Last regular day, Dutcher.  Business plan for day.. write the entire time.  Taste through the wines, go for a vineyard walk, take pictures, leave the winery seen as the most creative and writing-addicted bloke ever to be there, behind the bar or out in the vineyard or anywhere on property.  Now at the Yulupa Starbucks, writing and taking notes for day, found the best quote I think I ever have from Pablo [Picasso].  I need to be working, always.  Why did I not stay up this morning, at 04:50-something when downstairs after helping Jackie get cozy in his room?  I just stared at the clock at thought about it.  Why?  Why did I think?  Why didn’t I just open the laptop and start writing?  Or even do some note-taking or writing on phone?  Doesn’t matter.  Here I am.  Now.  Working.  If you stalled in the past, leave it there.  The Now is without blemish.  Keep it pristine.  More counsel to myself this morning, with all these people around me— older couple, left, one drinking her coffee and reading paper while husband looks at phone and sips from his cup.  Nice guy.. agreeing to watch my stuff while I sprinted outside to get headphones from car.

Sitting here thinking about the last year or so at Dutcher.  All the story and writing I’ve accrued, what I am because of the winery— better with sales, more confident in how I talk about the wines, more in love with the vineyard, more fond of photog’ and incorporating it into my work.  This new assignment, I’m confident, will do everything for me.  Everything.  Finish my book, finally… travel, taste more wines and more poetic push to write about the wines the way I do.  That, with today, is much of my business plan— use today as practice, write about all the wines open, from the SB to the Chards, all reds, and even that port, with verse.. wild verse.  Stanzas that could be performed, read to crowds, leaving them if not stunned then thinking.