Dear Readers,
This isn't Strappo writing or Terence behind a screen, doing a bit. This is me. This is the same guy who's been writing this blog for over 3 years and who's devoted more time and energy to it than even I can believe. For most of this time it has been "my toy, my dream, my rest," as John Berryman* wrote. Mondosapore sustained me through dark times (my own deepest most suicidal depression), enlarged my world and fed my longing for immersion in the world of wine. It opened my mind and my eyes to a new start in life, an exciting if risky new phase that thrills me every day (almost).
Yet, as you've seen since I wrote a post on wine-blogging blues in the autumn, I have written less about wine than ever. Posted less often. Lost interest or perhaps the over-intense attention to the blog and my stats. The number of visits and page views has been sinking and the numbers are lower than they have been in a very long time. I don't much care.
Once I would have written more and more in a frenzy. I would have commented all over the place, haunting other blogs as if I were my own one-man viral marketing department. I would have, in that way, promoted the brand.
I discussed this some time ago with Susannah Gold of avvinare. She said, "Sure you're bored. It happens. Post less often. Don't try to do it every day. Try to keep a 3-post-a-week schedule. Don't let mondosapore go. It's your brand, your identity. It's the entry into Domenico Selections!"
And another recurring comment closer to home (at home, in fact). Ken asks me, "Why don't you write about wine anymore? No one cares about all this personal crap."
They're both right. But why am I resistant to their sound advice? Why is it so damned important right now that my life "is a open book," is my brother Steve wrote me?
That last question is one that I don't know I can answer. Maybe someone else can play shrink and help me sort it out. I can say, though, that my relationship to and views of wine have undergone a sea change. It's massive and I feel, frankly, at sea myself. So join me as I sort of think out loud on this virtual paper.
* Great depressive alcoholic suicidal mid-20th Century American poet. I realize those descriptors are redundant.
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