Hi there! Long time no talk! Many times over the last year(ish) I have started writing up a “whats going on in my life and why are there no new reviews” post, but they have all ended up sitting as drafts or being deleted for one reason or another. The main reason is that this is a tea review blog, this last year has been heavy, and I’m never sure how much personal details I want to share or how much anybody would care to read. Over the last couple months I have had an increase in people messaging me on Instagram and asking whats going on, so with tea vendors off sourcing the latest and greatest right now, it’s probably time for an update.
The first cases of COVID hit my province March 12th, then on March 20th we entered a state of emergency, with our first batch of restrictions going into place, followed by a “circuit breaker shutdown” of the city on April 1st. This was a pretty terrifying time here, as I’m sure it was for most of the people reading this. This stress was made much worse by my wife being well into her pregnancy. Having our first child on the way then losing support of being able to see family and friend, care from the midwives being cut back, and not knowing if I was going to have a job or how long this would all last… the whole situation was a lot to take in. I think for a bit I was still getting some reviews done, or at the very least I would occasionally try to write one in order to regain a little bit of normalcy in my life with some success. This was extremely challenging though, as I found I simply didn’t have the mental capacity to focus for the length of time it takes to get through a tea session and edit every thing down. These reviews take more time and energy than you might think and I simply didn’t have the space for it.
Moving on from there a little bit – I honestly couldn’t tell you how far forward because this year has been a blur – my wife started having some complications with her pregnancy and had to be admitted to the hospital. She ended having to stay in the hospital for around a month and due to COVID restrictions I wasn’t allowed to be there with her, we could only do short visits outside. This was also around the time that everything hit the fan in the States and there were protests and riots going on nightly. Stuck at home, not able to see anybody, not able to visit my wife, worrying about anything and everything, keeping an eye on the news constantly, watching riots at three in the morning… it all got to be a too much and I decided to disconnect and take a mental health break from social media and the blog. Up until this time my posts had become infrequent but it was on my mind that I *should* be getting stuff up, so I would start a review only to abandon it twenty minutes into a tea session when I couldn’t focus. It’s not like I constantly have people banging on my (virtual) doors yelling at me to get new content out, but I still felt obligated to do something which was just adding stress, so I decided to give myself permission to let it fade away for a while. I think I intended it to be a short break, but as everything got crazier and crazier in the world, the break kept extending.
After a month-ish of ups and downs at the hospital, I got a call on June 8th that it was go time – my wife was having an emergency C-section. After 36 weeks of waiting, I finally got to meet my tiny baby girl! We had a short stay at the hospital while everybody stabilized and were back home just a few days later.
And that more or less sums things up. “But the weekend sessions, that was June! What has gone on between then and now?” you might ask yourself. Well, the last ten months can be summed up with five words: baby, baby, baby, baby, baby. Our kid is possibly the happiest child I have ever met but she is full on energy during the day and isn’t big on sleep at night. My wife and I had game planned a little bit while she was pregnant and came up with a rough schedule so that I could keep working on the blog and picking up new teas, but as any new parent probably knows, all plans you make should be held onto loosely. Things rarely go how you think they will and you need to learn to roll with it.
So there we go! That is an extremely condensed version of the last year. Now where are things going from here? Things are still hectic and I have no way to predict when I’ll be back to steady writing, but as I write this I am also drinking tea, writing up a review which should go up tomorrow, and after this I’m going to do my best to keep things going as I can. I am sure that reviews won’t come as frequent or as regular as I would like them to, but they will come so keep an eye on my Instagram or RSS to keep up to date!
Thanks and stay safe everyone!
-The Weekend Sessions