The Daily Open Minded Writer

Among the books I chose for the year is The Daily Laws by Robert Greene. This book is ironically a straightforward read given that he has a propensity to not only write very, very deep books but also write in a significantly dense manner or style. This book is what led me to many of this other writings but this is nothing more then little one paragraph meditations or thoughts that I have been reading shortly after I wake up in the morning to help focus on other things (my depression and anxiety) and really start to develop and define my identity because this is something I feel I have completely lost over the last 5 years. One of the daily laws really started to make me question a lot of things I have done leading up to this point because it went something like “mastery is a process and discovering your calling is nothing more then a starting point”.

This hit me in the face like a ton of bricks, so to speak, because it really made me stop and think for most of the day and beyond. If we are being honest, what the hell is my true calling in life? I ask this because, yeah, I have gone through tangents like any seriously borderline autistic person (I say this because I know I fall on the scale, just not sure how deeply I fall on it) would go through, which I thought were normal and at the time I got so deep into it I thought about jumping careers to it. A great example of this is many years ago (god, I sound like an old guy talking here), I went to a Viking festival much like the typical medieval festival but in a Nordic style. I accidentally walked into a lecture on how to make mead, and being the odd duck I was, I ended up staying watching the rest of the lecture and honestly got super curious about its whole art and craft. To my luck, they were selling these semi-starter kits to make mead, and it was not much money, so I picked one up and took it home with me. It sat in my closet for a bit before I got around to putting it all together, but it was a lot of fun for me. I will tell you now that the first batch of mead was horrendous; it tasted like legit gas it was horrible there was no taste, no flavor, no anything to it, just pure alcohol, and I want to say that it took the better part of 6 months to finally mellow out and actually be palatable and even then it was flat single note just meh at best. This was the start of my journey into the art of fermentation because I loved how you could take seemingly normal ingredients and turn them into something magical to drink and enjoy.

Fast-forward a few months, and I was able to make a few second-hand purchases, expand the size of my fermentation vessels, and really step up my skill set. I started experimenting with a mead style called Cyser, made with apple cider instead of the standard water addition. This change was the change I was looking for to really develop and progress the flavor of the meads I made into something that I really wanted to drink and enjoy. I loved how I could do something so simple as caramelize the honey (which is crazy hard to do without making a complete mess in the kitchen, for the record). It created such depth and body that the mead would take on a totally different personality all on its own.

As time went on, more and more mead was made (at this time, I had around 200 or more bottles of it lying around the house or in the wine rack) I made the first major purchase for this hobby, which was my stainless steel 20-gallon conical. This was a massive move because up until now, I had never spent this kind of money on anything besides a vehicle, and I wanted to have the tools to progress my skillset to higher and better levels. At this time, I secretly thought about and played with the idea of designing and creating my own meadery and restaurant because of my massive passion for the creation of mead. Looking back on this time in my life, I think the love I had was an outlet for the creative side of myself to come out, and I desperately needed that kind of outlet because it had been so long since I was able to and could really let loose on something that genuinely interested me outside of my career and doing things for it.

Writing this has really made me realize I have put so much on hold and so much to the side for the sake of my career or the idea of having the time to do the things I love and desire that I am not even sure what will light this kind of internal passion and just fire and excitement for life. Still, I can tell you this year that I want to find that passion for life again, find myself, and be whatever that looks like (hopefully a better, more fulfilled person with that sparkle in my eye once more). I just want to find that fire and excitement for life again, where I am excited to wake up and not just dreading what the hell each day will bring, I want to take on challenges, and I can do so with a smile on my face with determination and just joy for the experience.