Why Tea Ticks all the Boxes

I have gone through a lot of big life changes lately: I had a baby, quit my job, and am now a stay-at-home mom for as long as I want to be (maybe forever!). I'm super lucky. I love being at home with my baby. Yes, it can be boring at times; but being there for my daughter in such a present way, maintaining the home, cooking, and experiencing the everyday tranquility of facilitating a good life for me and my family brings me great joy.

However, I know that personal pursuits are also really important to me. I would love to build something of my own and maybe make money doing it. Right now I have the luxury of time to figure out what that is - which turns out to be difficult for me, since I have a million ideas but haven't been able to settle on anything. In thinking through everything, I have been able to discover that the things that bring me the greatest fulfillment include beauty, creativity, physical acts of service, and meaningful connections.

I've noticed how happy my husband is in his new security job. Of course it helps that he has an amazing boss, but the immediacy of his work is what I've really taken notice of. Let me explain: most of the jobs I've worked over the years have been in an office, with a computer and a phone. It's a lot of emails, spreadsheets, paper in files and out of files, files on shelves and in boxes, etc. The problem is, you start to feel like you're not actually doing anything. It's just a lot of shuffling of information back and forth. I know that's not accurate, but that's how it seems to me. I've felt massively bored and trapped at basically every job I've ever worked. I don't mind hard work at all, but I really, really need to be doing work that's real. I did work one job out of the many that I thoroughly enjoyed, and that was waitressing. No joke. I loved interacting with folks, making sure I got their orders right, keeping them happy, and hopefully getting a good tip at the end of it all. I also loved the camaraderie I had with my fellow servers and the cooks in the back. It was all such simple work, it all revolved around the very real task of serving people their food, and when I left at the end of the day there was no stress over how much work was building up while I was gone - there would be new people and new experiences for the next day. If you told me tomorrow that I had to start making money immediately, I would get a waitressing job and be happy with that. 

Anyhow, taking all of this information, I realized that tea is the one thing that ticks every single one of my boxes. This is why:

BEAUTY - Every layer is beautiful, from the tea leaves themselves, to the preparation process, to the supplies used, to the final presentation, to how it is set up in your space. 

CREATIVITY - Every step requires creativity, from finding the perfect blends, to procuring or designing the tea cups and teapots (and place settings and floral arrangements, etc.), to selecting and preparing the foods served with the tea, to facilitating the perfect tea-drinking experience; not to mention the creative process that goes into setting up your tea things in your space in a way that creates the proper flow during preparation.

PHYSICAL ACTS OF SERVICE - Just pouring someone a nice cuppa is an act of service which can be done literally anywhere. Whether it's a friend in your home, or a group of seniors at a retirement facility, you can show genuine care for your fellow humans through the physical act of preparing and serving them tea. 

MEANINGFUL CONNECTIONS - When I was growing up, my best friends lived far away, and we would travel annually to each others' homes. During my visits to their house, they would brew delicious pots of tea. Every time I have a cup of tea now, I still feel the same connection with my friends that I experienced during those visits. Tea is calming, it is grounding, and it brings humans closer together. 

So for me, tea is the whole package. Somehow I will find a way to use it to build something, to sink my teeth into, to be passionate about. There are so many ways to go about this, and I am excited to discover what my first step in this journey will be.