Before the writer can write anything for clients, he has to write for himself.  And even before he writes those wine reactions, he has to note for himself, for his own composition and consistency in character.  Odd, feel like I haven’t written in days.  Feel like less a writer, and I fucking hate it.  This Pinot I bought today from Oakville, for co-workers and myself to taste toward end of day, has me emboldened, but also calm and contemplative.  Another sip… more poetry, more verse and visions of me holding a mic in some other state, just speaking— in some other country, introducing myself to people already familiar with my work and they telling me to just read, “Read something new to us!” somebody orders.  I take another sip and recognize wine’s my controlling theme slab, a sturdy placement of place and purpose and intuition about my age, my existential currency.

This is what makes me a professional writer.  I know when I should be writing for clients and when the writer should be writing for he.  Himself.  For a more personifying sense of sense, a more homeostatic mood geography and sensible seismology.  Saw a friend write that she woke at 4-something this morning, and remarked “What the hek?” Are you kidding me, I thought… “I’d KILL to wake that early!” I muttered internally.  You know how much I’d get done, how many standalone pieces I could disseminate and promulgate, publish?  So thankful for this time to freely write, play and explore my abilities like my daughter who’ll soon be 1.  Just 9 more days.  How did that happen.  Time doesn’t give a shit about me, and that’s been squeezing my cognitive totality all day, to be honest.  Probably why I’m tackling what’s left of this Pinot.  And, to show how unreasonably sensitive I am as a penner—  I’m reacting to readers and students complimenting me on how “inspiring’ I am… student recently saying, “You’re so inspiring…” I know, I should take that as a compliment.  But irrationally I associate that with being some “motivational” writer, or speaker.  I. AM. NOT. THAT.  I’m a writer.  A literary expanse.  Storyteller.  I know, I know… I should be taking that as a compliment, what my student said.  But, I realize, as I said, my sensitivity is unreasonable, and immature, and unprofessional (didn’t voice this to her, my reaction).

Overthinking.  I know.  Writing freely made me an inmate to my own insecurities.  Just enjoy your wine, I tell myself.  This Pinot has actually developed quite the narrative.  Texted my friends at work, apologizing for my rookie move in removing the cork and immediately thereafter pouring.  After a couple hours of oxygen assimilation, it’s wildly expressive, charming and curvaceously cogent.  Wine definitely has say, in all described and done, tell and syllabically simmer…  Back from a break, or rather distraction.  Tempted to brew coffee, but then I remember I had my last cup this morning.  Only decaf now.  “But taste would still be there!” I think.  Agree to addle in the wine.  At Oakville, I just saw this bottle, something told me “Buy it.”  I love Pinot, I’d never heard of it before.. so why not, right?  Why be the one to pass on impulse, some “gut feeling”? (And I hate that phrase.)  Here be the memoirist, essayist, truth-teller, with his wine, some Pinot he just saw while walking around the market forever waiting for his sandwich, and the one he ordered for a co-worker.  Overthinking, again.  Must be the exhaustion from climbing my own Kilimanjaro.