to really help? If you're worried about sales, why don't you take that time instead to send off press releases to blogs that you think might be interested in your product? Or how about you use the time to tweet and facebook about your new print? Or, if you can't help hitting refresh over and over, go take a walk and clear your head. And don't bring your smartphone, because you know you'll be checking your email from there.

Overall, it's about figuring out what you can control and what you can't. You can control your emotions, and how much work you put into whatever it is you're trying to achieve. You can't control other people or their actions. You can control whether or not you're prepared for rain, but you can't control whether or not your craft fair is rained out. You can control whether or not you practice enough for your dance recital or novel reading, but you can't control whether or not people like what you do.

So remember: you have the choice and the freedom to be happy. Whether or not you choose to be happy is a whole different story. By doing all you can and trying your best, that's all you really have control of. Let go of the worry about external factors that are out of your control, and you'll find that you'll be less stressed, you'll be more in-tune with what you really want and really care about, and you'll find that you'll discover new ways of making what you do want to happen come true.

Let Your Freak Flag Fly - Be Yourself

Many people might give you unsolicited "advice" as to how to approach your work. Maybe your paintings are too dark and morbid, or that abstract painting looks like a bunch of paint splatters, or that you should take photos that are more commercial.

Getting criticism isn't a bad thing - it's getting unhelpful criticism (especially unsolicited criticism) that's a bad thing. Having someone help critique your work is awesome - we constantly critique each other's work probably daily, but we always ask for it, and we always ask what the other person is trying to achieve.

Asking what the other person is trying to achieve is always important before giving feedback. This allows you to tailor your feedback to the specific problem the other person is trying to achieve. If you are trying to paint a stylized character with goofy proportions, it doesn't help if the feedback is "Your proportions are off." Duh, that's what you were trying to do in the first place, right? However, if you're working on a photo-realistic painting of a friend and someone suggests that perhaps the left eye is a bit higher than where it should be, then you're getting helpful feedback.

But let's get back to bad feedback. Hopefully you don't have to deal with this, but if someone (especially someone whose opinion really matters to you, ie. mom, dad, partner, etc.) gives you feedback completely unsolicited and completely opposite of what you want to do and who you are, DO NOT LISTEN.

While they might mean well, do not listen to them. If you paint bears, and you love to paint bears, and bears are your favorite thing to paint, don't paint landscapes, even if you think you'll have a better chance to sell the painting. Even if you think you have a better chance at getting into a gallery. Especially if that someone told you not to paint bears, you had better frickin' keep painting bears.

If you don't enjoy what you paint, even if you're good at it, even if you become successful, you won't be happy. Monkey and Seal fought their Academy of Art classical realism training for years, and only just now are we really embracing what we love to do. Seal was told that her paintings are too saturated and look too much like animation background illustrations to be fine art. Bah! Monkey was told to paint more realistic, and to leave out the text or incorporate it more into the painting. Bah!

You have to love what you do, and to do that you have to do what you love. Whether you like painting demons or angels, landscapes or portraits, animal sex scenes or intricate church interiors, you have to paint what you like. If you're a dance who loves modern dancer, don't do ballet (unless you love ballet as well). If you're a MC, rap about what you want to rap about, not what you think will get you street cred. If you're a weirdo, be a weirdo. Everyone is weird to someone else. Just as you might be branded a weirdo for making your own paintbrushes out of your own hair, for you, that's normal and most importantly that's who YOU are. If you collect Coach bags, while you might think that everyone thinks you're normal, I bet you there are a good billion people or so who think you're nuts for spending so much on a single bag.

There is always going to be someone who thinks you're doing it wrong, but in reality, if you're happy, you're probably doing it right. So do what you love to do, and do it proudly, and everything else you want will fall in place after that.

Eat the fattest frog first

Recently, Seal has realized how true the saying "Eat the fattest frog first" is (via Mark Twain). Unless you happen to really like eating frogs (we don't - no meat in the Monkey + Seal household), the fattest frog is always going to be the one thing that you don't want to do. It's working on that project for the client that you hate, or it's getting around to wash that huge moldy pile of dishes, or it's paying that overdue bill.

Whatever it is, take it out first thing. We've found that when you save it until there's no more time, everything else you do during the day is tainted by that lingering feeling of unease that is your subconscious telling you that you still have something left to do.

In another gross metaphor, think of it this way. Would you rather eat some whipped cream only to find poop at the bottom of your bowl, or the other way around? If we had to eat poop, you'd be sure we'd want to do it first so that you kill the taste with something decent at the end of the meal. When we go out for (vegetarian) sushi, Monkey always makes a big deal about lining up his sushi in the correct order to make sure that the "ending taste" is exactly what he's feeling up to that day. He knows that there is going to be a single taste that will linger in his mouth after dinner, so he wants it to be his favorite.

If you just get the worst out of the way early, not only will you have taken care of some chore that you have a big resistance to doing, but then your day will be filled with more and more good things. End on a happy note, so that's what you're thinking about when you go to bed, and you can get a decent night's sleep.

Speaking of a tasty note to end on, this is the last week to get your Narwhal x Unicorn t-shirt "You're Not Alone Anymore" for $5 off the normal price in our pre-order sale! The shirts are being printed this week and will go out soon! Get yours now!

Don't Wait For Permission

You don't need this stamp.

Many times we wait for permission from some authority figure to tell us that we're good to go to start a project, or work towards our dreams. In short, we're looking for validation. While we are the first to admit that validation makes us feel all awesome inside and that our work matters and is that external approval that we're all after, it doesn't mean that it is necessary.

It is not necessary because whatever your dreams matter. They matter because they are your dreams. Whether you want to be a baker or a banker, a civil engineer or construction worker, an artist or an astronaut, your dreams are important. While you might be thinking that there are no objective reason why you should follow your dream, we say that there is. That reason is that you'll be happier.

Now this sounds like it may be a self-serving motive, and it may be, but by being happier, you'll make the world a better place. If you are grumpy and hating your work, you'll be a big downer for other around you. No one likes the constant pessimist/whiner/griper. While we acknowledge the benefits of venting and being allowed to complain (which we all should at times), dwelling on what is not working is like dragging a raincloud around with you that gets water on the floor and makes people's socks mushy - not fun at all. By following your dreams, you'll be much happier and that will pass on to the rest of the world.

If you are happy and totally crazy in love with what you do, it will show, and it will affect how you do your work. If you love to paint zombies, your zombie paintings are going to be much more awesome than if you painted flowers or puppies. Your work will appeal to other zombie fans and they will be happier because of it. If they are happier, they'll spread the happiness through their work, and so on and so on. Happiness is contagious, so unleash the happiness plague by doing the work you love.

Don't wait for others to tell you what you should or shouldn't do. If you have something to contribute to the world, then do it. If your heart says make a zine, then make one. If your heart says go into corporate law, then start studying for the LSAT. If your heart says you should travel to Australia to nurse sick wombats back to health, start shopping for plane tickets (and please send your photos to Monkey..he likes wombats). Know that your dreams matter, and go out and make the world a happier place.