Now
Day 9. About conviction, about defiance, about all of us finding what we’re searching for. Coltrane playing me and eased track. Didn’t record my spoken word piece yesterday. Was distracted by that bottle of Inspiration Syrah, the quiet of the house, and thoughts of writing about the wine industry. When in my office, I see such a book taking shape, in not much time either. Citing everything from the ridiculous pay, to the overwhelming focus on anything but get wine, to patterns and posturing from those patterns.
A truck passes me on 128. Hate typing on my phone, but this is what I have currently. Hoping for a day not at all busy. Not at all preoccupied with the winery making its number for the month, but more my sanity, my sentences, this project and others.
This week in the office, I’m going to loudly and communicatively accelerate all movements and sights. Why can’t I be the highest selling AE in my first year? There is no law or rule or policy prohibiting such. Actually, Sonic is the atmosphere that enables and emboldens such a progression to take place. Whatever we do for work, we need not only make it our own, but have it teach us and be a measure of effort. We should always seek to against ourselves compete.
Bed early tonight. Wake at 5, 4 if you can. At the end of 100 days, there will be a visual of such altitude, such attainment. If I’m not the highest earner, I’ll have shocked everyone with what I’ve done. Make calls, SET APPOINTMENTS…. just say hi. Forget about return, certainly immediate return. That’s a foot shot, I’ve learned, and an error the wine industry continues to seemingly want to make. And I e never figured out why, why they expect such instant transaction and metrics ascension. I’ve given up trying to learn, now focusing on my Sonic story and sense of new sense and story, character.
This writing spot, little spacious and sizeable inlet, used to write here in 2012 as I mentioned, and later in 2017 when working at the Foley camp. Now, story is different. Not at all fearful to question and defy regularity and policy, not that I was before. But Sonic has shown me that one idea can prove purposeful and provide a purpose which pervades till your final day. Such is now, such is me, such is my poetic and newly purposed immediacy.
What do I want from the day. Peace. Ideas for this week. Ideas on growth, branding and rebranding but more than that…. CHARACTER. Story. Life. Revolution. Start acting like a revolutionary, I said to myself and some other people at Sonic a few months ago. Today…. watch. And won’t do so with malice or a burn-bridge intent, but to have my identity known. For all in contact with me, not just for me. If I’m not making sense I apologize….. you’ll see what I mean, shortly.
Music.
Looking back at the writer.
Not a matter of correcting,
but designing. And if you’ve stayed or parted from the design, you put yourself back in it. Don’t scold yourself. At all, much less excessively. Go back to your sight and self-promise, actuating your fire and story. Collect, breathe, calm. There’s another scene soon to start.
When the day ends
planning for the next should
always creatively catalyze.
6:14. 9.5 miles later and I’m
a leg up on the day, maybe more with the thousand or so words I earlier wrote. I do feel tired still, a bit, but the run woke me. Going down to Novato, hopefully get some appointments set for businesses and executives to me. Need to shave, wear clothes bought last night. Hopefully that shirt fits. After work, home. Wine and laundry. Bed early more or less, again. And if not, then I run in the heat. OR at night. At some point. No more excuses, no more anything that… well, can’t run tomorrow night. Have a Pinot tasting at Mom and Dad’s, and I need to get a couple Pinots for that. I’ll hit Oliver’s tonight, get a burrito or something.
I now feel the tired wings wrap me in its intentions. Just have to keep moving. Dinner, laundry, just realized this is not a fun topic to write, and I bet even more painful to read. I need to travel. Even my kids are in DC now after spending a couple nights in NYC, seeing a Broadway show. That’s it. Travel. And a weekend day in Napa doesn’t count, fun as it was.
Pinot Noir… tonight. Budget is…. What. Maybe get dinner at Oliver’s then head to Bottle Barn. I don’t know. I overthink. And I’ve noticed myself doing it A LOT, lately.
7/5/19
Haven’t started editing piece from yesterday, the tasting room one about the two in the Room on a dead day. Will do today possibly at lunch. Or am I running at lunch. Run. Many will be out of the office today, so I can get quite a bit done. Contact new contacts, email other account executives. The day more or less planned, and I sit here typing with the little time I have left after taking wife and wee beats to bus, the airporter taking them to SF.
Dinner tonight, something light. Wake early before friend Chris arrives and run. Budget for Napa mission, brought down from its initial peak. Only looking to buy a bottle from each visited. Keep expenses constricted and tense, the day musical. This one especially, yield more pages. Need new pieces and ingredients to written recipe, precisely the reason for journey. Wine orders plays a new beat, and I recite what I can… Cabernet, like a one act play, but then I’m like dried clay here at the kitchen counter. Realizing the quiet, like a meditative riot tyrannical like Pontius Pilate.
6:34, another coffee at my composition door. Not from Starbucks but my own yesterday bought at store while getting bites for mini’s, saying they wanted 4th of July snacks and wanting to play outside and did but only for a bit the heat getting to them and me much quicker than forecast.
Think of editing This is The Tasting Room piece, but…. What the whatever, first paragraph…. Read a bit more. Mostly dialogue. Do I want to change that, switch it up a little? More narration? Save that for next piece. This idea aims to explore or maybe even endlessly define and characterize wine and the relationship she can have with someone seeking such. More and more, I frustrate quite vocally with people and the industry that just sees wine as something to pour, something to sell, some bit of fucking inventory.
In this
is narrative maze.
6/29/19
Trying to wake up. Last day in Field Sales. Keeping wine mind moving, back and forth from tasting room to vineyard, to me at a table writing about wine as I do. Charging watch, wallet, phone, coffee and #pozvibez water flask on desk. On clock in little less than 30. Thinking of getting breakfast from market in building. Not sure how good it’ll be, but I’m a little famished unexpectedly.
People around me talking, and needing quiet. A vineyard walk, early, slow, before the grapes are pulled on a day of harvesting. Seriously can’t think with the voices around me. My fault for letting them attach to my senses. Glass of red, view, sun going down…. Painting a fictive frame in head, me waking at 4 or just after and writing what to do for day… walk vineyard, sample barrels, go visit a friend who’s also a winemaker and taste through some lots with him. He calling me the night previous for an opinion, or asking if I’d offer mine one some lots and micro-lots he just racked.
Finally quiet. But I’m still in that scene. I lean back in chair for a minute. Then distracted by desk drawers needing to be cleaned and cleared out pre-transfer. Next week. Where I go to B2B division and show very much what I can do in sales and speaking, and brand representation. And, I still realize and appreciate, this all came from wine. I speak of Sonic as I do wine, wines that connect with me and that speak to me in some forward and intimate set of notes.
Tomorrow in the tasting room. Invited more people than I can re-count. Not to sell them, but speak to them. Share. Something about wine and them all collecting in that room, on that property.
Waiting for harvest….
Waiting for the wine story, my wine story, to again amplify.