Prospect Differently, and with more echoing exploration.
No more businesses of a certain size, I’m seeing. For viability’s sake, and also creativity’s.
The AE life, today reiterating the value of certain practices. Taking the Sonic laptop home with…. Sales is not sales, but evidence of useful connection. Haven’t had much time to write. Or, I have, just haven’t seized properly, or at all. Now, finally, typing. Only to have to leave in a bit. Get a beer somewhere before event. Don’t forget to bring cards. Again, evidence of connection… or maybe not even that, just not giving as many fucks, keeping self moving, and writing and speaking. Make it about YOU, you… the brand of you.
Sales is funny, and infuriating. You get a sale, or sign someone, and the business isn’t of a certain desired size, and you think to yourself, “Did I just waste my time?” Write it out, write more, plan more, and change the plan day to day. To be stoic and set is to be set to death. Business death. Out of business. That won’t happen to me, but I know I need set sights not just higher but with more demanding stance.
Office quieting down, and I’m in a mode of sight, seeing things for me this semester and with my business forward. Revolving around sales that is not sales. I keep saying connection but maybe it’s more than that. I’m doing this differently, celebrating what I’ve done so far and amplifying it in different angularity.
Thinking about my life selling, starting really with treadmills at Sears, when I was in high school and then a bit when in college. I didn’t know that much about the machines, I just talked about them as much as I could then switched the stitch of the interaction to the person, and myself. What we had in common, or didn’t. That’s as easy and eased as it should be, should remain. Knowing my Now in this sales dimension as a more interconnected and self-abetted provision.
4:42pm
In SF today for lunch with a Senior AE. First lunch then visiting businesses around us. Have more leads than I know what to do with. Just the feeling I want. And, the revelation now a true revelation to focus on Novato and south…. San Rafael, SF, and back in my neighborhood of the Peninsula.
Taking laptop home and looking for businesses on map file. Entirely instructional, this entire day. From when I woke, to kissing kids goodbye, then driving to work and later struggling for a parking spot.
Now, ZEN. I know what the focus on this writing AE need be. Not just geographically, but how I speak the narration of this company. “Selling”. Don’t sell. As I was advised today, “Give less fucks.” Noted. SO. Noted.
Running tonight at gym, on tread. No more coffee, and no wine tonight. Well, not before working out. I laugh to self as I want to open one of those White Oak bottles, more than likely the Merlot. OR, no wine and wake early like I did the other day.
Listening to the veteran AE speak at these businesses, how relaxed and comical he was… what I need do. More comedy, more ease, less fucks.
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In A New
You see that your attitude and disposition at times is the block. The only block. And certain habits and ways need to be definitively dissolved. So how do you do that? New habits, practices, and maintaining those new habits and practices. What are they? How do you know what to do, precisely in switching the direction of your ship? There is no one answer. But, the imperative urge should be to self-educate.
What are you doing right now, where you are. Is that getting you closer to your There? Is the practice you’re implementing now educating you on YOU, and what you’re prone to do. More than about change, I’m urging we understand more fully and immediately who and what and where we are, and why for all. Knowing your story, your character, and what the character does from day to day.
Everything begins with perspective, attitude, your way, your lens…. The way you estimate each scene and the composition of that scene. You and what you want, how you start your day, and the next, the next…. The music you create. Don’t see walls, or ceilings, only see and more so feel propulsion, invitation for YOUR creative.
This can materialize in a singular moment, one day, and with no forecast. If so, you need upon it seize, and with hungry turns and steps. We decide what we decide, and with more than just plainly by others endorsed enthusiasm… but MADNESS. Too much thinking will not bring about the shift you’re looking for, hoping for, or downright seeking.
One morning… it happens at the beginning of the day, where you decide you’re DONE with the way you’ve seen matters, certain people, certain intersections and perception. Today, this morning, there’s a different tone and hue… a new and renewed decision and dimension, a fiery decidedness bringing you There.
1/14/20
Broken from work, distracted by two, actually three, really four, people I met while in wine’s full wheel. The first person walking up to me, gently interrupting my types, a girl who worked with me while I was full-time at FFW, then a club member of Dutcher Crossing and his friend, then my really good friend JK. They all arrived at the same time, and I could only talk to them, hear what was new in their story. And that’s what wine is, the connectedness, you’ll see them again and again, over years after the last time you see them. Wine and its industry, especially here in Sonoma County, can do that.
Heading back home in a second, rest of day with family, and maybe a nap at some point. No time soon after this small latte I ordered. My own wine business world, thing, character and perpetuation… so, start with the day. With the wineries I visited today, the people with whom I spoke and tasted. Writing wine is putting on page the life and lives you experience in its world.
Was told that I need focus and self-contain and be singular in my written reason and narration. So now, 17 days and 4 months before turning fucking 41, I decide to be attached wine’s ideas, her forms and stories, geographies and travel. Writing only wine and the reactions to it.. my wishlist of travel spots, starting in the state just above me, the across however many miles to Spain, Bordeaux, Austria, Hungary….. The people that “interrupted” my pages actually strangely centered me, putting my figure and fixation further into a firm singularity.
Not in the tasting room, but my head doesn’t leave, my pages only speak in a wined and time-aligned way…. Vines right now in dormancy, and me unable to walk the rows from all the mud. Well, I could, but I don’t. Tomorrow back in office and I carry this with me in a peripatetic insatiability. So, then, before I leave write it again… WINE.
And more…
WINE WINE WINE.
The only thing I’m to write. Book done before month’s end. Gives me 19 days. Doable. Ray Bradbury wrote ‘451’ in 9 days I think, in the basement of a library. This current beat I’m listening to tells me to remember wine’s music…. Write more music into wine, and write the music in wine, be it jazz or hip-hop, rock, ambient, whatever else. Wine… start with her, then fly, come back, transcend the possibilities with writing and what’s looked at as unattainable. That’s what you should reach for, what you should write.
Two of the Chardonnays I tasted earlier, not my style. So whose are they? What is the audience, what is the music in that bottle, and the other one? What does it say, emancipate? Either way, me of wild weal today. And from Mom’s instruction to contain and singularize the pages, to a book, to a one-voice shape and shake, to convoke my composition.
I want to take on the industry, if you must know. Challenge it, have it answer to and for certain specific transactions and occurrences. Friend that came in earlier, years ago fired from a winery with no cause, no explanation or compensation adequate, or anything said. He wrote the then-CEO, and all the ivory tower sog-slouch could say is “I wish you the best…” or some bullshit.
I’ll start with pay. Why don’t they fucking pay?
Why don’t they encourage you go after what you want, rather than tell you you’re better for this, or that, or some other thing.
Vine Street Starbucks, where I’ve written and worked several times, but not in some time. Thought about stopping at a third winery for tasting, but no. Was feeling a bit famished and needing more coffee. Hannah the first stop, White Oak the second. And from both stops, seeing that wine should be that ever-amplifying anchor and angle in my writing. And a tasting room of my own, yes. One day. But by invitation only. Don’t want those event crowds, and those passport sippers that only want to keep sipping, and not stop until they have some escalated effect and then keep sipping wherever they can.
White Oak as a winery up for sale. Had no idea. Guy behind the bar, Jeff, selling me six bottles at half off, and giving me a Merlot at nothing. Felt sad, as that winery years ago I visited during barrel tasting weekend and had fun yes but tried bottles I’ve still never the like experienced. Can’t remember what it was, but the Cabernet of which I bought 3 bottles today had to be similar. I mean, I bought three bottles. That has to mean something, right?
Listening to Lo Fi beats and typing. Don’t want to taste anymore wine, if you can believe it. Know there’s someone in some other state probably reading this and thinking “What the fuck? How could you not want to taste more wine?” I just don’t. I don’t want to sip anything else. I’m wined out. Want to be full of caffeine, and write about wine, people in the wine world, behind the bar listening to people tell their stories of how they got there, and what wine is to them.
At Hannah, talked to some young girl. Been at winery for about two years she said. Asked her what she wanted to do in the industry, what the apex of her aims was, is. She said she didn’t know, but wanted to continue with DTC operations, dealing more closely with the people that visit the winery, wine club members… what I took, that she wants to have more close and involved dealings and conversations with people rather than the big crowd surges, the cattle flows a tasting room can sometimes have. Good for her, I thought. The wine industry shows you one directions, then another, then tries to herd you a certain straight. She, though, knows what she wants and Hanna Winery appears to encourage her consistency of pursuit.
I will write wine, this morning telling self again. From when I woke this morning and could barely concentrate with the skirmishing of Jack and Emma, to now on Vine Street, just a couple blocks away from another winery to write. Part of me wants to go find more to write about. Some new tasting room but I feel like I’ve been to all of them on the square. And, I’m not wanting to taste anymore. A wine writer not wanting to taste any more wine… so write about it. Write what… what wine should do. What I want from wine. What I don’t want. Don’t in anyway seek to be full-time at a winery again, ever. Ever. Never again in this life.
1/12/20
Writing offsite today. At winery.
And throughout the day. Putting self in winery owner’s jacket. Always wonder what it means to have it all come back to you. All of it. All. From the inventory, to the reservations, to the tours given and the fucking patio furniture. All of it, your Now.
New wine blog, not so new actually, re-activated again today. Wine business but not. More conversation from writing, letter writing… or something. Wine… focused and centered in wine and its industry, doing something different than just a tasting room 1-to-1. And more than some silly “1-to-1”.
Wine and its stories to me over the past twenty years since being here in Sonoma County (How has it been that …. Long?) have shaped and re-shaped everything. Writing, business ideology, wine itself. Hoping to do some “outreach” today as they call it, hearing other voices….
Can’t focus with the kids being their lunatic selves and eating breakfast, yelling at each other… need my own office. Hate that expression of necessity being the mother of invention but that’s precisely what I’m thinking. Have to get out of this house when writing, if I’m to finish these wine essays, or any essay. Today is a wine day, though, do note. Where I become a tourist, exploring innocently and with a hunger for I guess you could call it knowledge, but I don’t. It’s something else. A wine story, not so much about the wine or anything else, but seeing all of it. This was entirely my mind last night, sipping the Aperture blend. Different than the Malbec I had years ago in the hotel while we were out of the house. Everything about it different. And more than the wine…
Again with concentration contaminated by noises around me. Leaving soon, hopefully. Literally incapable of writing… anesthetized by everything. Chipmunk voices, Jack pounding his water bottle on the little table. I know my Now, more than closely and with a thorough throughness of thought. Everything around me, meant for the wine story… the kids one day in the office with me, managing a part of the blog, or business, the blog’s business. Wine and literature.. where it all started, this entire wine story of mine. The first blog, the first conversation with my sister-in-law. Cab last night like a beaming and subtle jazz vixen telling me to move one way then other.
Wine when I was first interacting with her topic mad me hesitant to speak, or write anything critical about what I was sipping. I didn’t know, and I still to some extent don’t, but I just react. Wine is reactionary, much beyond what I’m writing here, what I’m trying to do in this room caked in distraction. People in the tasting room, regardless of the side of the bar they’re on, have something they bring to the counter, to that pour. What then… what transpires in the interaction centered around the glass’ contents? Maybe that’s what I’m trying to do, this day and others, getting out to the winery, other tasting rooms, wherever.
Took all clutter and STUFF from car. Mostly kids books and running clothes. But less of everything is starting to be an emphasis at my age. Less… not so much shit just laying around. More than minimalism, but a simplification of sight, of movement.
9:10 and thinking of what else I can disconnect from. What else I can throw away. Be more a moving creature and less a re-arranging or filing one.
Drinking a latte, just back from a Starbucks drivethrough run with the kids. Already feel electricity, the veritable voltage from the first two cups I had, so I don’t know why I ordered this. Probably for the cinnamon. I love cinnamon. Have I told you that? Do you need such knowledge? Is that even knowledge?
Waking up with Jack, and not knowing what I’m thinking.
Where is my focus. Is it wine, is it literature, writing about wine…. I feel scattered this morning, panicked a bit like I need to find a focus or time’s going to run out. ‘work….FREED’ this blog professes. How, when you feel like this. I absolutely cannot write this morning. This is not odd, but horrifying. Painful. Sad…. Infuriating. Maybe it’s from not having dinner last night, me waiting for Melissa to come down as I thought we were eating together and she never did but rather went to bed. I snacked a little but didn’t eat a “real” dinner. My own folly. I should have had that steak. Oh well I say this morning in attempted shrug-off, and am frightened that I’m this old. That I’m 41. That I have two kids and live on this street with other families. Something’s out of place…. Or much is. How do I fix. WHAT, do I fix? This coffee isn’t helping, forcing jitters and more odd beats from me, heart not decided on its BPM or steadiness of rate and thump.
Kerouac started Road with Dean, another character that not only intrigued him but horrified him as well. I have no such character in my Now, now, or really ever…. Well, I did. Chris the “best man” at my wedding whom I haven’t talked to in over a decade, but now no one like that. Not sure that would help. So what would. Bored with the present, so make one up. And stop thinking so much.
I could switch to fiction, or something else. A screenplay? Am I really having this discussion with myself again, the whole ‘What do I write?’ tug of war? STOP. You’re too old for this. To make writing your work, you need…. Forget what you need. Just write.
Jack on couch watching some cartoon, now making a silly voice and singing. Not sure if wants my attention. More funny voices, then he stops. Then Emma arrives…. “Hi baby.” I say. She trots right past me not wanting to miss a single frame of whatever’s playing. “Hi Jack.” She says to her brother, brother not responding. Quiet again.
I need to get out of this lull, this lachrymose layer I’m under. What to do today to make self write differently… what. Think Emma and I have much of the day together. Jack having a birthday party to go to, or something. Time to write will be limited, so maybe I can… what. Carry that voice recorder I bought at the JC bookstore years ago, that I’ve barely used? Or write from memory as I’ve been trying to do lately. Or neither… start writing novel, the pick up where you stop. Write about what… a wine judge who doesn’t want to do it anymore(?). A winemaker? An adjunct professor at 40/41 who decides not to do it anymore and is panicked as to what he should do? That sounds more aligned with capability, something that’s more ME, I think. This semester, speaking of, has to be the last one. Going to stress essay writing and write an essay, at least one, for each meeting. And with that, who knows.
Tired of repetition.
Tired of waking mornings feeling like this.
Writing… not a blessing, not a curse, but an addiction. Why can’t I just stop… why do I have to be writing right now instead of on the couch cuddling with my babies, or scrolling through some social media feed like every other idiot in Sonoma County and counties all? I need to be doing this… this… Even when I worked at that grocery store in Belmont, my first job, just after my Hospital Time, I just wanted to be writing. Nothing else. I told myself that the stories I’d write would make it so I would never have to work… and now, dozens (literally) jobs later, I still with self skirmish as to what I write about, what form, how many words, paragraph breaks and I see it all BULLSHIT.
Just write. Isn’t that what I tell students to do? Am I phony, as a teacher? Yes… but it pays. And not that badly. But this semester I have two 3 unit classes and obviously they don’t pay as much as 4’s. Nothing I can do, all they had. The adjunct woe.. why would anyone do that to themselves? No answer… I’m done after this term, I hope. Just writing and traveling.. writing about what and traveling for what? WRITING. Showing others ways of writing and how to get past some block, as I think I have this morning, and writing for sakes of acquiring peace, and some type of equilibrium about yourself. So you’re not stressing and thinking to the point of doing nothing or going in circles with yourself.
7:07. Hmmm…. Today, writing about wine when I have a chance. And not as a critic. I hate their writing. Much why I never buy Wine Spectator, I can’t stand the writing. Quite literally, or not literally … It’s just painful to read. And how wineries brag about so-and-so’s score, and how their bottle is on the cover with the fucking score next to it. NO. I’m writing wine then I’m writing about wine and my relationship with it. How I see wine, feel, react. What I wish have in my glass.
No telling. The day is blank. It’s not even fully or partially day, yet. Sun still trying to come up, looking left out the glass of door, dark. Adjuncting… what I blame for the rotation of the wine industry, me going from winery to winery. But I can’t blame, or I could, but what would that do. Writing, listening to more funny sounds from Jack, Emma sitting there quiet and fascinated with what’s in the cartoon’s composition.
Writing this semester… teach it differently. Teach essays differently, if at all. How about not at all, keep the cash coming in from the JC, that’s it. No I don’t want to be like that. It’s just this morning mood, this downward push from some unknown and non-existent palm.
Now what. 3:28pm. More notes, emails, I guess.
No, not ‘I guess’. Not guessing, as that’s thinking. And the reasoning today is NO thinking, only action. About an hour now after the time above, and getting ready for meeting later. Taking home laptop, and some business cards. Going to take a late coffee break here and put out some more content. Hate that word… CONTENT. Can you be any less specific, and deprive your effort of significance any further? Shit… Nevermind. I got it. Thinking of class beginning on Monday, and how I need to switch some specifics on the 1B syllabus, but I’m not stressing about it. Only a couple things to do. Holding self to one ESSAY each meeting. Think I know the first title, or offering, prompt, but not settling on anything yet.
Office quieting, and my only remaining suitemate in this zone of the office is about to leave. Saw that one of the managers left, and now I’m thinking of departing. Thinking of wine… shocker. What to have tonight, and what to sell in my eventual room. Yes, I still want to do that. I will. Everything done now is for the reality then. Interesting to think of it that way, now that I consider what I just wrote a little closer. Business being bridged, or following me. Picking wines tonight that I know are aligned with my atmosphere and character beat and energy, my texture and beat, music.
2020 will see me elevate in a way that no one around me, at any level of success has. That is what I’m going to do… more than merely PROVE, but redefine and design my most purposeful and prudent truth.