Dear Janolytes,

Yep you read the title of this issue correctly. I, Jano Ryusaru, the sarcastic asshole who talks shit on the internet from cotton fields. Talk about random strangers, and people who piss me off in my JRPG adventures has wrote  a new book about Creative Therapy.

Spoiler Alert.

Hard to believe that I have some altruistic bones in tired slave dark humor body, but its true.

But Jano……Nigga how did we get here?

Honestly it was a slow build, but we can just flash back to Fall 2016.

Feels that was the zero year for me. What started with Cotton field 5 shutting down, Cotton field 6 laying me off, and me trying to be foolishly optimistic about using a grant from the state to transition to a career since I was a work refugee.

MAN I was such a fucking dumb ass. I was. Holy fuck bro.

A foolish one indeed.

I started focusing on my photography and posing people, worked on an art project, and at some point in the fall I started working on my comic series. Fall 2k16 came with a new surge of goals that haven’t been felt in a while. Like a while.

To the point I was excited about possibilities.

Scary.

At some point it hit me that I wanted to use my art and my psychology degree to help people’s mental health. I told myself when I finished my comic series I would start that project. Ideally I thought it would only take 4 years.

Again, Foolish one indeed.

It prob would have been 4 years but despite my intent of cotton field 7 being an actual job that involved me sitting in an office, life said

Nah nigga.

So here I am on Cotton field 12 and a battered body with an exhausted spirit. That sounds depressing but it is what it is.

Legit don’t know how I got so many things done over the course over the last decade…..

….Anyway…..

2022 happened, which was a lot. I will prob never speak of the existential nightmare it was, but it was. 2023 started and it was announced Cottonfield 11 was shutting down.

OMG Jano!!

Nah, it was ok. When I pulled into that dusty slave pit in August 2021 I got the same vibe of Cotton field 5. I didn’t know when it was going to happen but I know it was going to happen. My toxic trait was that I stayed because I was looking forward to being unemployed to finish working on my comic series.

Spoiler Alert, I didn’t actually finish coloring it until February 2024. Yep 8 years later. Shout out to the random unemployment stints that I had over the years, it def helped me get more done that I couldn’t because of slave exhaustion.

Mourning for a slave pit hasn’t been a thing and it wasn’t going to start.

The field slowed down and I had to the ability to bullshit at a cpu that was once used for slavery.

YAAAAAAAS.

I got put on special projects aka we are gonna pay y’all for something for the next 3 months until we shut down. In the midst of me doing this I started going down rabbit holes and thinking about wtf am I doing with my life. I google how can I get into Creative therapy and I saw that involved more school and debt.

Yuck.

Yuck as fuck bro.

Color me biased but I don’t want to owe no more money, especially when my first degree ain’t do shit for me. I love the act of learning but I don’t want to be in debt. Plus I don’t think I can balance school and being a slave. I didn’t when I was in undergrad, and I’m more sure of it as an adult.

And given the type of cotton fields I’ve had to work and still enduring It would be horrible for my academics.

Plus honestly, me not having time to work on any type of art projects would break me. Or rather life would break me since I wouldn’t have an outlet.

So I did what my degree taught me best, research.

1 of my professors at UNCG literally said Psychology is nothing but research, that and analyzing data.

So down the rabbit hole I went and in the end I created two surveys based on what I read and researched. 1 survey was for empirical data and the other was to help subjects ascertain their feelings.

The goal was to have people fill them out and eventually I would get enough data to apply for grants, and also to have a gallery of peoples creations and host an art show with it.

Again life said

Silly Nigga.

Funny thing about surveys, they only work if people fill them out. Out of all the emails I gathered I can honestly say maybe 1/32th filled them out. Some didn’t even do the creative part. If they did they didn’t answer questions specific to them, just vague answers that didn’t answer wtf I want.

In the meantime I started Udemy class that I started off an on, but honesty I never finished.

Fast Forward to spring 2025, my 2nd manager from cotton field 12 gave me a litany of books based on the subject matter that I could use. I had the fullest intent on reading them, but god damn it I’m so fucking exhausted.

FUCK!!

I hit a wall between that, finishing my latest sketch tape and then the upcoming Super Slave Season. Fall and winter 2025 was a jumble of being a super slave, starting to vend again after 3 years, doing photo shoots that spanned over multiple w.ends, and also prepping for my first solo art show.

Fun.

At some point I did type the intro of this book, but that was it.

I realized the probability of me escaping Cotton field 12 may not happen before winter so I planned my show for spring of 2026….sadly that is how it happened. 1 random snow day w.end in February at my girls house I jumped into research mode.

Omg the joy in my heart danced off my bones for those few hours.

I made a outline I had wanted to talk about at some point prior to this and jumped in as the powder encapsulated my portion of the earth.

Months passed and I slowly closed tabs that were slowly stressing me out. When I finally finished my first art show I decided I wasn’t going to do anything…….that lasted for like a week.

Side note, when the time comes I will have an issue for this solo show, but for right now you can click here to see the info on Soul Synthesis and who the cast was.

I restarted my research slowly and compiled the information I needed. I came back from New Orleans with a whole urge to finish this project.

And I did.

YEEEEEET.

I kept my JRPG metaphor throughout the text in between spouting science data to back how stress can fuck you up. While in the process plot out the visuals, because you know a nigga is gonna have visuals in a book.

And here we are.

I’m proud of myself bro.

My toxic trait is that I enjoy doing intellectual things that stimulate my brain and use my degree and love of art.

I just want to do something to help out my friends and make some type of difference. When I was a child I wanted to be a doctor, again life said

Nigga you funny.

I changed majors from Bio to Psychology with a minor in art, then added Sociology as a 2nd minor. But in the course of time I was at UNCG my GPA was ass from my poor academic history of my 1st few years. At some point in my new major  I found out I needed my gpa to be a certain number to get into grad school to get my either my PhD or Psy D. When I hit the 2nd day of my last semester I was done.

Jano, did you quit?

No, but in my spirit I knew i was done with higher education and loans. I finished the semester, graduated and did my best to find jobs that were entry level for my degree.

Spoiler Alert, that never happened hence why I’ve been conditioned to take whatever the fuck I can get, which for the most part has been ASS Bro.

Musty, soggy, unhygienic ass.

The only places I’ve liked was Cotton field 2 and 5.

Side note, I didn’t start calling jobs cotton fields until cotton field 4, I actually really liked job 2, but for the sake of consistency the aforementioned places will be referred to as cotton fields.

Cotton field 2 was a wonderful blessing considering I stayed in Greensboro for an extra year and i couldn’t find shit. Volunteering with them over that year gave me some modicum of peace. In Spring 2010 I was surprised with a contract job offer for the next 2 months until I moved back home.

I can honestly say that radicalized me, in the sense that I enjoyed doing something that was part of the bigger picture. I enjoyed the fuck out of it. Honestly I was doing the same things I was doing when I was volunteering and even though wasn’t making that much. But it was so enjoyable to be part of something that had goals to create unity among humanity.

Unlike most of the shit I’ve been doing since graduating. Fuck Retail and Capitaliam.

Plus I had an office, could listen to my headphones, and draw in the meantime.

More so doing something with an actual humanitarian cause is why I can’t get jiggy with most of these cotton fields, I can’t. On top of me doing demanding and physical slave labor you aren’t doing anything to help out civilization.

Cotton field 5 was koolio because I actually learned things I could use for my photo journey.

I fully acknowledged this isn’t a publication created by someone with the recommenced education that comes with the title.

However most of these self help books now are written by people who don’t have a credit to their fucking name. I randomly met someone at a gallery and we discussed things at some point concerning this and at some point she told me that.

And she is right.

Over the course of the last few years I found myself looking at books at various shops, checking the credits, and looking at the authors and they still sell to the masses.

I don’t claim to be a therapist. I’m just an artist with a degree in psychology who used his research skills to talk about a subject matter that he used to get a creative catharsis. Especially over the course of working these rancid cotton fields. If not for me finding an artistic release I would have lost my mind

and life, and possibly my life a long time ago.

Fun Fact.

So its up to you.

You can check out the work of this random artistic internet ass hole with altruistic intent or not. Its up to you.

Idk where this will take me, maybe no where since that tends to be the case. But I’m glad I did this.

As Kyosuke Shigure said after stabbing the fuck out of Omni Exist.

“I’ve paid my debt.”

After this I’m going back to working on things relating to my comic and curating other art show that relate to things i went to school for. Psychology and Sociology in case you missed it.

As Usual, the preview is here. When I say Preview its the visuals I created, and the link to the book is here.

For the most part it reads like a text book with that good ole ass hole Jano geek flair.

Moral of the story. Just fucking try bro. Even if you don’t know how you are gonna do it. You will figure something out if you just try.

In the meantime

 

 

Time for a video game coma, similar to what I experienced before I started my comic in 2k16.

 

YEEEEEEEEEEEET!!!!