The best gift I've ever received.

The best gift I’ve ever received? A professional kitchen knife and a belt-driven electric sharpener.

I believed that the knife would make cooking much more enjoyable. And it did.

But I didn’t initially appreciate the value of a great sharpener. I had tried a simpler product where you pull a knife through v-shaped grooves. (It didn’t work well.) I had scraped my knives against a honing rod. (It doesn’t do anything to a dull blade). I had watched countless Youtube videos describing “the right way” to sharpen a knife with a whetstone. But I know myself. And I’m the kind of person that would buy a whetstone and then let it gather dust.

A belt-driven electric sharpener just works for me. Once or twice a year, I run every plain-edge knife in the house through it. Even my cheap, 20-year old knives have a new lease on life after just 15 minutes of effort.

A newly sharpened kitchen knife is one of life’s great joys. Every time I use one, I wonder why I waited so long to pull out the sharpener.

This is really a post about mental health. Every brain needs proper care and maintenance. Some generally effective strategies won’t work for us, and some of our habits don’t work for anyone (who else is on social media right now 😜). But when we do find something that works, it’s worth doing again and again.

So find some small way to sharpen your mental health today. And if you’re struggling to make progress on your own, it might be time to ask a professional for help. You just might find yourself asking why you waited so long.