Massive Life Update Post That Explains Everything

My last blog post was in October 2025... shocking! I owe all of my dearly beloved readers an update, from the most exciting to the most mundane.

1.

AFTER 10 YEARS, I AM NOW OFFICIALLY, FINALLY A PERMANENT RESIDENT OF AUSTRALIA!!! 😭

It’s really fitting how I first arrived in Australia because of a connection through making comics (@choodraws - one of my closest friends and who witnessed the entirety of this odyssey) - and I’m now able to stay because of comics too. I never thought that my original childhood passion for art and visual storytelling would enable the life I dreamed of, and that includes finding a place in Australia.

I’m so touched by the Australian comics community for welcoming, supporting and rallying behind me and my career for the past 7 years. The migration stream to gain this permanent residency isn’t an easy one (I am applying via my “artistic achievements” and proving that I can “become an asset to Australian culture” - which I jokingly call the Clout Visa or the Most High Stakes Arts Residency program). Thank you to Meg O’Shea, Pat Grant, Comic Art Workshop, Campbell Whyte, Perth Comic Arts Festivall, Bernard Caleo, Elizabeth MacFarlane, Iurgi Urrata, Bruce Mutard, Ronnie Scott, my agent Jen Linnan and my mentor Helen Summers of the Interfaith Centre for so kindly writing letters of support for my application. And special thanks to Sarah Winifred Searle for being my nominator. Without your love I wouldn’t have been able to come this far. Now we get to make comics together forever!!

2.

The Stress of It All (Social Media)

A huge post will come out later regarding my thoughts on the current state of being an artist on social media, but the TL;DR is that I've been on an epic social media break due to a terrible combination of factors: jadedness, health (see below) and simply being too socially busy.

3.

The Stress of It All (Mental/Physical Health)

I've spoken about my kinda-sorta-not-really burnout before, but I really wasn't prepared for the peak of it all coming together between June and August 2025, when multiple doors of my life closed and opened simultaneously.

My mentor passed away? Devastating!

Did that news provoke me to finally officially completely resolutedly quit my ex-dayjob that went dire since 2022, soft-closed in late 2024, and then dragged me on for half of 2025 to handle offboarding administration and advocacy for the sake of our ex-clients? Totally! The anger stage of grief did something positive.

Did I have the funnest long weekend hanging out and tabling with my best friends and beloved colleagues at one of my favourite comics festivals (Perth Comic Arts Festival)? Yes!!

Did my unfortunately-mismanaged English publisher of my first ever graphic novel, The Carpet Merchant, totally collapse and go into administration thereby making me lose any possibility of either regaining my missing royalties or the restitution of any physical inventory of both volumes? Bro, awesome. Thank god I regained my publishing rights ages ago before this happened. Too bad about the money or the inventory - at least the collapse automatically returned my right to oversee the already-sold French rights.

Was I deep in the process of preparing a really cool piece for my first gallery group exhibition? Wow yeah!

Then, I got the best news ever of my life, which was my permanent residency in Australia. But suddenly this meant I had to properly establish myself in the country, meaning I had to make permanent what was temporary, sign up to the public healthcare system, become a homeowner and transfer a billion pieces of paperwork, etc...

Meanwhile I had to overcome my then-ongoing creative block while juggling already existing social and professional obligations while figuring out how to return to the Publishing Hustle while taking in global news.

All of this much of everything happening in the span of a month and a half wrecked me a lot. At the time I thought I was fine, but I actually wasn't.

I pride myself as being an organised person who could compartmentalise and juggle many spinning plates. But the ordeals of 2025 threw me in for a loop. I so totally dropped some plates and was dangerously close to dropping the others.

After I wrapped up my in-person obligations, I immediately went on sabbatical.

4.

Sabbatical November 2025 - February 2026.

I returned to Kuala Lumpur, partly to help reduce my cost of living, partly to grab some things to transfer to Melbourne, partly to see my family/friends, and mostly to recover my mental health and resolve my burnout.

Oddly, a lot of social and professional obligations fell within the sabbatical period, justifying its length: my visit to the Singapore Writers' Festival both for professional development and to meet my long-time online friend from Egypt (who was invited to speak at the Festival); Christmas; Chinese New Year; a reunion with my BFF for her Malaysian wedding. Some other obligations came up too at the last minute: Josh Groban was doing a 2026 tour in Singapore AND Melbourne; I finally got a replacement editor for a graphic novel project after the previous one quit; I received a professional opportunity to travel to Guangdong, China, which so happened to be my ancestral province, and lots of more.

In the midst of all of this, I was able to finally to dig myself out of the fallow period.

The sabbatical achieved its goal: I am making things again.

5.

Life moving forward.

It's April now, a month since I ended my sabbatical. I had to spend awhile to settle down, since I was winded out by travelling so much and needing to resume the Australian portion of my obligations.

It's lovely feeling more and more like myself again. I am so happy to be able to write and draw, and to be affirmed of a life that continues forward with plenty of blessing, despite devastating losses. I am looking forward to a new era.

Unfortunately, physically, I might never be the same. I was already starting to slow down a little because I was entering my 30s (I don't have my spring-chicken hyperdrive anymore!). Then the stresses of the past 3 years debuffed my energy levels a lot.

I am suspecting that I have developed some kind of chronic fatigue. Nowadays, I can only do so much before I am over for the day and am left with an ebbing ache in my limbs. However, I can't tell if the fatigue is due to still needing to recover from whatever remnants of stress, an outcome of ongoing bad habits developed as a stress coping mechanism, my jadedness over social media which has triggered a minor existential crisis... or if it's actually a real, medical condition. I don't know.

I am giving myself some more time and grace to see through the resolution of what I hope is actually stress fatigue. But if it turns out to be in reality something bodily chronic... well, we will see.

6.

Blog moving forward??? Art???

I miss and cherish this blog. I miss art too.

I have a ton of drafts that I need to publish, including the one about the state of social media. I have a lot of new things to say, particularly the 10th anniversary of The Carpet Merchant (which I am doing a webcomic rerun right now, since February), a life-milestone project, the graphic novel project and Alexander Comic (the current passion project and my debt to my mentor).

It is midnight and I am feeling the aforementioned aching in my limbs and fingers and core as I type. Time for me to retire and prepare for a new day.

Thank you so much to the readers of this blog. Posting to the void continues to be fun because of you.

Talk soon. <333