Natasha Nesic, Snooty Tea Blog author, on life transitions and sports training

photo credit http://wlfitness.webflow.io/bio

Natasha wrote and developed video posts for one of my favorite tea blogs, the Snooty Tea Blog.  The YouTube based videos were really cool (but not there now, related to a fresh start theme).  They brought across interesting background about tea mixed with personal perspective.  

She fills in lots about her personal background and the sports training pursuits she has moved on to in the following, with some nice insight into current sports training trends and practices.  These are covered in photos in her Instagram page, with more detail in a related website, which links through to interesting articles on fitness training practices.

I can't thank her enough for sharing these insights into her life experiences, along with photos of stages along the way (all photos owned by her, with specific site or producer credit only mentioned in some cases). 

As a fan of her blog and an online acquaintance (or friend; it depends on how people use that concept) it means a lot to me on a couple of different levels.  She's a private person, so unlike many of us adding hundreds of pictures to public access Instagram accounts she's just not like that.  It's especially nice that the sports training ideas would still be interesting and maybe even helpful to people without any of that background.

Do you still drink tea?  Which kinds are your favorites?

I don’t drink tea nearly as much as I used to. If I prep a cup, it’s usually because I have some serious brainwork ahead— like the fitness guide I’m working on right now— and tea forces me to stop the monkeys in my head long enough to return to the focused mindset I cherished when I was a tea blogger.

If the day feels like a run-on sentence of planned activities, then tea acts like a nice, deliberate semicolon. My favorites are Gyokuro, Tai Ping Hou Kui, Tie Guan Yin (extra points if it’s Tealet’s Dark Roast variety), and Shou Pu-erh. Herbal go-tos are turmeric, dandelion, lemongrass, rosehip, hibiscus, and ginger. You can dump turmeric in just about anything, it’s beautiful.

Can you fill in some background on your journey with athletics, and about that leading into a training role?  How did martial arts fit with other range?  Did you compete in fighting matches or spar at some point?

I started off as an avid dancer in childhood, albeit not a very focused one. Ballet, modern, jazz— whatever my mom could sign me up for, we did it. But when I was nine, I fell in love with horseback riding, then Lord of the Rings, both of which took my heart away from dance practice. It became clear that I didn’t have the extra “hunger” to perform, something which would have taken me from amateur to pre-professional level as a dancer. Given that this was the age when dancers can start getting serious physical and psychological issues if they don’t have the traditional ballet body type, my disinterest was probably a developmental blessing.

So my chosen sport became horseback riding. Hunter/Hunt Seat Equitation, specifically, so I could still use my ballet training to sit pretty over fences. But due to limited economic resources— my parents are both teachers, let’s be frank about salary— I was unable to ride daily or lease a horse to get into competitions and advance. I had grand ambitions of being a world-class eventer when I grew up, but another developmental blessing hit in the way of cosplay.

Yep. “Cosplay” is that very nerdy pastime where you take your favorite anime, sci-fi-, fantasy, or otherwise fictional character and create their costume to wear at a convention with other nerds doing the same thing. Cosplay gave me the social life that I wouldn’t have had if I had stayed at a barn seven days a week, and taught me some valuable skills— which I’ll come back to for your last, most interesting question.

I figured that I’d make up for this when I got into college, and could compete on Mount Holyoke’s nationally-recognized competitive riding team. Everything went well until the tryout, when I nearly ran over the team coach— aka: our judge for the event. Once the results came in that I didn’t make it, I used the momentum of hysterical disappointment— this had been my seventeen-year-old life’s dream, after all— to run down the hill and plant myself in my dorm’s common room, where the first meeting for the rugby club was taking place. All you needed to do was show up to become part of the team, so that was that. I had a team sport in college! It was fantastic. I never knew I had any running ability until I was a wing.

It lasted exactly one semester. Problem was, that pesky cosplay social life had come up again, and I lost interest in practice. Magically again, it helped me avoid disaster. It turned out that the rugby team had hazing practices, which I was exempt from because of a Harry Potter Halloween party on the very night of the rookie initiation party, one that would later be investigated by the authorities and go on the attendees’ permanent records.

What rugby did do, however, was ignite my love of fitness. At an intellectually-driven liberal arts school with a fantastic gym, I was in the perfect place to research endlessly about the body and exercise, and then put it to use through creating my own workouts, yoga routines, and seeing the aesthetic results when I cosplayed. Biggest highlight of that was using all that knowledge to do Wonder Woman for my senior thesis on gender identity and representation in the cosplay subculture— which also served as a quiet, academic end to that hobby, so that I could focus on my career.

Upon graduation, I had intended to go to grad school for journalism, but my GREs were horrible and Columbia rejected me. This was fine, because then I had enough time to still work out, keep up my love of fitness by starting taekwondo and getting a National Academy of Sports Medicine Personal Trainer certification— “just in case” — and try to develop my tea blog into a worthwhile career path. I was able to pursue a few jobs in the tea field, right up to a Tea Sommelier certification and being hired at a very high-class restaurant with a noted tea program. Then the restaurant fired me, and I was stuck.

This is the part that I have to preface with, “Dude, I’m not making this up.”

Within weeks of that firing, I was on the subway and it stopped midway between 66th and 72nd Street. Just dead in the tracks. No one knew how long it would be stuck. Then the guy next to me started talking about bodyweight training, and one of us mentioned that we’re working on one-armed pushups. Immediately he went, “Here’s my card. I can put in a good word for you at Equinox.”

I started there a few months later, and have trained at a few other gyms since then before settling into a mostly private practice. The guy from the subway is still one of my best friends, and I’ve written content for his own brand, Semet Fitness. The taekwondo I keep up for myself, and because it gives me a way to quantify the other aspects of my training: kicking power, agility, reaction time, etc. It’s also therapeutic.

For your last question, yes. I was almost scheduled for an MMA fight this past December, but I backed out because a) I am extremely nearsighted and contact lenses aren’t allowed in fights, and b) it’s just not financially in the cards right now.

photo credit the Work Life Fitness FB page

What subject scope covers your current training role?

I specialize in corrective exercise, and that serves as the foundation for everything else. When a client comes to me for non-corrective work, such as weight loss or overall fitness, I still use the principles behind a comfortably moving body, plus my background in dance and martial arts, to make sure they get the biggest return on their workout.

How does someone find the type of athletic pursuit that’s right for them?  Is it about personal interest, a balance of training ranges that work together, or a match to particular goals?

All of the above! I find people work best when they have a concrete, specified interest that they want to enhance. For example, one of my dearest dudes came to me for overall longevity, so we started off with a lot of stability and small-muscle strength work, which led to larger strength movements, and then pure brute strength with core maintenance. As we navigated progressions for exercises around his pre-existing injuries— meniscus and rotator mishaps— he told me about his admiration for ballet dancers, so I worked that into his routine by giving him techniques that could both strengthen his weak points and help him realize how to embody the physicality of a dancer, in his own way. He’s progressed exponentially since we made that connection, and now we choreograph his workouts so that every exercise feeds into that goal and passion.

It’s not so much balance as it’s a matter of interweaving. Find the points that lead to each other, and build on them in a positive manner.

In particular in reference to readers who may have been involved in the past, what has changed in sports training, related to sports physiology knowledge, training approaches, cross-training philosophy, diet and other factors, mental approach, etc.?

Oh gosh. Everything.

When I started, “vegan” and “keto” were unicorn words on Google, and YouTube was only just starting to be the go-to fitness platform. Zuzka Light, a guru I followed in 2009, was filming sketchy dumbbell videos in a basement with her boyfriend. Now she’s a certified wellness coach with her own brand, and a book out in Barnes & Noble— sans boyfriend, go figure. It’s incredible to see that evolution with her and other wellness professionals, and pretty tickly to know that I’m participating in it on a smaller level.

The fitness industry continues to grow at such a rapid pace, so the knowledge keeps getting rewritten, which can be dizzying. You have to be on top of it at all times, while still applying the truths gathered in your own experience. Not every solution works for every body, which is why the industry has exploded; more and more people are looking for that custom solution, and with the external motivation from social media and Instagram, they’re more likely to want to put in the self-work it takes to get their body to the place they want it to be.

My job, in all of that, is to help the individual along by being an interpreter between the person and their body. Not everyone trains like that, but as I said, gone are the days of plug-and-chug exercise routines and diet plans. I’m not a big fan of diet plans, either, because they don’t account for the variability of the person’s emotional state and environment, ie: both the world we live in outside, and the world of the microbiome that lives inside us. Both of these are responsible for each of our biological responses to food, and that allowance is hard to program into a standard diet or workout regime. I guess the biggest change is that popular science is now giving us more freedom to listen to our gut, literally.

Could you say a little about your background with “motion training,” what that scope refers to.  What related practices did you train in, and how those helped with other sports pursuits?

“Motion training” falls under the “movement training” buzzword, which is a brand of fitness that stems from teaching the client how to perform primal movements that are also found in dance, gymnastics, capoeira, martial arts, etc, in order to achieve greater neurological connection with their bodies. Ido Portal made this very popular amongst certain MMA enthusiasts, from his work with Conor McGregor, and you can see it in the way that fighter moves like jaguar and a crocodile when he’s in the ring— fluid, responsive, never stepping twice the same way.

That’s why movement training results in all-around better performance for even the average Joe, as each individual movement serves as a blueprint for what the body will later be able to perform subconsciously. While you’re training, you won’t know why you’re being told to bridge up your hips to one side, for example, but then it’ll come up during an act of daily living when you have to reach over your head for something at an awkward angle, or in an emergency like nearly being nailed by a delivery biker, that requires drastically shifting your center of gravity in order to move out of harm’s path.

I don’t use Ido Portal’s method, but I am certified in Animal Flow, which was created by Mike Fitch of Global Bodyweight Training. If you watch the video, it’ll make my above explanation make more sense:   This Is Animal Flow

What is it like living in NYC?

Breathtakingly wonderful. Every day I wake up and I’m grateful I’m here— and that I’m lucky enough to live on the Upper West Side, two blocks from a Trader Joe’s!

Your look changed (hairstyle, most obviously).  Is there anything more to share about that?

Funny you mention it like that, because even though it looks like I’m changing my game from the ultra-feminine Snooty Tea alter ego, it’s actually been an experience of coming back to my roots.

from the Snooty Tea Person days

That’s where the cosplay comes in. As a cosplayer, in our groups I was usually the one doing “bishounen,” or “pretty boys,” which meant that I spent my adolescence walking around in a very androgynous second skin— and it was fun! Now I channel it into my personal style, with a little taekwondo thrown in there for kicks.

Oh gosh, I didn’t mean that pun! I swear. Dangit. Old habits die hard.

more than just pulling it off, but the fitness guru image works too

The end of a tea blog

No, not this blog.  Let me explain.

I love old tea blogs, looking back on perspectives on tea from way back when, maybe even ten years ago.  What Western tea culture must have been like!  The pu'er bubble burst around then, and people kept discovering new and unique versions of teas, like aged oolongs, or obscure forms of hei cha, and new producer countries kept turning up.  They still do; as far as I know I've "broke" the news of two new tea origins, of production in Spain and North Korea (teas I actually did try, in the second case).

A different type of transition relates to a changing of the guard in tea blogging; old blogs go inactive, new ones start up.  This at least partly relates to a natural process of changing personal interests.  I think back to how I loved wine at one point, then tisanes, and craft beer, after English and German beer before that.  I once owned a small espresso machine, and later went back to plain drip brewed coffee, and then switched to tea.  I was into liquors once too, but that related more to getting drunk, kind of a different thing.


This tea blogger's closing remarks in Another Tea Blog sums up all that related to their own transition:


Ok, I fought it and fought it, but the blog is officially dead. It saddens me, as tea has given me much pleasure, as has this blog. Unfortunately for now my interests and hobbies have moved on to other things.

Even without updates, many people still find their way to this blog. It is my hope that it will still be a source of information to some. I have disabled the comment moderation. If you wish to leave a comment, feel free, but I will most likely not respond.

Hopefully this is temporary. Hopefully tea will once again be the source of pleasure that it was to me. And in the mean time, hopefully it will continue to be a source of pleasure for you.



And that is the theme of this post, examining the life cycle of tea blogging, largely through the perspective and words of people that had written a blog but stopped.  With a bit of my rambling added it runs a little long but I found their input fascinating, well worth the read.

If you read through that blog, or any other, the posts tell the same type of story about initial enthusiasm, ramping up knowledge and experience, and writing and tasting skills, about building connections with others who share the interest, then eventually interest tapering off, at least in writing.  That's more or less the type of cycle I summarized in a comment on a seven year old resurrected thread on Steepster about starting a tea lounge.  Based on a little looking around none of those people commenting there probably actually started a tea lounge, and none seemed to maintain an active online interest in tea, or at least the trail goes cold there.


It's similar to this article on the 12 phases of every coffee snob's life; it ends with going quiet:


Phase 12: You develop an ability to keep your opinions to yourself

The clouds part. It becomes clear that not every coffee needs three adjectives attached to it. Mr. Coffee doesn't seem like such a bad dude anymore, he's just trying to feed his kids. There's actually a strange pleasure in drinking plain diner coffee, although you'll still draw the line at coffees from bank lobbies and hotel continental breakfasts. 


I could swear that there was a similar commentary in A Tea Addict's Journal, authored by "Marshal N," about stages of tea experience, more related to a form change than an eventual end.  A 2012 post there on tea blogging in general, about what is out there and changes, will suffice as a background reference.  There isn't much there that sums up general patterns but it is interesting comparing that post to his perspective on blogging from 2007 in the Cha Dao blog.  An observation on one reason why people write a tea blog from that:


But in much of the English-speaking community, from which most tea bloggers are drawn, oftentimes the only person who drinks tea seriously whom the blogger knows is the blogger him/herself. What the blogs, and the exchanges that take place both on and off sites, serve are the same needs that a tea drinker in China wants from a visit to a teahouse or teashop -- an interaction with somebody else who is passionate about tea.


That is true of my blog.  Compared to the real life group interaction mentioned in that early post even more of my own tea-related contact remains online.  I talk about tea in different places, all online, like in this FB group I helped found and moderate.

Old blogs coming back to life

There are few cases of old blogs continuing for a long time, on the order of a decade.  Besides the Tea Addict's Journal the Half Dipper comes to mind.  Both are perhaps quieter than before but both are well worth checking out, with both authors now drawing on a wealth of experience.  There are a few recent examples of classic blogs going dormant for years and then returning to some degree of activity:  Matt Cha's blog, Bear's blog, and Tea Obsession.

They don't tend to become too philosophical about re-starting, to examine their motivations for not blogging, or blogging again, or delve into cultural shift examination.  They just go back to talking about tea, probably from a slightly different perspective.  There might be more insight to draw on related to those cases but I didn't turn up any, so I'll move on to a few descriptions of why people stop blogging, input about personal experiences.  This short tangent can stop at mentioning those special cases.

The end of two of my favorite tea blogs, and one from before my time

I asked one of my favorite former tea bloggers about her experiences, and why she thought people let the writing interest go, the author of the Snooty Tea Blog.  The video form of that blog is under Natasha Nesic; following the trend of most early bloggers her real name wasn't connected to her work at first, but later on it was.  I'd like to include what I liked about her blog but it's hard to pin down; watch a video if you're curious about that.  Her input:

I believe that recreational blogging takes a certain dedication and outside support to maintain motivation. The ones who can do it sustainably are in fields with a much larger audience--therefore greater support network, greater opportunity to make cash. Income speaks, at the end of the day. We want to be paid for doing what we love.

These days it's more of a thing that personal training clients find fascinating--"You're a tea sommelier? And you had a blog?" but then we go back to squats. Fitness is where my real passion is, though I still enjoy a good cup of Pu-Erh. 

her iconic blog profile photo (and of course she's actually in the videos)

So a few different points there; overall support network issues and balancing different demands comes into play, and interests can change over time.  It does seem like tea blogs tied to a tea business tend to last longer, and that in cases when a tea blogger not working in the industry moves into that it helps solidify the connection.

I looked around through old tea blogs to find other examples, really as much out of personal interest as research for this post.  Based on asking around the author of one very well developed and now inactive tea blog, Palatabilitea, passed on her own insights to her own experiences, edited down just a little:


As a teacher, I know that human brains are wired to enjoy novelty, and that I have to develop multiple strategies and approaches to keep my students' interest. But we also end up returning to a few favorites.  I am still very interested in tea and continue to drink it daily. I just no longer have the need to constantly explore it and find new teas and new ways of brewing. I've had hundreds of different teas, each brewed in many ways, and I've gotten to the point where I'd rather just keep a few of my favorites on hand and brew them in my favorite ways.

Why my particular blog dried up was not a reflection of me losing interest in tea or the online tea culture, but more of a reflection of a huge change in my life. The couple of years I wrote my blog was a unique period of time between graduating from my undergrad and moving on to my first graduate program. When I started the blog, the Great Recession was in full swing and the only job I could manage to get was a part time receptionist position.  I started writing the tea blog as a way to keep my writing chops sharp, while at the same time studying to pass the GRE.  I'd fallen into a core group of live chatters on Adagio's TeaChat, and a few of them had started blogs to archive our tasting notes. We realized that a lot of other people were reading our blogs, too, which really bothered some of the guys (I was the only girl), and they stopped writing for that reason. More of us stopped for the same reason I did: our lives changed.

In my case, I got into a demanding graduate program. I went from having tons of 'free time' to none at all, and blogging was actually fairly labor intensive. Between tasting multiple rounds, taking notes, photography and photo editing, and then finally composing and editing, I think I was putting 5 hours of work into each post, and I just did not have that time. 

...And when I did get a bit of free time and funds back, I found I preferred not constantly writing about and talking about tea. The constant discussion had begun to feel performative, and I had developed a critic's lens when it came to tea...and that was keeping me from enjoying the moment and the tea in my cup. Drinking tea was far more pleasurable and meditative when I wasn't evaluating it. And it was a major relief from my "day job" of literary criticism. So I stopped paying attention to the tea chatter that was going on online, and I've been quite happy with my decision. 

I can relate to all of that.  Tea blogging does take time, and to some extent the activity takes away from simply enjoying the experience, even if it does push you to explore some aspects more deeply.  There seems to be a divide between people that enjoy trying to define tea tasting through description, who experience the analysis and communication as enriching it, and for others who find it gets in the way.  That gets compared to photography, how for some that puts distance between them and what they see, and for others it somehow adds a meaningful extra dimension.

While I was writing this post one of my own favorite current tea bloggers posted her sign-off from tea blogging, Amanda from My Thoughts Are Like Butterflies.  That blog won't be updated with reviews from here on out but I highly recommend reading through the existing posts.  She influenced my own experience of writing about tea, I suppose to some extent related to reviewing style, but really more about adding a bit more of myself to my blog posts.  Her closing post tells the story:


Well, all, the time has come to hang up my blogger hat, this is the last update this blog will have. I have given this a lot of thought and realized it was time to move on to other things! Before I get into the meat of the blog, thank you...all of you...all the readers, fellow bloggers, tea companies, tea growers, all the ones that found my words useful and relevant, you guys are the reason I continued with this blog for as long as I did, the reason I went from posting quick tasting notes on Facebook to long-winded rambles. I will never have the right words to accurately express my appreciation and the glowing warm fuzzies I get in my heart.


There are myriad reasons why, so I will give a quick rundown. 

1. I have burned out and no longer feel I have anything worth saying about these teas, which doesn't do anyone justice, and I really do not want my burn out of writing to leach into the tea itself, I adore tea and will do anything to avoid jeopardizing my love of it!

2. It is a job that doesn't pay anything, and I no longer find this job fun, it went from being a hobby and passion to a job. I know from experience this is toxic as hell one's hobbies should never only be a job. 

a pure soul

3. Yes, my health is part of it, I am tired of beating myself up for missing blog days due to being too unwell. I started this blog in part to make myself feel constructive while also being disabled, and that really helped at first, now I no longer need it for the confidence boost and the stress of missing posts got old. 


4. I just want to drink tea, I am tired of having to stop my sessions to take notes and mess with taking pictures, it is so easy with Instagram to take (mediocre) photos and throw them on there while waiting for the cup to cool, the process of taking notes mid tasting and photos were just getting in the way of my enjoyment,I am tired of having to think about it, I just want to get lost in tea.Those are the main reasons I am ending the blog, I feel as though a weight has been lifted from me!




She goes on to sign off a bit more, and explain that disappointed readers can still catch more limited updates on Instagram.

Those last two citations overlap a bit, and pretty much sum it up:  it can shift from being a labor of love to just being work, and for most it's work that doesn't actually pay.  Except maybe in tea samples, or for some limited advertising revenue, but a lot of tea bloggers are doing it almost entirely just to share experiences.

I'm not thinking of throwing in the towel just yet but it wouldn't take much in the way of life circumstances changes for me to scale back the effort I put in.  I've used tea exploration, research and writing to support different ends, to explore a subject I love and also social networking avenues.  Blogging always was about two separate interests, for me, one related to experiencing tea and the other to all the rest, and I could imagine the latter dropping out.  For now it's still a labor of love, and along with the mundane reviews I have a few other interesting things in mind to tell you about.