I passed my WSET 2 with distinction. I got 2 questions wrong. I felt amazing. I also felt that I would have to swallow my pride if I did any less than that. FFS I have been working in wine for 8 years, it’s embarrassing if I did poorly. I have taken a pause for multiple reasons from doing the level 3. Mostly I’m scared shitless because while I love scents, I don’t have a great sniffer and there are times it fails me…it’s a medical problem. I feel like with tons of studying, I would probably do really well, maybe not distinction but passing with a decent mark. But I don’t trust the taste portion and again I am left feeling anxious about being in an industry where someone looks at me and points, you aren’t good, or you aren’t as slick as you think. I have an honest to god problem with failing…or people judging me. I hate being evaluated, and yet I have been assessed my entire life and I don’t know any other programming than to feel a need for ranking or charting. Like I’m some friggin billboard hit or song waiting for this week’s position.

I hate to feel that level of insecurity. I really do. I also hate that in order to justify my level of competance in this industry, so that I can move ahead, it requires a 1500$ training/exam fee. It shouldn’t really shock me as all education is a fee and why would wine be any different. You get the tools from a registered educator, drink a bunch of wine, learn stuff from reading, and then say, ITS A CHENIN or ITS A PINOT. I doubt they would put a friggin esoteric wine like a Canary Island red, although I would at least be able to narrow it down to a volcanic region based on texture/minerality. But I am not good with knowing regions… I already fear not having the knowledge prior to receiving the knowledge. It’s like, I should be able to ace this fucker now and the class is really just to say I did it, but like didn’t actually need it. Again, I say 1500$ dollars. I could deal with it, ALMOST, if I wasn’t already 23K in the hole. (Insert emoji with tears streaming down.)

I thought to myself today about all this. I said, you need to just invest in yourself. You aren’t going to get out of this predicament if you don’t. The exam/course is there to have you pass, not fail. I frequently feel like Im not meant to succeed. I frequently feel like marginality is what is always in store for me and every time greatness comes to mind, it’s fleeting… OH THERE IT IS! ANOTHER AMAZING IDEA….. and now I’ll wait for it to never be. Man, it’s that level of completion I fail so miserably at. It frustrates me to no end. Not even to sound obnoxious, although, assuredly this will, I am just so tired of being over qualified and under prepared. Preparation is not organizing your desk and sock drawer by patterns and color combinations….ok for some it is…. for me it is an absolute OCD interference that prevents me from doing shit. I have no F’ing knowledge about business. I need to take classes. I want to be over the learning and just in the implementing stage. Here’s another frustration. TIME! Never having time to do it all and yet never failing to waist time watching 80s shows instead of getting stuff done in the morning prior to work. But Im Tired. But I hurt. But I need to Recharge! But I Need to Give No Fucks. But I need to Sort Laundry. But Im Tired. Oh, Instagram…..I need to store K-holing Reels for over an hour on Instagram. I need to truly be off that fucking app.

I HAD SOME POINT HERE…I SWARE!

Investing in yourself. I need to. Im exhausted in my own complaining. I have such little will to use punctuation as well. So Be It! Meet me in the art room with black jack gum. Anywoo, Yeah, futures….Need to get sorted. Need to create a plan. Ok, It’s September 25th… I will simply end the year the way I ended last year…I will be sure to register for the WSET 3 for 2026. Let’s see—Oh jeezus christ, it went up to 1795$. That’s insane. Ok, it is what it is. Shit, the class in SF Isn’t until April, with exam in July. Another whole year? I just can’t get to S. SF on a Sunday after a shift Saturday evening, by 10am. It’s not happening by BART. Hard enough to do it at Barrel Room. Alright. It is what it is. April isn’t too far away….Gives me time to organize.

Tag under: GOALS, WINE STUDIES, PERSONAL STRIFE, WORK

fuck it. I have gone through so many blog posts in my head unable to type them because the layout wasn’t complete and portrayed me to the aesthetic that I felt was part of my visual identification. I can’t do something until the other thing is done. so time passes and things that I was inspired to do go null. then another wave happens, I get inspired and then reminded I haven’t finished one aspect of the item and because B must follow A and if not A then not B (its great always breaking down aspects of your life by mathematics, thanks dad) then C none of the above….resulting in D, all things apply and hence nothing and another day of failure to produce.

I am the product of my era, Gen X, so things follow school testing models and that which troubles me seems to find itself within testing models…Introvert, Extrovert, Shy, Outgoing, Social, Non-Social, Distant, Engaged…Parent Teacher nights were always “complicated.” Lorelle is a smart girl but seems to dream off in class and has difficulty paying attention. She wanders out windows when she should be paying attention…She seems to do things last minute when she needs help before the deadline and then suffers the results of poor grades. She shows high aptitude but seems lazy and fails to take projects seriously. I admit, things haven’t changed much in my life where that is concerned. I still trail off to objects in the room when I talk to people, I force myself to make eye contact due to working in business departments as the token “creative” (read aka autistic individual) and feeling like I need to validate myself as a normal adult who can deliver intelligent presentations. I left corporate America because I still hate working in groups, but I love synthesis, but it means something different to me. It’s not about creating one thing altogether but like dishes for a holiday as opposed to the dish itself.

DOES THAT MAKE SENSE?! (fuck that phrase, I hate it. I vehemently HATE IT!)

I have tried to figure out what these blogs were about as far as positioning myself in the world of bloggers and what makes this a marketable site. I went around and around on this, and knowingly I was doing it for myself, made the dichotomy of marketable and for me an impossible one. It can’t be marketable and sellable to the public as a conscious task I start with prior to writing if it’s going to be me. I thought about the blogs I used to enjoy and I seemed to like things that appealed to my simpler interests, cosmetics, fashion, shoes and music…So I thought, I will make a blog that is for music, then I will make one for my professional interests and then one for just dumping personal stuff & thought, and sure I’ll be trendy and use an &. One again I was compartmentalizing myself in words that opposed each other and finding myself again, needing to identify myself as an adjective and persona type and how to properly bucket aspects of my interests so they didnt intersect. Again, I found myself overwhelmed with starting blog designs for each of these and not finishing any of them and then not really starting any of them and then again failing on all and being defeated by everything that I kinda start and kinda never finish…cuz I kinda straddle the line on many things…social and not wanting to talk, outgoing but insular, driven but unfocused, focused but not driven….competitive but dismissive. I get frustrated seeing the faces of those I’ve known in highly successful capacities, because they offered nothing that I felt was more special than what I was capable of, and yet it’s not that I failed, I simply never started on their paths…so feeling frustration was invalid but yet hurt all the same. I COULD BE RICH! But Im here struggling in debt with great ideas and no VC monies.

It’s a lot. I know. But I think what Im trying to work through here are my own personal issues. The struggle to just be. To get over the need to have B follow A when A is all Im really after but B becomes the focus when A needs to be. If I can really define A to be the item that needs to be done and not the thing that needs to be done in order to get to the item that needs to be done, then maybe I can move forward with shit. The ideas can happen. I can somehow feel whole and not like pieces. I can get out of lists and needing to be this while struggling with that….My brain is a very hectic one. I don’t know if any reader will find solace in any of this but maybe you will. Maybe no one will really read any of this, maybe it won’t honestly matter. Maybe I will truly have the journal/diary I always probably should have had as a child….as a very lost and absent child. I don’t know if marketable matters here. I am also plagued by my professional world and how my marketability is necessary for success. Again stuck in the in-between. I search for the whole, but maybe there really isn’t one….but I need that discovery and journey so that I can begin to live within the two simultaneously and not loose my shit internally the way I do.

Im not into the phrase of LIVING MY TRUTH, but I can’t be writing about anything that feels disingenuous and worried about it being the right kind of honesty. In this world of falsehoods parading as reality as if early 2000s Livejournal culture has gone mental, I just want to be blatantly myself and throw it down here. All of it…the interests and the heartfelts.

TAH DAH.