meeting with team in the field. Will be visiting businesses. Trying new prospecting approaches. Meet people, KNOW the people. Learn something about them. My aim for day is PEOPLE, not prospects.
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.
from this morning…
Do I ever sip Rose. Yes. I did last night. Though, I wasn’t wowed. And was it good? I guess, but how good can Rose be? Enough of Ro-zay. How about wines that do capture and convince me… what does that? Pretty much anything but Rose. Kidding…. Sauvignon Blancs and Chardonnays do hold potential to haunt and bewitch. Cabs, Pinots (even though I’m not in the whole Pinot-whoa that began with Sideways)… Not going to just list varietals. That’s not writing. I look for and welcome any wine that tells me something, that instructs me on wine and why I write about it, her. Why do I do this… why has merely writing about wine snapped me out of the mood I was in yesterday and that partially clawed into this morning. What is wine, about it that does this to me, that always convinces me to turn around when I’ve turned around and away from her.
Wine isn’t a symbol, not a metaphor, but a reminder. That I’m only here for so long, and that’s not so long. So snap out of it. I’m not one to write about wine and just slap a score to its name and accompany with some remedial barely paragraph-long narration. This, SHE, is more.
What winery should I write at, today. If I do, if I can. Which. Thinking DeLoach on Olivet, or Hook & Ladder. Something close. Don’t want to drive all the way to Sonoma Valley, St. Francis or Kunde, or St. Jean, ‘cause that’s where my head goes with near immediate inkling.
More than wine, it’s knowing that the time you waste being angry, or low for some unexplained reason, resenting something, you forfeit life. You surrender opportunity to LIVE. And for me, WRITE. Today being one new, obvious invitation to climb, I think of my favorite book, or one of them. Duke looked everywhere for the DREAM. And not necessarily an American one. But FREEDOM, a wildness that would purvey and provide his heaven. His manuscripts. Seeing this as an embrace of what’s at your 12 and not a rejection of it. And in all other directions as well.
Running tonight. Then when back more for book, and blog, both, whatever. Just more than yesterday. No more letting a mood sink me, letting some force or pseudo-force altogether within my control, control and steer, decompose me. That’s no longer allow to materialize.
Enthusiasm, even for what I’d rather not do. That’s what will truly joy ado.
Attitude is not just
attitude.
It’s presence.
It’s communication.
It’s the world you put into the world.
Me
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.