Staying Active on Steepster...General Motivation?
If you really like something, you shouldn’t have to force yourself to do it.
I think maybe summertime makes all but the most diehard less active here, maybe? I’m not sure. But I could just imagine that cold and snuggly winter would make more people seek out tea friends.
Agreed, hot beverages are a harder sell in hot weather (at least in Western cultures, which seem to be the origin of most Steepster participants). Also, people take vacations more in the summer, so may be spending more time away from the computer.
This reminds me of something my Sister’s boyfriend said. He is a southern boy with a love of sweet tea. He will accept a cup of hot tea when offered, but he grew up on iced tea. this makes sense since it always so hot in the south. Well, anyway, he and my sister were visiting a few weeks ago and I offered them some tea. It was hot tea. He said something to the effect of “It’s like I’m in Japan again. Its weird over there! hot tea everywhere, it doesn’t matter if its 110 degrees outside, everyone is drinking hot tea!! whats with that?” lol
Don’t need motivation,,,I LOVE Steepster,,,just need new teas!! lol Still here everyday but I am drinking what I have and out of new teas to review lol. I add notes to the teas that I have already reviewed but can’t wait to get some new tea in the fall.
Also, when they roll out the ap for Steepster,,,people can be active anywhere. BTW when is that ap gonna be ready??? Are they still doing the ap? I hope?
I’m a newbie on Steepster having joined less than a month ago, so for me, it’s not so much about staying involved as it is about learning how to get involved. I’ve been serious about tea for the last few years (as my cupboards will attest), but it’s only recently that I started dreaming and planning to open a tea shop (8-10 year plan because I have three kids to put through college and need more income than a tea shop will allow). I realized how much I need to learn in order to do that and I said (duh!), “There must be folks online who are discussing tea. I should go find them.” So here I am, trying to absorb as much as I can and contribute as I’m able.
Honestly I visit this site very sporadically, but still drink tea all day every day. What motivates my coming back is to find new teas to try and new people who enjoy the drink as much as I do (which is hard to come by here in MT). So as a chronic lurker, I’m emerging from the shadows today to say hello! I have no friends here really, so maybe a few words of exchange would motivate me to come back more often…
Well hi then! :P I was lurking too for a while but finally a few months ago I decided to get more involved. I’m glad I did. Awesome people here!
Welcome into the light! I’ll be your friend!
Montana is incredibly beautiful. It must be awesome to kick back with a cup of tea and watch the sun set in that massive sky.
It took me sometime too. JustJames was the one who post a comment on my rating(without review) saying why I don’t post anything and write whatever you want. Thank you sir!
I’m following you;)
Hi! Steepster is great for finding new teas, but it has an exceptionally friendly community as well. Welcome!
I also lurked for a really long time, and even now only chime in every now and again. Sometimes I enjoy just absorbing, sometimes participating :)
Honestly, I was looking for an more active discussion board type site, but I stayed for the tea logs. It has a nice database even if the discussions are lacking. I am a member of other forums and even have a blog, but I haven’t don’t anything on them. I think I’ve only written one tea review recently – no, I wrote two. I find it hard to make tea more than once a day these days, and since I’m going through tea samples with caffeine, I’ve been limiting myself. I do have herbal tea, though, so I should start making it again.
I do the same thing too, by the way, but that isn’t just with the internet. And my problem isn’t simply that I lose interest, but that I’ve devoted so much attention to it that I need to get space from it. I still can’t eat quest bars. I just push them to the back of my cupboard.
I joined last year but didn’t have much time to go on the Internet much for a few months. When I came to stock up on my teas last month, I came back to look at my tealog to see if there were any I’d particularly loved – and found that I’d only ever got around to rating and reviewing two or three. So I’m back mostly to try to keep a record of teas I buy and which ones I like the most.
I’m from the UK, so I can’t use the US tea sellers others recommend, or participate in swaps and so on – US-UK postage is astronomical – but it’s interesting to read others’ tealogs and participate a little in some of the forum threads – I’ve found some good advice here.
What I find really useful is the Cupboard, sometime I forget what my tea cakes are, and they are all in Chinese. So I have been trying to keep up with recording what I have when a tea arrives so I know what each one is. Most have photos on here already, and that helps me match up my teas with their names.
I have a friend in Milton Keynes and we’ve sent packages back and forth over the years. Royal Air Mail is pretty reasonable for small boxes and loose tea weighs very little. International swaps are fairly regular topics on here.
That’s interesting, Cwyn; when I’ve checked out US companies, the postage is prohibitive, but if it’s normally not too bad, I’ll keep a closer look-out for any possible international swap threads on here. Not that I have anything to swap right now, I deliberately buy fairly small quantities because tea-lovers are pretty thin on the ground among my friends, but if tea-swapping was more of an option, I’d probably be less cautious.
And I love the tea cupboard too – though I’ve neglected it quite a bit. I wish it could ‘sort’ by tea-type, though (maybe it can, and I’ve overlooked that?) – when I have a few more teas in it, I’d love to be able to see what Greens or Blacks etc I have, when the fancy takes me, so I don’t have to go rooting around my tea shelf to see what’s hidden in the tin right at the back.
First Class International is priced in the US by the ounce unit. It is $12.60 for 1 lb, $8.85 for 8 ounce, with prices less and more, again per ounce. Tea doesn’t weigh very much. A half pound is ~227 grams. That is about 20 10-gram samples, or 8 big 1 ounce samples. I think online companies probably use a faster shipping service, but from the US to the UK the difference between First Class and Priority is only 3-4 days time. Other countries this travel time can be vastly longer, but not so from the US to the UK.
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