The Challenge is Discipline
Of late I’ve been taking more days off from blogging than the usual weekend retreat. Honestly, when I do take days off, it’s usually because I simply forget to blog. I cannot remember the last time so many things seemed to weigh so heavily on my thinking. Normally, my focus is narrower. Recently however it’s because I’ve been spending a great deal of time thinking about the following things.
Fair Trade
The Economy
Solutions to the tyranny of the three tier system
Open Markets
Direct Sales
Email Marketing
The Limit of Blog Monetization
Pre-Prohibition Vineyards as National Monuments
Distributor Consolidation after the Anheuser Busch-InBev Merger
Inter-Wine Association Relations
The American Wine Blog Awards
Many of these these issues I merely need to wrap my mind around and figure out their consequences. Others I am actively trying to manipulate. Not until recently have I realized how difficult it is to do a really good job of narrowing focus without losing focus or losing sight of issues that are important, but not the most important.
But this reminds me what I love so much about the wine industry as it is shaped today: the scope of wine’s impact and implications is spectacular. Law, culture, economics, consumerism, philosophy, politics, history, aesthetics. The challenge is discipline.
tom,
I fully agree, the areas in this pursuit are infinite in scope and potential, concerted focus, discipline, and unwavering beliefs in fundamental commerce move the ball where as flash in the pan get rich methodology breaks down the efforts of the truly dedicated.
Wine–it’s production and its commerce–reflects just about all facets of life.
I don’t think discipline is the problem, Tom, at least not in my case. It’s having interest in so many things that keeps me bouncing from place to place. As I grow older, instead of slacking off, I seem to want to know more and more–about many things.
Perhaps, like me, you are trying to make up for a miss-spent youth!!!
Tim, thanks for all the hard work and good reporting you do in these areas. Your blog is always the first one I turn to, to find out the latest in Wark-think.
I’ve found, of late, that over filling the plate really makes it difficult to get anything done right.
I may think I’ve struck a balance, but I just have *a lot* of many things – if still in proportion.
Sometimes, I find I have to be patient and let the bottleneck clear.