7/8/19

Busy day.  Caught self overthinking a bit ago.  But resolved.  Don’t think.  Just move, act, create.

Going shopping for some new work articles, then home for dinner, little writing and bed early.  Tomorrow a 4am-er. Told Abraham I’d be there, and more than that I WANT to be there.  For me.  Try for 9 miles.  Then the next day, the next, and all remaining.

Rest of day planned to not any kind of boring degree.  Hear people around me in leave mode, but I’m still in the propelled personification I had this morning. Work, as an idea, and one stretching from wine.  I think about all the work that involves in winemaking, how strenuous it is, the early rises but even more than that, the containment, more than focus or fixation, but IT.  The IT to it all.  All this.

Setting out running uniform, or not uniform but you know what I mean, tonight.  Shoes out, untied, phone charged, headphones, everything.  If I can, leave before 4 like I did that one time.

Phone at desk set up, voice message and my name for in-office comm.  Only minutes from leave.  Day for tomorrow more or less planned.  Meeting in morning, out in Field later in day and for most of the day’s remainder.

Put trash cans out.  Can’t forget to do that… not that exciting a detail but one with which everyone is familiar.  In bed before ten, the aim.  Going over to-do plate, not so much a list just a bunch of slop on a plate.

4:50, been chewing this gum since before the meeting we just had, which started at 3 and Shannon and myself nearly missed having lunch out right before.  Work versus time.  How to approach, how to consider, how to be place and put-together as character, for character and story.

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wine page

7/3/19

Went out on my own, “Feet on the Street” as they say in this part of the company.  Just introducing myself, as I knew there was a chance of running into current clients.  And I did.  No deterrence.  This whole day thinking about selling and why some get anxiety when it comes to selling, and the possibility of conversion, that you might or might not sell.  Again, I learn on wine ideology and methodology.  Everything is from wine, for me.  Talk to people as you would if you were having a glass of SB with them on a desk in some warm weather, or sipping a stainless Chard on a dock somewhere in the San Juan Islands, or on a boat around the islands.  Do your job less, I said to myself walking up to that first corporate building in on of the Fountain Grove business building spots.

Department head sent out an email saying, basically telling us, that early departure at 3 is fine.  Told us to get the heck out of here and enjoy our weekend.  Which I more than appreciate as in the wine industry that rarely happens.  Every last dollar, every last dollar the mentality rather than making sure your sales force is satisfied with everything from day-to-day to how they see themselves in their role.  I’ll leave in a bit, I guess.  Go write somewhere maybe for a bit before meeting family in Windsor for the baseball game and whatever else is planned.  Looking around my new desk, and my place has already been punctuated.  Wine… wine… don’t fixate on the overwhelming population and propulsion of new terms and products and surrounding language.  Just see the person in front of you, I tell myself and offer to anyone reading this in any kind of sales post.  Just talk to as many people as you can, record everything, follow up, and don’t stop moving.  Not sure what else to say other than that, and I don’t want to talk about sales for this whole piece but narrating who you are and what you’re doing is nearly the entirety of what we think of as “sales”.

Wine taught me all this.  And the industry having forced me into disgust with it instructed me to gut-trust and find something else.  I did, and here I am, but still with wine-wound principles and sight, the Road to my Equilibrium purveying all the poetry and prose but more so poetry and music this writer ever need.  What will I have to do when with my own wines, but go door to door, just handing them out not really selling or even narrating anything, just saying hi and saying my name a couple times and handing a bottle of wine to whomever’s in front of me.

Office getting quiet.  I can tell people have left.  Think I’ll send my EOD in a minute then depart, myself.  Get a glass of something, somewhere.  Why does Sauvignon Blanc always sound good, and always sound like the most optimal and appropriate, optimally appropriate varietal and style, feel and song and vinified ride?  Don’t know, but I can see the glass in front of me, and by some odd extension see myself rising in this department far faster than anyone before me, and even faster than I now see myself ascending.  Why?  I’m not selling.  I refuse to sell.  I’ll only connect, talk, educate, create.  So many overthink sales and talk themselves out of it and into some undeserved low self-estimation.  The creativity and conversations will illuminate opportunity, and renewing zenith.

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wine page

6/29/19

Second to last day in June.  Will be in Sebastopol, today.  Alert on my phone saying I had to be here AT 8, but incorrect.  Not sure how that happened, maybe I put something on calendar as all-day event.  Anyway, two wines tasted last night.  What is an all-day effort is to write about each, 500 words each.  Sipping coffee from office as I rushed here from getting gas just in case I was wrong and did have to be here at 8.  Strong, but not at all appealing in flavor or, well, anything.  But it has caffeine, I’ll take it.  $8 more in envelop.  OR should I set aside for next Saturday in Napa tasting wines at whatever, however many dozens of wineries and tasting rooms and collectives there are.  Not thinking about it.  $8 to envelope, done.

Wine one, a Rose from Topping-Legnon, think that’s how you spell the winery and is the actual name, far too dark for your typical or even non-typical Rose.  Not much said through introduction on nose, with aromatic language and touch, then on palate a bit more expression and layeredness to her, but again nothing that confirmed or affirmed any distinguished identity.  Not that I didn’t like it, her, but again there was not much said.  That doesn’t mean the wine was bad, or missing something, or once more that I didn’t like it.  No.  There was just a compromised connection for some reason.  With only two glasses, really a glass and a half, if even that now that I think, we didn’t have that attraction.

Second, a Robert Young Cabernet, Spring Mountain.  At first, I thought something was wrong with her.  I don’t know what, like temperature damage or just a bum bottle.  Not in any way the case. After some air falling down the bottle’s neck, 20 or 30 minutes give or take, she was alert, awake, ready to communicate.  No more dreaming of another thrilling Cab from Robert Young. She was present, there, speaking to me and now I was ready for the page.  Of course I’ll write more later, but I can still taste that immediate pulse, the pronounced impression of the mountain, of the winery, the ’15 vintage which as many know had its own mood and shapeliness from the drought.  Don’t want to write about her like these published wine blatherers.  There was far too much there, far too much being sang to me there in the kitchen, from that glass.

Seeking more definition from wine, and last night’s second bottle provided more than what I expected.  To be honest, I just wanted to taste wine and not think that much about it.  I didn’t want to be a writer, not then, but again, the second bottle had a vision more consistent with my own than my own.  Convincing composition and what I said to myself in the last glass about 45 minutes before bed was, “I need a vineyard.” Pretty much the only thing I wrote last night in the Kerouac journal, watching the final inning of a Giants game.  Find myself thinking now, this morning in the office to this coffee and stop myself.  Just write about the wines, and what they say.  The Cabernet more and moreover speaking her song, not letting me stray from the vineyard rows again.

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6/25/19

At work, feeling more than invigorated and fiery with this promotion.  Sales, selling, speaking… now everything culminates, much I hate that word.  Getting done starting tasks, committing to 3000 observational words for and from day.  Idea for day, Knowledge.  Get to know the person in front of you, even if you already know them.  Listen, listen more…. Study, again, observational.

At my desk, ready for the day in a way I’ve never been.  But I calm, compose, collect, settle and assemble attitude and sight for what’s next, in next hour.  Want to work in slowing down in idea delivery.

9:08.  Writing notes to self and even more in exploratory mode, mood, mold.  Drive down to SF, thinking, speaking into recorder.  Envelope to tasting room, or just studio.  Where I write and self-publish, blog and develop what I develop, bring more to life.  Creative Room….  Just got a call from a scammer, claiming to be from the Social Security Administration.  The recording claimed my number had been suspended due to suspicious activity.  Wouldn’t a live person want to tell me that?  I pressed one to speak to the next available “officer”.  A gentleman came to the phone and asked for my name.  I asked Shouldn’t you know that already?  He said no.  I said I’d wait for something in the mail.  The guy then said he’d inform the sheriff and the arrest warrant would be issued have a nice day hang up.  I turned off phone, and laughed my way back to my desk.  I thought and am still thinking about it, from a writer’s perspective.  Shouldn’t you write a better plan than that, a better script, story?  And all due respect to scams stretching from other countries, don’t you think the accent kiiiiiiiiiiiiiind of gives it away?  They’d benefit from my instruction, a small or larger writing seminar, creative writing effort and intensive for scammers.  I wasn’t sold.

Then thinking came back to here, Sonic, selling and what I’m about to sell for the B2B division.  Still laughing, and if I’m not arrested in the next couple hours, I’ll keep jotting jots on sales approach and tone, word selection and deployment.

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