I swear this one isn’t about burnout

01.31.2025.

This one has some exciting - but also anxiety-inducing, if you’re me - things in it as well. Towards the end of last year, it became clear that I would be able to possibly finally, after many years of hoping and waiting, move abroad! Temporarily, for now. On a little trial run of sorts - still, I’ll get to have one month to live in a country I’d actually like to live in, closer to my friends. Super exciting, and I can’t wait to get to be there.

But moving abroad, while I knew it was something I wanted to do since, well, high school, still fills me with some mixed emotions. Not because I’d miss my country or my hometown - I’m sure there will be some things about both I’ll end up finding myself missing, but (probably very much in line with my lack of effort to do so, but regardless) I don’t really feel myself at home in this country I was born in… It’s kind of a sad thing. Sure national pride sometimes catches me when I see something that I know originates from here and I have to make everyone know that fact, whether they want to or not. But I never really saw a future for myself here. I always knew I’d be at home somewhere else.

And still, now that I get to have a little trial, with the possibility of actually getting to move down the line, for a longer time, I keep thinking about having to leave my mom behind. And my cat. The only two I’ll miss from this country. I keep thinking it’s really unfair how my mom labored to take care of both set of my grandparents in their old age and health problems, how we took care of my dad, but I feel guilty for leaving her to fend for herself for her own now. It’s really unfair, not feeling at home in your birthplace. Especially when there are people there who you care for.

I know I’m not the first, nor the only person who feels like this. Especially considering the dire states we have all over the world now - I know I’m lucky, to some degree, that it’s a choice I get to make, it’s my choice to move away - but still, doesn’t make it suck any less. Maybe it’s the people pleaser in me, maybe it’s my conscience, maybe I’m just moody… Either way, I have to leave, because I feel it in my soul, this is not the place for me.

So here’s hoping things will work out. My mom has friends here, unlike me. She’s social, and likes to go out, so I hope she’ll get to enjoy her friends and some new adventures. And I hope I get to do the same. And I’m sure we will.

I’m still kinda suffering from burnout on my comic work, I wish that would go away tho…