One more thing about the coronavirus to worry about

There’s more to fear than getting sick.

The Coronavirus is undoubtedly something to fear, and I send my condolences to the families of those with loved ones who have passed away.

With the virus spreading like crazy, travel bans spreading even faster, and the news media blowing it up to epic proportions, I'm concerned about another sickness that may develop. One that could affect us mentally.

The fear of Asians. Not just people of Chinese descent, but all Asians.

This virus is not an excuse to be racist or xenophobic.

But you know people will be anyway.

With famous thinkers like Bill Gates sharing his belief that pandemics are one of the biggest threats to humanity, we're all left shaking in our boots and could possibly be afraid of any Asian person we think might have the virus.

As an African-American with a Japanese wife, I ask you to please keep an open mind. Don't use this as an excuse to show prejudice or hate towards Asian people.

I hate to lump everyone together, but I know a large portion of Americans, especially, will. I'll admit, before my two years living in Japan, it was difficult telling the difference between people from various countries in Asia. 

What will someone with very little exposure to Asian people believe?

I’m afraid most Americans will think a Korean person is Chinese. Or, see a Japanese person—wearing a mask only because they have a common cold and do not want to spread it to others—and assume they have the virus.

When you're all wound up in reacting to the "CORONAVIRUS: The End Is Nigh!" news coverage, it might make you say and do cruel things.   

Considering the symptoms that originated in the city of Wuhan, China is similar to the common cold or flu—coughing, fever, runny nose—makes it easy to judge others out of fear.

Yes, a fear of contracting something that could make you drop dead within a few weeks. But if this spreads throughout America, you might feel suspicious of your next-door neighbors and people on the street. You could refuse to see them or walk around or away from an Asian person because you want to "stay safe.

Is this fear mainly because the virus originated in China?

What would happen if there were a Switzerland Coronavirus outbreak taking the world by storm? Imagine you're watching videos on TV of blonde-haired Caucasians walking around with masks and hearing about hundreds of people dying in Europe. Would you feel as scared of all the white folks you see on the street?

If you're white, how would you feel if an Asian person saw you on the street and immediately crossed to the other side, scared of possibly breathing in a virus?

Imagine if an outbreak occurred in Mexico, and in turn, we all think it's ok to be afraid of getting a virus from any Hispanic person we see? You get where I'm going.

We should all be informed and safe but also remember our connection to each other as human beings. Be compassionate enough to understand that real people are passing away, the virus is spreading. Still, it doesn't make one race better or worse than another.

It doesn't give any of us a good reason to treat others with disrespect.

We are all one. Don't let fear spread a virus of hate.

Meditation is amazing but, what if you hate being with yourself? 3 powerful ways to tolerate time alone with your thoughts

Life can be stressful. People say, “Make time to meditate. Quiet your mind, and it will melt all your worries away.” That’s nice and all but, what if you can’t stand being with yourself?

I’m serious, what if you feel like a jerk inside and want nothing to do with that person?

Let’s say you sit down, in that awkwardly uncomfortable folded legs position—lotus I think it’s called—puff your chest out and close your eyes. Your annoying mind keeps yelling at you.

Not even about important topics. Just dumb stuff, like what to eat for breakfast and which podcast you’ll listen to on the way to work.

Annoying.

You’ve heard some of those benefits of meditation; a focused mind, inner peace, and more patience to approach the challenges of daily life. It’s estimated that stress is the cause of 90% of doctor visits. That is insane.

We all definitely need more time for mindfulness in our lives. How can you shut off the mouthy jerk inside your head and focus on that sought after quiet? 

1. Accept that your emotions want all of your attention and will try and distract you while you meditate.

This is normal. You’re not doing it wrong.  

Let yourself be who and what you are at that moment. Be present. Even if all the mess in your head is driving you nuts. 

Make peace with the anxious, emotional, and overly fearful part of yourself. It only wants to be heard, felt, and acknowledged.

2. Make those emotions stronger

If you have a lot on your mind, sit there and listen to yourself. If you notice strong feelings, pay attention to them. In fact, amplify them and make the emotions stronger. 

Give each emotion and thought inside your head some of your time, notice where in your body the feelings are, and they will gradually dissolve away. 

You’ll see that by sitting with your annoying voices and negative emotions and giving them your full attention, it will help you release and move on to the more positive ones.

When I started meditating regularly several years ago, this was tough for me.

I knew that I was never going to get rid of feeling crappy sometimes. Having the courage to sit with the mess of my thoughts was no easy task and I’m still no expert. 

I have found, though, that giving all of those thoughts and their emotions, time in the spotlight then shining several other lights directly on them, helps them to disappear. 

Meditating is generally pretty simple. Sit in a comfortable position with your legs folded, or on a chair with your hands in your lap. Breathe slowly, in through your nose and out through your mouth. Focus on your breath. 

When the thoughts start flooding in, treat them like that annoying coworker you barely know, who likes coming up and telling you all of their problems. You smile politely and nod, give them their time, until they finish and go away. 

Know that you don’t have to be in total control. Even though it’s hard to let go and tune in, do your best to stay present.

3. Meditate for at least ten minutes 

There’s something magical about getting to the ten-minute mark.  

Give yourself time to move through emotions and reach calm. I’ve read that twenty-minutes of meditation is ideal, but I know for me, reaching ten minutes is where I begin to melt into the moment.

You’ll find those annoying voices will dissipate, and it will be easier to be in a state of tranquility.

You will begin to focus on the moment. You will find yourself. The true self that is always there but buried under all that mess.

Believe me, you’ll like how the “true you” feels. You want to make sure to meet.

What if you can’t spend 20-30 minutes meditating most days? Don’t worry about it. 

If you can only do ten minutes, that’s what you do. Paying attention to yourself is the key.

Scheduling meditation time—making it a routine—is what keeps me on track. Every morning, it’s one of the first things I do.   

I have grown to like my inner thoughts more, and I believe you can too. 

When you go out and face the world, you will notice how much easier it will be to pay attention to one task at a time. You will feel less rushed. Anxiety will take a backseat, and you’ll gain more confidence and acceptance with the process of your regular daily life. 

Do your best to sit in meditation for ten minutes every day. Experience all of your emotions fully. 

Over time, you will understand and love yourself more, and the magic within each day will transform your life.

Calvin and Hobbes Creator Reveals His Method for Creativity

This illustration by Calvin and Hobbes cartoonist, Bill Watterson, reveals the top secret method for coming up with ideas for comic strips.  

Putting your butt in the chair and staring blankly into space until inspiration hits you.

Ok. Maybe it’s not that simple but it feels like it sometimes. The true key to consistent creativity is a daily routine you schedule into your life and stick to, no matter what.

Coming up with ideas for what to write or draw is still a challenge. When I’m sitting at my drafting table, mechanical pencil in hand, upset that inspiration isn’t striking yet, here’s what I like to do.

Pull it back. I will probably have one of my Fried Chicken and Sushi characters in mind that I want to create a comic strip about but no idea what to do with them. Even if I’m lucky and have a theme in mind, there’s one element that is of the utmost importance.

The feeling. The feels. Whatever you want to call them, your first question before even coming up with the joke should be-

What are you trying to get your readers to feel?

If you pull this into your creation process, you can move on to ‘the what’ and ‘the gag.’

After all, you know your work will have characters and something exciting or humorous happening, but will anyone feel anything? Will your readers care?

I’m still working on getting better at this myself. There’s so much more I need to learn so that I can improve as a writer and cartoonist.  Hopefully, to one day, get close to the genius of Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes.

But I believe that adding emotion to your work is key to quality.

Think about it. Plenty of content out there you can watch and read might be fun but can leave you feeling empty. After consuming any content, ask yourself-

Did you discover anything new about life or the world? Perhaps what you read mirrors your life in some way and helps validate your choices or represents who you are?  Maybe, it just made you feel good about being human.

If it made an impact, even in a small way, then it matters. Are you making people feel happy about their choices or sad? Are you looking to get them riled up about a topic and take action to make a change? Are you trying to take the blinders off and get them to think deeper about an issue in a new way?

A lot of questions, I know. But this is how I work through an idea to determine if it will resonate with an audience.

When I’m really having a hard time coming up with an idea for a funny gag, I take the feeling I want my readers to have about my comics and craft a plan around it. This question always haunts me-

Can I get people to care about my characters?

Here’s an example-

For the FC&S storyline where Tanuki, our magical raccoon character, wears a suit and sneaks into an office in Japan to see how it feels to work as a salaryman, I was looking to create a positive sense of fun with a touch of reality.

After several strips on this theme, I wanted readers to feel sorry for him in the final strip that ends the arc. That feeling led me to think about how that could happen in this situation.  

Tanuki can get a little cocky at times and even though we love him, reality should set in at some point. He’s a wild animal in an office. Why would people want that wild animal to leave?

Here’s the final comic strip-

Did you feel sorry for Tanuki? Maybe you think he deserves to be kicked out. Either way, you’re feeling and thinking about the characters in the comic.

Hopefully, your overall feeling for FC&S is still positive and you care about Tanuki. That’s my goal. Fried Chicken and Sushi should make you smile and leave you feeling good. Not just from the laughter, but from what the characters try, and often fail, to do in their lives.   

I’m not on the level of Bill Watterson as a cartoonist. I do believe that he understands the concept of making something people care about and feel. You get that from each and every one of his comic strips. Even if he had to stare blankly at a wall sometimes for ideas.

Before I go, there’s one more question you might have.

What if a reader hates my work that day and “feels” like it was terrible? Well then, they will make sure to read the next strip or article you post to see if you give them the feeling they want. Over time, the reader might decide to stop following your work.

Publishing your art for the world and making people think and feel on a regular basis is hard. You should be prepared for critics, haters, and if you’re lucky, hardcore fans.

Let people decide what they like.

You, my creative friend, make them feel.

(True Story) Why I Quit FC&S Comics, Then Came Back

It’s been one year since Little Fried Chicken and Sushi returned to regular updates after a year hiatus.  Here are some of my thoughts on why I stopped and started again, and ideas for how you can move forward with new creative projects when you lose passion for your work.

Letting go can lead you to what you need

I’ll never forget, feeling so burned out two years ago from work and life that even drawing comics didn’t make me smile.  In my mind at the time, ending Little Fried Chicken and Sushi comics was the only way to rest and heal.

And why keep it going? No new readers were discovering the strip.  I had a decent amount of support on Patreon -even though it didn’t feel like enough to me.  So, I ended Fried Chicken and Sushi completely. Finally! I would have time to rest and take things slower.

Not true. I started drawing for fun in my sketchbook more, and sharing those sketches on Instagram regularly, eventually feeling the drive to grow as an illustrator.  

But that didn’t make me happy.  Single images are fun, but I always yearn for more of a story -a sequence of events and the visual pacing only possible within panels.  

Even though making comic strips two to three times a week is difficult, I had to face the truth.  Making comics, made me happy. I needed it in my life.

So, I started brainstorming possible concepts and characters to develop a new comic.

I got close with a strip idea entitled “The Honeybuns.”  The strip was named after a rabbit family of four, and the humor primarily revolved around their life living in Silicon Valley.  My goal was to parody the stressful and ridiculously hectic lifestyle of bay area families, but instead of humans, using busy bunnies. Here are some of the sample strips from my submission packet.

What do you think?  Should I have stuck with this concept? Are you happy I moved on? This is a small sample of my submission.  If you would like to see more let me know in the comments.

Work on a project only you can create

No syndicates were interested.  Not even GoComics, the one that syndicates FC&S online.  I received some helpful feedback but ultimately had a choice to make.  Either keep working on improving “The Honeybuns,” a more mainstream strip idea or start Little Fried Chicken and Sushi up again.

Sometimes, you just have to face the hard truth.  Working on developing a new project would take a tremendous amount of time and energy I didn’t have

I knew the world and characters of Little FC&S best, so it would be easier to just start again.  That way, I could get better with something familiar and have an easier time creating new strip ideas.

The big question for me was -why restart a comic strip that wasn’t that popular in the first place?

One answer was pretty obvious. The election of Donald Trump as president. What felt like a rise in Americans sharing their outright racist opinions in public, online, and through committing hate crimes, helped to light my motivational fire to continue drawing a positive black family in comic strip form.

I noticed there were few humor strips with people of color, let alone with both African-Americans and Japanese main characters combined. Fried Chicken and Sushi could be the voice of a new comics generation.

Or, at least, one voice from the minority perspective. A voice with the opportunity to speak to a broader audience about living overseas and being open to other cultures through the GoComics platform, where only a handful of comics with people of color are syndicated.

The other factor is authenticity.  Only I could write and draw FC&S. Gag ideas come from my experiences as a black man who lived in and visits Japan. My unique worldview in writing would set it apart combined with my individual art style.

If it comes down to it, pick a project with a subject matter you know well or have a passion for and present it in a way that brings joy.     

Work on a new project while producing your current one

Perhaps, creating new project ideas feels easier while you are writing and drawing an already established project because you’re working out your “idea muscle” every day.  Taking a long break might just slow the process down and weaken your creativity.

There are benefits to keeping that creative fire burning!

Does this mean I have a new and better comic strip idea brewing in my head?  Honestly, no, not yet. It’s fun to work on improving my gag writing and character development skills through producing Fried Chicken and Sushi comics consistently every week.

I hope you’re enjoying reading them and I look forward to your feedback.  

Arigato Gozaimasu,

Khalid

Get Fried Chicken and Sushi comics emailed to you HERE

Become a patron of the arts!  Support FC&S comics on Patreon.com/birdsong

Read, comment, and share FC&S comics on GoComics.com

Learning Japanese with comics -SUMIMASEN!

Sumimasen -the word that works for everything. I'm sure there are uses I left out, and will most likely put in future strips. Sumimasen is one of my favorite Japanese words, and I marvel at how effortlessly people use it in various situations.

I forgot that creating a comic about living in another country gives plenty of opportunities to teach language and how it relates to the culture. As I grow as a cartoonist, I hope these examples of "international cartooning" improve over time.

The Urban Dictionary defines sumimasen as:

Japanese word meaning, "I am sorry".
Sometimes used together with doumo. "Doumo sumimasen" also means I'm sorry.

Often in conversation "doumo sumimasen" or "sumimasen" are used in place of "Thank you". Perhaps Japanese feeling is, I'm sorry bothering you, but thank you very much to be so considerate.

1. Sumimasen I broke your dish.
2. When a gentle person gives away a seat on a crowded train to an aged person, the person who received the favor may say, "sumimasen" or "doumo sumimasen".

Thanks for your support and don't forget to like and share the comic with the world!

Khalid

3 Creativity Hacks Inspired By Japanese Wood Carvings

What do monkeys; a cat and an elephant have in common?  Believe it or not, inspiration for expanding your creativity!

Actually, the animals I’m talking about are ornately carved on structures made over 400 years ago at Toshogu Shrine in the city of Nikko, Japan.  The famous shrine and world heritage site is just north of Tokyo, and was built as the final resting place of ruler Tokugawa Ieyasu.  He founded the Tokugawa Shogunate, the final military dynasty in Japan that lasted from 1603-1867.

Even though Japan has been a part of my life for thirteen years I can’t recall hearing about this place until this summer.  My family and I visited Nikko for several days and were quite impressed with the history and colorful beauty of the area.

Not only was it lovely, there were several takeaways I discovered about the creative process just from pondering these wood carved animals at Toshogu Shrine. 

Nemuri-Neko, the sleeping cat, guarding Tokugawa Ieyasu's resting place.

1.    The Sleeping Cat shows us how we can receive inspiration while at rest

Nemuri-Neko, carved by Hidari Jingoro, is of a sleeping cat surrounded by flowers.  It was placed at the entrance of Tokugawa Ieyasu’s grave to ward off mice and has become a famous recognizable symbol to Japanese people.  What fascinates me is that the cat is sleeping and, similar to a real feline, still seems alert!

I’m reminded of how cats take frequent naps but are still aware of their surroundings and can wake quickly when approached.  Just like when we’re trying to get creative inspiration for our projects, thinking hard doesn’t usually get results.  It’s when we’re sleeping, taking a walk or even using the restroom that the great idea pops into our heads!  If you jump right away and make a mental note or write it down, you can catch it like a little mouse.

Learn to fill your mind with images and information from research related to the project you need a great idea for.  Then take a break so that it can all gel in your brain.  When you let go by doing something different and turn your mind away, the answers will come!

The artist carved the elephant on the right without ever seeing a real one.

2.    The Elephant shows that if you commit to taking risks you can create something no one has ever seen before

On top of a building that was used as a warehouse called “Kamijinko” is a carving of an elephant.  The artist never actually saw one in real life and I think it turned out looking pretty accurate.  I assume he was going off of written descriptions of what elephants look like.

There must have been quite a bit of pressure because this was to be done to honor the emperor.  Since there are no elephants in Japan and no cameras at that time, he had to use his imagination to create his own interpretation.  Yes, we could say that no one else had seen real elephants back then either so he could have created whatever crazy animal he wanted, but it looks like he took it seriously.

The artist couldn’t see any references for what he needed to create but still took a risk and made it happen.  I’m sure he sketched plenty of ideas early on (and probably hated all of them) but found something good eventually through continually doing the work.

When you’re coming up with a new idea or design, use what you know and have the courage to put down ideas even if they look or sound awful.  Getting started is the key.  Learning through continually working on and through your ideas by facing fears, taking small risks and trying styles you’ve never taken on before will create something amazing.    

The three monkeys reminding you to hear no evil, speak no evil and see no evil.

3.    The Three Monkeys want you to train your brain and avoid evil

On the sacred horse stable or Shinkyusha are 8 carved boards along the top that depict the life of a monkey and caricature human life.  One of the most famous boards illustrates the famous Buddhist teaching -if we hear no evil, speak no evil and see no evil; we can live a good life.

It’s something we have to train ourselves to do.  I’m sure all of us have times when we get in deep trouble for speaking evil my mistake!  As we grow in life, we learn when to speak up and when to stay quiet.  You can also train yourself to be more creative as long as you understand that it will take time.  It will take less time if you have a purpose.

Just like the monkeys in the carving you can make a point to avoid evil but pay attention to all the inspiration that you hear, say and see in the world.

Read more and make a point to remember one detail that you feel is important.  Look at the work of artists you admire or despise and study what makes their work special.  Learn a new skill.  Spend time with people you think of as creative and talk with them about what inspires you.  Question everything!  The answers will create new inventions, characters and stories.  

The bottom line is to make a point to take inspiration breaks while you work, commit to consistently taking risks and exercising your creative mind with more than just your art, music or writing.  Keep these ideas in your head each day and watch your creative power expand in ways you never thought possible!

Of course, you should also take a trip to Nikko, Japan.  It’s pretty amazing!