Wish for a Star: The New Trials: March 2020

Merry Christmas/ Happy New Year S+S unfinished fanart!

I don't how to get started, and this is not really the first blog post that I have started in the past couple months. This might have been the longest period that I have gone off the radar in recent years. As the end of the year approached, I was overwhelmed in general with work and life. Nothing terribly bad but just had to prioritize things to get done because as I grow older, I realize that my energy and time is unfortunately finite. Once I missed one self-imposed deadline, I think the pressure grew stronger on me not to come back to the community until I had a substantial new update. And yet I don't have an update ready for today, but I just wanted to drop a note because of the situation of the world, combating a global pandemic perhaps in a crisis a lot of us haven't seen in our lifetimes. Because of my line of work, that's all my attention has been focused on over the past month and a half on the novel coronavirus, or COVID-19, has only been named a global pandemic last week. (Initially I had been aiming for a February return to the New Trials Community because it's an important month for us, but that is mainly the reason for the delay). I know all of you are coming from across the world, some more affected by others, but I hope you are all take care of yourselves and your loved ones. My country was one that was affected by the virus earlier than some other places, and so we have been dealing with this for more than a month now. It's important to maintain a sense of balance, practicing caution and exercising good judgement in terms of hygiene and social distancing, but also, not to panic or go into a state of hysteria. After all, most of us aren't really scared for ourselves and more for our loved ones, maybe grandparents or parents who can be more affected by the virus. Because of my line of work, I need to keep going to work and am busier than ever, but the perks of social distancing is general social life has been minimized/cut off giving more time to reflect on other things, I suppose. But after more than a month of living on the edge, I slowly realized that all the joy in life was being sapped away from me. (It doesn't help that I've always been an extreme germaphobe, though I am pretty good at hiding that in everyday life.) Then, I wondered what is something that gives me join and happiness, and of course, that is writing and you guys, the New Trials of Card Captor Sakura community. And it hit me how much I missed being a part of it.

On a brighter note, I would like to properly mark the 20th anniversary of "The New Trials of Card Captor Sakura" here in the official blog and thank you all for your undying support. This whole experience, interacting with other Card Captor Sakura fans and just finding kindred spirits out in the world globally has been a life-changer for me, and an inseparable part of my formative years and the path to becoming who I am today. There are really no words to express the gratitude I have for everyone for sticking by all these years, and of course the best way to show my thanks is through action, which in my head is updates, which I have been bad about. The amount of my gratitude is always paired with my apology for how long it takes me to write and for those times I go missing.

In terms of productivity in writing, 2019 has sort of been a failure, in every aspect, but if readers will see it in a kinder light, it's been an important year architecturally to set the foundation of the end of New Trials. Amethyst Beloved (who in my head I call my chief editor who has been a major force in driving me all these years), in 2018 told me that I can finish New Trials to mark its 20th anniversary, and somewhere in my head, I've been pressuring myself into thinking I have to finish New Trials by 2019. I think somewhere in late autumn, I realized that it's just not happening. I missed posting on a lot of important occasions over the past several months because as long-time readers know, I oftentimes go on self-imposed exile when I am really trying to crunch down on finishing a chapter, or in this case, the whole series. This time around though, I think it's had a negative effect. I enjoy all the positive energy, and I really missed being a part of the NT/CCS community real-time (which I was so good about in 2018). I apologize for this, and it's not because I put New Trials any lower on my priorities or wasn't thinking about it, but consider it as my self-imposed punishment for not meeting my own deadlines and also what I think readers expect from me. I spent last year realizing and accepting my own limitations but hope 2020 can be more about trying to overcome this.

Happy Halloween 2019!

I was devastated to hear that Yahoo Groups has gone under while I was MIA. But then, Amethyst Beloved let me know that a group of longtime followers have set up a new backup account: https://groups.io/g/newtrialsring. Thank you again to Natasha Gibson, Serenity Shields, Jiri-chan, Kirei-chan, Mesel Tzegai and Amethyst Beloved! I love the NT community, the best group in the world, and am so grateful. Happy International New Trials Day!

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, Happy Valentine's Day, Happy White Day! All these special occasions I missed while I was away. But my heart was still with New Trials nonetheless. Just sharing a few doodles I drew to mark the special occasions and ended up not posting.

Please take care, everybody!