Is it Actually That Hard? Or is it Just New?

Pictured above is my cup of tea. It has only been in more recent years of my life that I’ve become a fan of drinking tea, specifically hot tea as I’m not a fan of iced tea still. All my fellow Texans are now collectively clutching their pearls at my betrayal of true Southern-ism. The scandal!

(No actual besmirching of Texans intended – at worse I’ve faced *very* light teasing 😂)

When you first get into drinking hot tea and making it for yourself there doesn’t seem to be much beyond the factor of boil water and place teabag in cup. Then as time progresses, and if you’re the curious type like I am, you discover there can be a lot more art involved in the process of making varying types and qualities. I suppose it’s similar in a sense to the deeper dives of nearly anyone’s passion. There are layers of both simplicity and complexity.

The funny thing is that sometimes the realization that parts can be complex somehow translates in my mind that more will be complex without knowing this for certain.

I spent about year working at a bookstore that held a cafe inside it. In that time a learned a lot about making all sorts of drinks. Pro tip: when pulling espresso shots make sure to wait no more than 7 seconds maximum before mixing your shot in with your drink. Leaving it sitting out on a counter for longer before mixing it in will cause the shot to overcook itself and make the drink more bitter.

Funnily enough, the thing I did not learn a lot about was the tea making side of things. It was there that I first came into contact with a London Fog, which basically is an Earl Grey latte. I don’t know why or when, but somehow my mind decided that it would clearly be too complicated of a drink to attempt making. Maybe it was just the hectic-ness of the work environment that made me miss-associate the stress? Either way it took me three years later before I finally decided to look up a recipe for myself and see if I could make my own version at home.

All it took was like a quarter teaspoon of vanilla extract, a half cup of hot milk, and then your regular cup of Earl Grey tea mixed with whatever sweetner you preferred. I felt so ridiculous! I could have been enjoying this drink from home for years now if I had just been willing to look it up for myself 🤦‍♀️

After having a good laugh at myself and I finally sitting down with my off branded London Fog it got me wondering about how many times similar occurrences have happened in life. The times where we tell ourselves something is just too difficult to understand or even attempt figuring out because either the person or the environment that introduced us to said concepts were stressful or some other negative context?

How many times have we kept ourselves from big or simple joys because we disqualify ourselves before we even start? New territory in any topic can be both scary and overwhelming. We carry our personal scars and doubts into far more facets of life than we often recognize. Past woundings and lies we’ve believed about ourselves can cause us to shut off even the most basic experiences in life.

I know it can sound a little silly going so deep over just learning how to make a type of tea. Still, this little adventure just struck me with this concept. It’s just basically the idea of reminding myself to not let my uncertainty to stop me from having good things in my life. That before shutting myself down and my perceived abilities maybe just give it a shot first. No, not everything will end up being as simple as making a cup of London Fog tea, but I still think it’s better to try and find out than to assume and miss out on something that could be really nice.