February 25 2008
I know it exists because I have talked to other bloggers. It happens to every wine blogger. At some point, your wine ardor turns arduous.
Man, that ever-ready Zippo lighter igniting your passion turns into wet book of matches.
That desire to write, write, write vanishes and all you want to do is go live on a farm and raise chickens.
I have personally been experiencing this over the course of the last couple of weeks as I contemplate career, blogging and the convergence of it all.
I am actually in a bit of a creative jag, but the circumstance around the jag makes it all so confusing.
Frankly, I have had to re-think the notion of “love what you do and never work a day in your life.”
My personal analogy is a bit unsavory in polite company, and better left unsaid, but suffice to say that all things, even those that give pleasure, can be too much; it is what happens when allow commerce to take the wind out of your sails for your hobby.
Now, I am being a bit overly dramatic here in regards to my own ardor, but I am doing so purposefully because I have noticed an unintentional thread amongst several bloggers recently that is too coincidental to chalk up as happenstance.
Hugh at gapingvoid.com had a very interesting post several weeks back related to this very topic. Hugh, late of Stormhoek, is a wine industry ex-pat, too. The net of the post was:
Beware of turning hobbies into jobs.
The late billionaire, James Goldsmith once quipped, “When a man marries his mistress, he immediately creates a vacancy.”
What’s true with philanderers, can sometimes be true in life.
Hugh continues and relates an anecdote about a man that turned his passion into payroll and subsequently went on to find hard luck.
“That’s why you should never turn your hobby into your job,” said one of my friends, someone far older and wiser than me. “Before, this man had a job and a hobby. Now suddenly, he’s just got the job, but no hobby anymore. But a man needs both, you see. And now what does this man, who’s always had a hobby, do with his time?
My friend held up his glass.
Now, consider that within the span of a week, perhaps a week and a ½, in addition to the Hugh at Gapingvoid post, I have run across the following posts:
Jamie, guest columnist at Lenndevours says:
I’m sick of wine.
I don’t quite know how this happened, but it’s true. At some point during the past year, I lost interest in wine and – quite frankly – don’t give a fig anymore. Or at least at the moment.
Lyle Fass from Rockss and Fruit says:
Getting back from Europe tomorrow and it turned our to be one of the more extremely difficult trips of my life. As a result my inspiration to write about wine is pretty non existent at this time and the forseeable future so this site will be here but not updated for a while. I’ll be back one day. Thanks for everyone who reads and comments. It is greatly appreciated.
Anyway, here I am wondering if the Internet discussion of wine has run its course. I spent over an hour today scanning wine oriented Web sites and could not find an original subject among them. Seems we keep talking about the same issues, and the same bad information keeps on circulating, as well as the same good information—the operative word is “same.”
What’s new in wine? What questions need answering?
When I started this blog over a year ago, I thought it could go on for a long time; I thought there was so much needing to be addressed. Did I address them all? I doubt it. Maybe I was wrong.
Like I said, I know other bloggers go through dry spells, when life collides with hobby making this blogging thing more work than fun, particularly those that happen to secure their living within the wine industry, but who knew we were going to go into a full-on case of Seasonal Affective Disorder?
While I do not discount Hugh from GapingVoid, in fact I believe what he says to be true, the best thing I can say, and I do not have any real answers here outside of just an observation, but the following quote from the movie, “She’s the One” rings true:
Between Father (Mr. Fitzpatrick) and Son (Francis Fitzpatrick)
I told you it’s…
...it’s a down cycle, that’s all.
What? You’re not familiar
with the “down cycle”?
No. What, exactly, is a “down cycle”?
You know, in a relationship
you got ups, downs…
...sometimes you do it a lot,
like you do…
...other times, not at all.
Ups and downs and…
The down cycle.
Wine, like anything in life, has natural lifecycle and sometimes that which gives you the greatest pleasure can rob you of joy. You just gotta keep on, keeping on and work through that down cycle. Or, use the pidgin latin phrase, Illegitimi non carborundum, which basically means: “Don’t let the bastards wear you down.” Finally, there’s a vignette in the House of Mondavi when Robert is in litigation with his family and he was pacing in the hall deep into the night, repeatedly hitting the wall with the soft underside of his fist, repeating, “Only the strong survive, only the strong survive, only the strong survive ...”
Lyle, Jamie, Tom, Hugh … you listening?
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