Spilling MORE Tea, Part 1: My Blog is Ruining My Life

Dear reader,

Hello, old friend! It’s been quite some time, hasn't it? How have you been? Have you been drinking good tea lately? 

Speaking of tea, the last time I spilled tea to you was last year when I wrapped up my first series titled ‘Spilling The Tea’. After writing the series for 8 consecutive weeks, I was tired. I needed a break. I needed outside of my own head. However, since we last talked, I’ve done a lot more reflection on some of the events that I’ve experienced over the past year or so. There’s still so much that needs to get out. So, dear reader, fasten your seatbelt and heat up your kettle. This is Part 1 of ‘Spilling MORE Tea’…

To get into today’s story, I’ll need to add context. 

I started my blog 9 years ago, intending to review tea. At the time, would have never imagined that I’d eventually show my face on my blog, much less talk about my life to you in such an intimate setting. I mainly focused on reviewing teas and analyzing the tea industry from an objective point of view. However, after several years of trying to remove myself from the narrative, I ran into an issue: My writing could only go so far because as much as I wanted to be objective, the way you perceive tea is entirely subjective. 

Eventually, I began writing pieces that were more opinion-forward, and eventually, started sharing my face on social media. As a side note, I wanted to mention that when I initially shared my face on social media, I lost around 100 followers because many followers believed I was a woman. 

As time went on, I eventually shared more opinion pieces, launched a tea talk show, and began traveling across the country to speak at tea-industry events. 

After a bit of time, I began to realize something: The more I was my authentic self through my blog, the happier I became. The more authentic I was through my blog, the more friends I started to make through blogging. Above all else, the more I was authentic on my blog, the more I was validating to myself that I was, in fact, valid for being myself — not because of the approval of other people, but because I was receiving the validation I needed from the one person who matters the most: Myself. 

However, despite that, I was meeting some of the most special people I had ever met, I quickly became confronted with one dilemma: How much authenticity is too much authenticity? 

Last year, when I launched the first ‘Spilling The Tea’ series, I received a lot of positive feedback. Generally, on my blog, my most popular and most read blog posts were my year-end blog anniversary posts, where I ‘spilled the tea’ on that year’s drama. Because of the praise I often got for my down-to-earth look at some of the issues I faced in the tea industry, I decided to launch the ‘Spill The Tea’ series. 

Although I received a lot of praise, I also began to receive a lot of condemnation. 

After posting the first ‘Spilling The Tea’, where I talked about cutting a friend from my life named Lilly who stood me up multiple times, I received a phone call from one of my friends named Tom. 

For context, Tom and I met through Lilly, and throughout our friendship, we had one common connection: We were both burned by Lilly. While I was being stood up by her, Tom was being stood up by her, too. There’s more to the story, but the short version is, Lilly walked over Tom, and Tom struggled with maintaining a friendship with Lilly as well. Outside of Lilly, we also bonded over our commonality of being gay and got along well. 

Well, up until launching my series. 

Tom called, and upon answering, I quickly realized he was upset. 

“I know Lilly did you wrong, and what she did was horrible and was relationship-ending, but I think what you did was worse. Although she wronged you, it was horrible of you to talk about how she hurt you on your blog.”

Taken by surprise, I replied, “My blog isn’t about shading anyone I come into contact with. My blog series is about how I react to certain situations in life, in hopes that it can help someone else in a similar situation. If I talk about how her actions hurt me, and she doesn’t like it, then that’s not my problem!”

Tom replied, “But it is your problem! Sure, she was rude and she treats us horribly, but that’s not an excuse to talk about how you feel. It’s not about you!”

To which I further replied, “When her actions affected me, then her actions no longer belonged to her! My feelings are my feelings, and this is about me! So what? I’m supposed to be an emotionless punching bag for someone else, and never write about my life and my life experiences? Besides, this has nothing to do with you! Why are you inserting yourself in this?”

Tom replied, “Because I know Lilly is a shitty friend, but she’s still my friend! This is about me! Besides, you talked about my friend like this, and on my birthday of all days?! How could you do this to me!!”

At that moment, I realized I had lost the narrative completely. I know my friendship with Tom was over, and I knew there was no going back from my series either. No matter how many times I could articulate it, this is a series about how I reacted to life stations — not a series to shade random bystanders in my life who unexpectedly get caught in the crossfire. Because that’s not what I wanted, and now he made it about him…

After the end of my ‘Spilling The Tea’ series, I took a short break to disassociate myself from my blog. Although the journey was healing, it was also tiring. I did 8 weeks of back-to-back blog posts, and I needed to rest. To help take a break from my blog, I doubled down on making reels and content creation for my blog’s social media pages. Given that I was more comfortable with my own voice, I decided to reflect that in my social media content. A lot of my reels became sillier, goofier, and most importantly, they started to become more authentically happy.

However, this created another issue. 

One day, I walked into work and got confronted by a coworker. 

“Cody!! I saw your reel! You were NAKED on your reel!!” 

I did a side-eye and asked her what she was talking about. She then pulled up a video on her phone of her screen-recording my reel.

It was a reel of me advertising my pop-up shop on my blog (which you can see here).

Two things came to mind: One, how did she know my blog’s social media account? I never shared it with her. Two, why did she take a screen recording of my blog on her personal phone?

Well, after a conversation with her in regards to respecting boundaries regarding keeping my private life private, and my work-life separate, she said she deleted her screen recording and never spoke of it again...

Until I got called into my manager’s office in regards to promoting pornography on my blog. She showed me a screen-grab that was 'anonymously' sent to her, which was the same screen grab my co worker showed me.

I left the meeting fuming and combed through every single one of my followers until I found her account (which was a burner account) and blocked her from my social media. Shortly thereafter, I left the company and found a new job.

So if I’m being ‘too’ authentic on my blog, that oversharing has become a problem, and now, oversharing has become a problem for social media… I decided to slowly take a step back from both and revert to my early-blog days on talking only about tea. There for a short (very) short period, I told myself I’d stop sharing about my life in general, and decided that in the time-being, my life would be for my eyes only, and for no one else…

As you can tell, dear reader, we’re back for ‘Spilling The Tea’ round two, so you know it didn’t last but a total of two weeks… lol. 

After a few weeks of taking a back seat, I went out with a guy named Loser. Loser was in graduate school in Boulder and was looking to date someone more seriously. After having an effortless chat on a dating app, we agreed to go out. We met up for dinner, hung out at my apartment after, and made out. It was a wonderful night, and after agreeing to go out again, things finally started to even out. He felt like he could have been the one. 

That was until I woke up the next morning from a lengthy text from him. 

Loser texted me and said, “Hey, I had a magical night. I was thinking you could be the one, until I googled you. I found your blog, and I didn’t like what I saw. I think it’s terrible that you’ve normalized having no filter on your blog series, and find it scary that if I were to ever do you wrong, then I might end up as a talking point on one of your ‘tea spilling’ posts. I liked the person I met, but I don’t like the person I’m seeing online. This isn’t going to work.”

I looked at my text and angrily replied, “You had no right to make an assumption about me based on a para-social image of me on the internet. You had no reason to be a talking point in my blog series — until now. Congrats, you just made yourself the star of my new series.” 

Safe to say, he blocked me.

However, I was pretty upset. I felt like I couldn’t win. If I’m authentic and telling my truth on my blog, then I’m oversharing in a way that will interfere with my interpersonal relationships. If I’m authentic and being my truth on social media, then I’m too excessive in a way that will interfere with my work life. If I stay off of both and pull back on both, I’ll still face the repercussions of what I put on why blog regardless. 

So why hide?

Is the very thing that brightens my life, so much love and joy, also ruining my life?

(Melodramatic, I know. But I did promise melodrama.)

Here’s what I learned: 

First, everything online stays online. I can’t go back and change something I said on my blog from the past. Not that I want to change it, but ignoring it would just present an older version of myself to live on. As we grow and change, why would I want an older version of myself to be the current perception of me? I might as well continue the journey, in that case. 

Second, I learned that there’s no such thing as my ‘authentic’ self on my blog. Between my old friend, my old coworker, and the guy I dated, they all took a small piece of who I am and made the assumption that I’m that entire thing. They all view me differently; however, does that make them wrong? 

Well, yes. 

They saw different facets of me and cherry-picked it to use as an excuse to dislike me. If someone is doing that, there’s a good chance that they probably didn’t really like the other version of you to begin with. 

Whatever singular version of me they saw is still a version of me. If they don’t like it, it’s not like I can change that. It’s really not my problem. 

I’m a complex human being. My ‘blog’ self, my ‘work’ self, and my ‘social’ self are all three different people, because who I am is dependent on who interacts with me in any given moment. In that moment, we can’t change how people view us or judge us. 

So what should we do?

The best thing we can do is to try to be our most honest selves in any given moment. Above all else, live our own truths for ourselves. We are the only person who sees every version of ourselves.

As for me, I will continue to write on my blog as I see fit. This is not a series to shade or slander anyone who gets caught in any cross-fire. Rather, this is a series to share my life experiences with you because deep down, I never got the peace and resolution that I needed to move on. I need to heal, and sharing these experiences with you is what's going to help me answer the one question I keep asking myself repeatedly:

Was it all worth it?

Thank you, dear reader, for seeing and accepting this version of me. Also, thank you for coming back for ‘Spilling More Tea’.

Coming back to you has felt like a warm hug. 

I will write to you again next week. However, in the meantime, drink a tea that makes you feel warm and fuzzy.

Thank you, dear reader.

Until next time,

~Cody Wade

Aka The Oolong Drunk 

“Blissfully Tea Drunk”