Despite being hours of reading into wellness for Nepal Tea's content strategy, I  got Covid. It was awful. I didn’t have the energy to get up from my bed and I spent weeks at a corner trying to not succumb to the anxiety of being unwell. The bedridden days felt short and the days of recovery – a purgatory between having the controls of my body back and medicine-induced dreamless sleep, felt long. Each hour pressmark-ed with all the works piling up and each day ending with all the projects I was letting down, I couldn’t wait to recover. 

Recovery came but wellness didn't 

Alas, the recovery came swiftly. In no time, I was catching up to all the tasks I couldn’t get at last month. Soon a different kind of tiredness started following me.  I’d open my laptop in the morning and realize that I hadn’t looked at anything else other than my screen for hours. My neck and my back, from working from my nest-like bed, hurt. I’d forget to drink water all day and compensate by gulping down three-four glasses before sleep. As I spent more nights with my tummy full of water, I realized what I needed now, more than ever, is time to connect with myself and with people in a meaningful manner.
But I can’t exactly take more time off work or put a hold on that project that’s due early next month after using a stone as a blanket and crawling under it for almost a month. Despite all the wellness blogs and the youtubers telling me I deserve the break, it just didn’t feel right.

In short, I was healthier for the first time in months but not exactly well. 

So I had to ask the question, was there no balance between work and wellness? Could I not take a stock of my mental, physical, and spiritual health while looking at the stock market too? I am deciding that it’s difficult but not entirely impossible. It’s to do with habits after all.

Few habits changes marking the beginning of my wellness journey

- I don’t check my phone past 11 PM. Not even for TikToks.
- I dedicate at least 30 minutes a day to reading. This number should be way more but I’ve fallen out of the reading for pleasure habit lately so baby step at a time.
- The benefit of working from home has given a lot of deadlines but also a level of flexibility to have some room in my daily schedule to bask in the sun at least once.
- Play with my dog. Has to be done.
- Separate another 30 minutes to do one more thing I love i.e. writing.
- Sum up work into lists and slowly nib at it, at my own speed.
- And lastly, of course, I pick one tea from Nepal Tea’s collection and try and perfect the art of brewing tea. I’m still quite bad at it and fumble to find the right notes and right flavors as described in the package but the joy is in the attempt.

How have you been loving yourself this month of love? When you think about love do you think about yourself and your own wellness? Did you find any time to take a pause and consider how well you feel today? If you can't think of a single time, you looked away from screen, take this as a cue to do so today and step away for a few minutes or even seconds! We've all got to start somewhere!