At the beginning of this year, I shook off my old yoga mat. It’d been sitting in a corner for months, dusty with disuse behind my gym bags and some clothes I’d been meaning to donate. Unfurling it, I noticed it had gained a perceptible curvature after being packed away for so long. That stiffness and inflexibility mirrored my limbs for the first few weeks of practice but, like my body, it’s since loosened up. As my mat flattens, I feel my muscles getting stronger, my limbs stretching further, my breath lasting longer. The one benefit I’ve yet to regain? My balance.

Every Tree Pose is a battle. Every Boat Pose is torture. Half the time, Eagle Pose has me worried I’ll end up in the Peter Griffin Death Pose instead. It’s hard to realize that, without practice and intention, you can lose your ability to balance your body.
And it sucks to realize the same holds true for balancing your life.

By the end of 2023, I knew I was off-kilter. Whether I was working on the blog, spending time with family and friends, or taking the day off, everything felt like a chore. I’d reached a point where my goals were so imbalanced that I was staring down the barrel of burnout and just waiting for my body to pull the trigger. Trying to ditch the mental game of chicken I was playing, I paused the blog for 2024. It was too little, too late— burnout had found me and it was time to pay up.

After several weeks of laying flat on my back (both from exhaustion and a respiratory infection), I realized that, since I’d graduated college, I’d never given myself permission to do nothing. With zero irony, I made my goal for the year to not set goals. No scheduled posts, no big, overarching life plans. Just exist. Rest. Try to balance the last several years of overwork and stress with a year of relaxation.

It seemed a good idea, in theory. And, in some respects, it worked! I re-engaged with old hobbies, started new ones, and drank copious amounts of tea in the process. But after a month or two of nothing but rest, a little voice in the back of my head started muttering. It was quiet, at first, then grew louder with each day, week, month that passed. What was I doing with myself?

I wasn’t finishing any projects. I wasn’t growing my skills. Time was passing and I was swimming through the days, aimless and guilty. Toward the latter half of the year, I realized I’d over-corrected and tipped the scales in the opposite direction. I’d rested so much that I’d replaced my old, overworked stress with a new, chronophobic kind. It didn’t matter how many experiences I shoved into my weekends, how many books I read, or how much tea I drank; the fear of another year passing with nothing to show for it hung over my head like the sword of Damocles.

Turns out, my problem has always been about balance. A full year of nothing doesn’t counteract several years of non-stop output. Conversely, no one can force themselves to grind for years without screwing with their perception of relaxation. The true goal is to find a way to balance the two, allowing both to take prominent places in your life without one overtaking the other.

Easier said than done. Like yoga, true balance takes effort. No one wakes up one morning and suddenly knows how to do a headstand. You have to train and build up your strength and flexibility to maintain equilibrium. You have to breathe and spread awareness through your body and the space around you. And, most importantly, you must cultivate patience so you can give yourself grace when you inevitably fall.

That’s my goal for 2025: to seek balance. No more strict deadlines or amorphous desires I never act upon. Instead, I’ll manage both my goals and my expectations day by day, re-evaluating as necessary to ensure I find stable footing.

As such, I won’t be committing to a post schedule, neither here nor on Instagram. What I can promise is that you will see me around this year, sporadically, talking about tea and books. I thank you all for sticking with me during my hiatus and now, as I puzzle out how to Tree Pose my way into a more harmonious life.

Until next time, folks— Happy reading and happy sipping.