Tea from Wistaria and some personal thoughts

Wistaria - Signature Dong Ding Oolong

I've been mulling over what is to become of my little blog and whether "a" it was still a worthwhile endeavour and "b" whether I wanted to focus this blog a little more or leave it to be a mixture of things in my life.  I actually wrote this back in the middle of summer when I had several posts to write but never finished writing for various reasons.  And after writing I wanted to sit on it.  We'll,  I guess I sat for a very long time!

I do still think it's worthwhile for me to continue writing in this space but the focus part is the hard thing. I have thought about the type of content and when I first started blogging, I had a tea focused blog.  Then I gave that blog up and started this blog and one of my goals was to share things about my hobbies and what it was like living in Toronto through eating and social events.  But that quickly went to the wayside when soon after starting, I became a mother and priorities changed.  

I now realize I had too many hobbies and could not focus or really put my whole heart into them.

A pic from the past: Sewing coin purses and needle felting were among my hobbies.

I needed to come back to the initial reason for blogging. What I am really after when I think about blogging?  It was a space to practice writing and an opportunity for me to learn and share something.  

I came across a post on Medium about making 7 figures in 3 years and most of the time I ignore these types of titles (although a little more $$ is always nice, lol!), but I decided to skim through it because of a quote in the subtitle:

“Don’t be addicted to money. Work to learn. Don’t work for money. Work for knowledge.” — Robert Kiyosaki

Learning is something I enjoy doing (sounds kinda awkward to say, I know).  I'm the first to admit that I can be lazy at times because who wouldn't want to just sit back and drink tea all day?!  :)

But, I'm the little girl that wanted to go to kindergarten full day when it was only half day kindergarten and the school had to tell my mom to keep me home.  I took summer school to gain extra credits despite taking enough during the regular year.  I know, a little bit of a geek.  Today, it's much harder to learn when the reality of being an adult and parent doesn't allow for much personal learning aside from learning to "parent" or what might be needed for your job.  That type of learning never stops, but that type of learning is not solely for yourself.  The learning that I strive for is what grows me as a person and satisfies my innate need for something "new".

If you do read the above mentioned post, it talks about learning by teaching and I firmly believe it is a quick way to learn something and is how I often find something gets committed to my memory. 

So, here is where this blog comes in.  I continually try to gain time for TEA.  Learning about tea, preparing tea, and drinking tea.  I've also become much more attuned to the "tea experience" in which, tea accessories, tea snacks/desserts, flowers and plants, poetry and art all have a role in how we experience tea.  

I haven't worked out too much about what I'll be posting on and in some ways I think I have a fear of boxing myself in. I've even considered starting a whole new blog. However, for the time being I'm going to leave things as is with the goal to focus more on documenting my tea experience if it requires more than what I'd want to post on Instagram...whether it is just a collection of photos of a tea session, a post about a book I read, a recipe for something to go with tea, or maybe a more informative piece on tea, like tea and health.  My instagram @tiantiantea is already a tea based account so this would likely be more an extension of that - living a life of tea - are words that I've been thinking about.

While thinking about this blog, I enjoyed this Dong Ding Oolong tea from Wistaria Tea House in Taipei. They started taking online orders this year so I jumped at the chance to order a few items. Mmmm, thinking back I have to brew it again this weekend!

Beautiful colour and clarity

Large leaves, slightly oxidized.

After brewing, you can see how slightly agitating the leaves during production to create browning at the edges of the leaf creates such beauty.  I also came across a post on defining oolong tea as more than just mid-oxidized teas which is often what I would say to someone new to tea, but really, oolongs are about the gentle process as described here. So much more to oolong tea than just the oxidation level!

Till next time!