A Reorientation for 2021

I promised some months ago to write more from the heart. It’s been a hard year. But I’m sure you know that, and have had our own challenging experiences. I’ve been lucky so far in terms of health. But to preserve my health, I also remained unable to do what I wanted to this year, which was to travel the country, learning about cachaça.

Instead, I’ve spent the year learning about cachaça at home. I took an e-class through Escola da Cachaça. I completed the course for the first level of the Wine and Spirits Education Trust. I’ve watched lots of videos and read plenty of articles. I’ve really tried to educate myself and the reading public about cachaça.

Of course, the most important part of my journey this year has been experimenting with new brands, flavors, and styles from all over the country.  

I’ve reached people from across the globe. Mostly from the US and Brazil, but also people from Europe, India, and China. I’ve even connected with some readers who really want to learn more about this universe of cachaça.

For much of the past year, I’ve been worrying. Not about anything related to cachaça, just related to life choices. But as the year comes to a close, I realize that I’ve already reoriented myself toward what I want.

Since coming to Brazil, I’ve had to set aside my professional pride to some extent, and do things that I wouldn’t need to do had I been living in the US. If I were still living there, I’d probably have a pretty highly respected job and more than average salary.

Here in Brazil, I’ve had to adapt. Now, I’m focusing my efforts on two things: cachaça and helping Brazilian businesses write better English. The latter includes distilleries and cachaça brands.

There remains a grave problem with communication here, which, as I said last week, has really hindered the ability of various industries to thrive, not least of which is cachaça.

I’ve spent a lot of the last year rushing around inside my apartment as though the most important thing for me to do was worry about how I presented myself to the world; what the world thought of me. But as the year comes to an end, I realize that I’ve got to do the exact opposite. I have to set aside my image and get focus on the two things right in front of me.

I have to create something new. I have to do things differently.

This may seem like a blog post from out of nowhere, since everything I’ve done over the past year has been oriented to presenting cachaça to foreigners.  And, to some extent it is.

I’ve always thought of myself as a writer. For the last twenty plus years anyway. I thought that this was my vocation. Even when I wasn’t writing, I thought of myself as belonging to the community.

There are things about me that the reader may never know or care about, and I’m not here to write about them now. I’ve realized over the past several months that at my core, I’ve always wanted to connect people, to break barriers, to facilitate understanding. At first I thought that I could only do this through writing.

Writing instead is a tool I use. It’s one of many tools I can use to break barriers and facilitate cultural exchange. Over recent years, I’ve seen our world darken in a way that I didn’t think possible. Walls that I believed to have been destroyed very much exist.

And so rather than just being a writer, I am someone who facilitates communication and understanding, who removes, brick by brick, the walls that inhibit sympathy, empathy and a path to a better world.

When I look at my life this way, I feel a sense of order that I haven’t previously felt. Even though I’ve known for some time, I’ve spent decades believing that I should submit myself to the venerated order of status seekers; that if I don’t have a title, then I’m worthless. But I don’t really care about such things. Because of who I am, and my experiences, I need to eschew those traditional signs of status and look for something else.

Here is where I find cachaça and communication. And thus, for next year, I will work deeply in these fields, helping myself, potential customers, and readers, better understand one another, facilitate understanding, and remove barriers.

Merry Christmas to those who celebrate and Happy New Year to all. I’ll write more in a couple weeks. Until then, rest up and focus on making the world a better place.