Getting stuff done

Sometimes, if you're like this little red-haired dude above, you feel trapped, stuck in a rut, creatively drained, tired, and a bit hopeless that you're ever going to finish/succeed/reach goal X/etc., etc.

We know that we can certainly relate. Monkey and Seal are both managers for two different retail stores, and after being on your feet for 6-9 hours per day dealing with sometimes irate (but usually awesome) customers, the last thing we feel like doing is working more when we get home. Besides running errands, cooking dinner, doing other household chores, and trying to spend time with one another, the Monkey + Seal team is usually pretty pooped out by the end of the day.

However, we find the motivation to continue working, to continue painting, to continue creating into the wee hours of the morning (usual bedtime is around 3am) because we have to hold ourselves accountable.

Whether it is to clients, customers, or ourselves, when something needs to get done, it is not a matter of "if," it's a matter of "how." Yes, we do admit that sometimes it might be worth it to get some rest and put a project off for a day, but we find that most of the time that leads you to a space where all you're doing is playing catch-up, and we end up sacrificing (or at least not starting) on projects that we would like to do since we're so backed up.

It all really comes down to integrity. In our retail jobs, we've seen a good number of people quit over email, or just stop showing up to work. Regardless of how much you hate your job or your boss or if you've just won the lottery, by bailing on your job, someone else has to pick up your shifts and your workload so things keep going smoothly. Nothing frustrates us more than flakes, so we strive to make sure that we follow through.

Our friends will attest - we admit, it is sometimes hard for us to commit to parties, or checking out friends' gallery shows, or just anything that pulls us out of our little urban cave. But if we say we're gonna be there, we show up, no matter how tired we are or how backlogged we are in our work (we might not stay for too long, but we'll be there).

Honestly, Monkey has a ton of work to do, and he's been going on about 4 hours of sleep a day for the past week, and to meet his deadline of launching the wedding guide by Sunday, there are a lot of fine-tuning that he still needs to do. But, he told the mailing list that it was going to be up for download, (and now you know about the release date) so now he's got to suck it up and follow through.

Planning something, having great ideas or tons of talent, all that is great, and makes lots of parts of life easier, but the thing that really gets stuff done is action. Following through is perhaps the hardest thing to do, but it's the most important. Whether it's about integrity or chasing a dream, following through is what turns the world 'round.

What do you do to motivate yourself to get business taken care of? How do you follow through?

Art Of the Day / Coincidence

Monkey has decided to create some sort of art every day, for at LEAST the rest of 2010. He is going to put these pieces of art up on his blog, Politics=Art=Culture, daily for the rest of 2010. He's starting today, so be sure to check it out!

Also, Monkey has to relate two incidents that occurred recently on our trip down to Long Beach/San Diego for our friends' wedding which is strong evidence (yes, we know about the principle of self-proving-ness, or whatever it's called in social psychology) in the idea of the Law of Attraction:

1) Seal is looking for a bagel shop she used to frequent when she lived back in Long Beach. We're driving down the road she thinks it was on, and we turn into a shopping center. I point out a bagel shop, and she knows that it's the wrong one, but she remembers it being in a shopping center with another cafe/bagel place in it. I then see a sign that says "The Bagelry" that's been removed (thus the shop left the plaza). I get on my phone and look up the bagelry, as Eve thinks that might be the place. We find an address, and we drive over.

When we get to our destination, we drive around the lot, and cannot find the listed address. Out of luck, we decide, on a whim, to see what's in the other large shopping center across the street. As we're driving, I sees a place called "Grounds" and I ask her if that's it. She remembers the place being much smaller, but we decide to get out of the car to check the menu anyway - and we've found it!

Grounds actually just expanded a few years back, misleading us as we were looking for a tiny, hole-in-the-wall place, as opposed to the diner-sized restaurant it is now. Eve got her childhood bagel sandwich, and we somehow found the place she was looking for.

The strangest thing is that we would have never found Grounds if we weren't looking for the Bagelry, a place that Eve probably has never eaten at.

2) It turns out that our friend Kevin is also in Long Beach due to a business training event. We try to meet up, but he tells me his phone is dying, so he might not be able to get a hold of us on our one free day down in LB. We decide that Eve and her family might take me to a nearby park for some nice naturetime, and I let Kevin know about our plans to head out over to the park. He says he might not be able to make it, but if he is available, he should call us.

Instead of going to the park, however, because it looks like it's going to rain, we decide to make a trip to the only store that sells Indonesian food in the greater Long Beach area. It's this little tiny shop, which is generally only frequented by people specifically looking for Indonesian food.

As we go in, Eve is showing me around, and I look up to see Kevin walking in. Randomly, he happened to eat lunch nearby (and he charged his phone in the restaurant), and got thirsty so he followed a large group of people into the Indo store, thinking if so many people were going in, they must have some good food/drinks/snacks/whatever.

Of all the places in all of the surrounding Long Beach area, the one guy we're looking for happens to stroll into the one shop we're in thanks to him wanting a soda. Crazy.

Another example that just happened two days ago:
My dad leaves me a message that he found out that my great-grandfather carved a wood block while in the Japanese American internment camps and the relief is now in the Smithsonian museum in Washington, D.C. On a business trip, my dad was going to go to the Smithsonian and see his grandfather's work in person.

Since I missed his call due to work, and I didn't want to chance waking him up (due to the time difference between California and D.C., I wait until the next day thinking "well, he's probably in a meeting, so I'll just leave a message." Imagine my surprise when he picks up WHILE HE IS STANDING IN FRONT OF THE WOOD BLOCK IN THE SMITHSONIAN. He told me he literally had just found the piece, and walked up to it when he got my call. Crazy, right?

Anyway, although this has definitely helped to sell this little Monkey on the Law of Attraction, I'm not going to bank on just positive thinking to help me reach my goals. Hard work, determination, and action are what's going to do the heavy lifting, but if this Law of Attraction stuff helps out, I'm totally down.

Monkey's Mini Guide to Wedding Invitations

Hi everyone! Monkey here, with a quick little self-promotional piece today. I've been working on a little itty-bitty guide for all those recently engaged couples out there who are just starting on choosing their wedding invitations.

After selling wedding invitations for the past three/four years, I've noticed that since most couples are getting married for the first time, they do not have a whole lot of experience in choosing wedding invitations. Many times this leads to me (as the person helping the couple order the invitations) asking the same questions again and again, which lead to couples spending anywhere between 2-6 hours with me working on their invitations, sometimes spread out over multiple weeks. While I am more than happy to spend this time with people, I often hear about how many other aspects of the wedding they have to deal with, so I figure if I could help speed up the ordering process, they'd be less stressed, my job would be easier, and everyone wins!

Thus, I've decided to write a short little downloadable guide titled and checklist for people to read before they even step foot in a stationery store. This way, they can deal with some stumbling points early on, so they don't waste precious quarters feeding parking meters (at least, that's what a lot of my customers have to deal with).

Anyway, I'll be launching the guide this coming weekend, although I guess it's not really a true "product launch" because it'll be free, but just mark your calendars! Woo woo!

Monkey and Seal update

A very short post.

Lately Seal has been very busy with work and freelance. She often has to find balance and make space for her personal art. She has been trying out new styles and ways of working. She is inspired by her colleagues who excel at digital painting. Although Seal prefers to paint with a traditional brush, she is having fun trying out new techniques. Above is her work in-progress digital painting for the Tyger Tyger series.

This week, Monkey and Seal are having a meeting with Hyphen magazine to discuss the direction of their next gallery. They are projecting to have a theme and space booked in the coming month. So, please check back soon for updates. Thank you for reading!

Fillmore Art Walk tonight!

Granted, we probably should have posted about this a bit earlier, but tonight, Friday, April 23rd, we'll be selling a limited selection of our prints and ties and will be live painting from 6pm-10pm (maybe later?) at the Fillmore Art Walk!

We will be working collaboratively (!!!) on smaller canvases outside of Jazz'z Hair Salon, right across from Yoshi's on Fillmore, at Eddy. Look for the bright green tablecloth! It should definitely be a night to remember, and it's your first chance to see what an Eve Skylar-Rick Kitagawa painting looks like!

Giving Up is for Quitters

Life can definitely be discouraging at times, especially when you're trying to be a professional artist. Now, not to say that other professions don't have as much personal investment, but when you are a visual artist, it is easy to get down on yourself and quit. I think a lot of it stems from the personal investment that you have in your art, especially as a fine artist. It's not like a car salesperson is going to take it personally when a customer asks for that Civic in blue, not red. The car salesperson doesn't care - they're still making a sale. For us artists, sometimes something as simple as that defeats the entire purpose of the piece. For designers, "just change the font" can completely ruin a piece. For artists, changing color schemes (besides potentially taking a huge amount of time) completely shifts the mood/symbolism/feel of a piece.

It's easy to take stuff like that personally. It's easy to feel like crap when you don't sell anything at a craft show. It's easy to feel down when you post a new painting on facebook and no one says anything about it. But you know what? It doesn't matter. There are so many billions of reasons why XY and Z happened, and I bet you that it has nothing to do with you as an artist. How do I know this? Because art is subjective. Yes, we have classical realism which is often touted as "good" art, but even if you draw like a two-year-old with no fingers, I guarantee you that someone out there is going to dig it. It may be hell trying to find that person, but someone out there is all about your art. The trick is finding that person, or those people.

Case in point: This was a painting I did in a class at the Academy. As 1/3 of my total grade, I did not do well, grade-wise. I was told to integrate my text into the image more. I ended up barely passing the class with a C-. Not the best feeling in the world, but when I made giclee prints out of these and took them to a craft fair, I sold out of the prints. Just because my instructors (who, granted, are trying to teach classical realism) weren't into my painting, doesn't mean that others won't be.

So, what I'm trying to say is: Don't give up. Maybe you won't be able to live solely off your art. Monkey + Seal both aren't able to do that. Right now, we have to work day jobs to support ourselves. This won't be the case forever, but it is a reality right this second. But we're not giving up. We're marking ourselves and doing what we can to get our art out there, so that people who are interested will buy. It's all about finding your audience.

But at the end of the day, it really isn't about sales. It's about knowing that you're doing the very best you can on every single piece, and doing it because you love to make art. Now, just because you could spend 50 hours on a painting doesn't mean that you should. If your best is 30 hours, then spend 30. If it's 5, then spend 5. Hell, if your best, for that given time, day, energy level, and general circumstance is a 5 minute sketch, then do that 5 minute sketch. Just make sure you're doing it for yourself, and buyers, and fans, and people into your art will definitely follow.

7 Steps to Playing a Much Bigger Game

So Monkey has been on a bit of an entrepreneurial kick this past week, and as he types this, he's been feeling a twisting pang in his chest. Fortunately, it's not angina, but the feeling of a realization that is so profound and life-altering, that it is hard to put it into words. It's the feeling (Monkey imagines) of standing on a high-dive platform, really, really high up, with the (what looks like) a tiny tiny pool down beneath you. You start to bounce a bit to get into the swing of things, and then you realize that if you try to stop the bounce, you're totally going to lose your balance and fall. But if you just take a big jump, you're going to get enough spring to fling you through the air.

The trick is to just let gravity do its thing and move you along. To be a bit more personal, here's Monkey:

To be honest, this feeling is scary. I first thought "what the f is wrong with me?" but then I realized that it's the life-altering slap in the face that I needed. Being able to finally "get it" - that really my own fear is what has been holding me back all these years is both relieving as well as frightening. It feels like a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders, but at the same time I feel exposed and vulnerable, as knowing that I've been hiding behind my fear and insecurities, I really have been at fault for holding myself back.

I've heard this many times, in many various forms, but the pdf. I just read touched something in me that just shook me to my core. Now, for a few quick disclaimers. 1. I was so f'ing in to this little mini e-book that I immediately signed up for the affiliate program, so if you ever buy something or anything, we'll get a cut of it. 2. Dave Navarro, the author who wrote "7 Steps to playing a much bigger game," might not be for everyone as he's definitely blunt and motivating in a "get your ass up and go" sort of way. However, if you, like me, need a bit of a heavy hand sometimes, then this is definitely for you.


Some of my fav quotes from the guide:

"Yeah, life is difficult. It really is. But it seems much more difficult than it really is because society is training you to think that it should be easy. Microwave popcorn, drive-throughs, magic pills and instant downloads have conditioned us to expect everything to be easy and push button and if it's not, then oh-crap-what-is-wrong-with-me-I-am-such-a-failure."

"Imagine: You know CPR well enough. Someone stops breathing, and what do you do? Do you start asking yourself if there are better CPR practitioners than you? Do you wonder if your certification came from a prestigious enough teacher? Or maybe you have no certification at all, someone just showed you how to do it (correctly)? Are you going to dredge up every loser feeling you've had about yourself and dwell on that while that person slips off into the great unknown?
Hell no. You're going to get on your knees, do that CPR thing, and save that person's life. Without a second thought. Because the situation calls for value, and you have value to offer."

Definitely a bit brusque, Dave's writing really hits home for me, though, and has inspired me to really start working past my fear and taking action, regardless if it ends up in failure or success, as either way, it won't really be that bad.

I highly recommend signing up for his free email newsletters in order to get downloadable access to all the free pdfs he has to offer - all of which come with little worksheets that will help you get on your way to stepping it up another notch.

Anyway, as I've been doing more and more reading, I'll definitely be posting more and more awesome other writers/bloggers/coaches/advice/etc. about making it as a creative and chasing the dream. But for reals, check out Dave's stuff, and let me know what you think - hopefully it'll give you the kick in the pants you need to get out there and change the world.