I had no expectations for what this tea would taste like, and honestly, I still don't know how to describe it.

 

This is a tea made from dried and fermented hydrangea leaf: the name means “sweet tea” and it is, from first sip, shockingly sweet: punch-you-in-the-face sweet. The sweetener is non-caloric, and it's sweet in the way that tea with a very generous spoonful of honey tastes sweet, without any of the weird aftertaste that artificial sweeteners impart.

 

There is a taste to it that is something like mint, and another taste that is just on the cusp of bitterness--I think, without the sweetness, I would call it bitter, but with it, it feels…right? 

 

The sweetness fades with each steep. Right around steep four, you get a balanced, round, sweetness that is highly drinkable. Before then, it is almost a little too sweet for my taste.

 

I had this with my sister on New Year's Day. She is very caffeine sensitive and so we needed something without for her to drink.

 

This is not something I could see myself drinking on a regular basis, but it is so different that it's a little bit shocking, and definitely a lot of fun.

Amacha comes to me from Sazen Tea.

Happy New Year! I have a 2026 gift that will be useful to the small number of people who have brains that are somewhat like me.

 

A few weeks ago, I talked about my new fancy planner (which was a blank sheet of paper). After approximately a month or so of using this extremely effective new planner, I have made a personalized update based on ways that the planner is likely to fail for me. 

 

I am sharing this update with you as a new year giveaway of a downloadable planner page, which sounds very cool and exciting.

 

In reality, I am giving you a mostly blank page.

There is not a page for every day. Those pages are awful when you skip using a planner for a long time and then skip a billion blank pages of flaming embarrassment as you flip from January 17th to April 3rd.

 

It's just a page, and if you skip days it's still just a new page and zero pages in between. The shame is zero width, and therefore does not exist.

 

In the slightly elevated version of my fancy planner, there is ¼ of a page that is just for you to write tasks down, and then number them. Nothing tells you to do this because I hate being told what to do. There is a big grey box at the top where you can write “task dump” or the date or whatever you want, but there are no prompts because every prompt is an opportunity for my brain to say, “nah nah nah you can't make me.”

 

To the right, there is a section that says “check your calendar.” I still hate being told what to do, but the one detriment of the pure blank page planner I would, in fact, forget to check my calendar and then forget that linear time existed and contained things like dentist appointments. I put stars around “check your calendar” to soften the blow of being told what to do. I may need to go back and add rainbows at some point if that's too much.

 

This is not optimal, and so this updated version of the calendar crosses the rubicon and reminds me that my past self is forced to commit me to do things in advance.

 

I have also added a box for a single sticky task. “Sticky task” is what I call tasks that end up on my list for somewhere between two weeks or eleven months, depending on how much I don't want to do it. Every so often I make myself do a sticky task when the dread I feel at writing the task down for the eleventy-billionth time becomes greater than the dread I feel at having to do the task.

 

There is only room for one sticky task. I can make myself do more than one sticky task per day, but if I do, I will quickly start seeing my planner as a form of punishment and then I will avoid it forever, to my eternal detriment. There is room underneath the task for a phone number, because for me, 80% of sticky tasks require me to call someone, which is quite frankly ranked slightly below gnawing my own arm off in my personal hierarchy of things I want to do.

 

When I do a sticky task I must immediately reward myself, because otherwise the associated pain with the planner gets out of hand and once again, I avoid it forever.

 

(I am told that most human beings can do things they really don't want to do on a regular basis, and frankly, that seems fake and weird. This is not a planner for people who are good at being told what to do and then being able to do it, even if they would prefer not to.)

 

Finally, there is a large-ish box for the last third of the page. This box is where I acknowledge that my corporeal existence requires care. 

 

There are three versions of this uploaded. In version number one, that entire box is left completely blank so that I am not telling my future self what to do at all. This may work best for some of you. Here is where you can download version number one.

 

In version number two, that box just contains a meal list.  This allows me to answer questions like “what am I eating for dinner” at some point other than the one where I am horrifically starving and making bad choices. I have added a section for “defrost” because the number one reason I find myself totally unable to make dinner on a particular night is because I forgot to defrost the salmon I was supposed to make. Here is where you can download version number two.

 

Version number three adds some basic boxes for taking meds and exercising and cleaning up after yourself. Here is where you can download version number three. 

 

For those of you who are as demand resistant as I am, you might find these boxes extremely rude, because who are you to tell me what to do! (Me. I am literally me. I did that.) Sometimes I cannot handle even this very basic suggestion of a check box.

 

I actually use all three different versions so I can pick the version that best matches my current level of ridiculous stubbornness. 

 

This is a great planner for highly demand resistant people who don't have a lot of external demands on their schedules. It would probably be useless for anyone else.

 

Happy New Year!

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