To Begin and Complete a Self-Designed Project Abroad

"To begin a project of your own is not easy; there are expectations -- yours and others -- to live up to, the unshakable and unsettled feeling of having to start everything from scratch, the unspoken worry of not knowing where you are going with your project, or worse, of not going where you think you should be going with it. To complete a project is equally hard; there are questions about whether you have lived up to the expectations, about how the project is going to be received, and about how to say good-bye to the work which has given you comfort, laughter, a learning as well as growing experience, and insights ito life itself. This is a story of an artist who has grown very attached to his work over the time taken to complete it -- not a Narcissistic kind of attachment, but a maternal kind. In writing this end note for my cartoon work now, I feel like a mother who is sending her child away and off into the world. She feels, on one hand, happy, because her responsibilities are over."