“You’ve been thunderstruck, yeah, yeah, yeah, thunderstruck…”

It’s Sunday afternoon, so of course I’ve got the TV on with the Jets game running at fever pitch. Mind you, I’m not a Jets fan, but a football fan, and a good game is a good game. At this point in my life, when I watch the Jets play I’m thinking of two people: my brother-in-law Joe and Gary Vaynerchuk. Joe will have to somehow forgive me for not writing an entire article about him. Gary, the host of Wine Library TV (aka The Thunder Show), is as passionate about his Jets as he is about wine, and it would be impossible to draw a line there—or to draw any line at all. More than being content simply turning tens of thousands of viewers on to the latest and greatest from the Priorat or such, Gary is in a perpetual state of forward motion. And not only do objects in motion tend to stay in motion, but if they are big enough, they also tend to set anything in their path in motion as well.

As guest host of Wine 2.0 in New York City, Gary spoke about doing what you love, regardless of price or consequence. I can’t possibly argue with the man, as this blog is what I love to do, and it was born more out of necessity than desire—I HAVE to do this just as much as I want to, and I think he’d be apt to agree. In fact, ask a stock broker or lawyer who has decided to hang it all up, buy a patch of vineyard somewhere and start making wine. It takes a brass set of balls to pursue what you love to do, knowing it may land you in the poorhouse, particularly when you know that those newly planted vines won’t give you marketable wine for at least 7 years. But in the end, when we look back on our lives, the things we most often regret are not things we did, but things we DIDN’T do.

However, seeking out the things we love to do is often a process of metamorphosis. We’re hungry to learn, to explore and to experience, and to be bound by one aspect of ourselves is….well….boring. It’s someone else, not us. Gary gripes on his most recent post about folks who tell him to just “stick to wine” if he goes off on tangents. You know what? That would piss me off, too. In fact, it often has. If you ask anyone what Katie is into, the answers will most likely contain things like art, music, food, wine, books, technology, horror flicks, etc. But at any other point in my life it could just as easily have included a host of other things. People ask, what the hell are you into now? They roll their eyes and call it being fickle or indecisive. I call it growth. You see, I can just as easily sit at a party with someone and discuss Buddhist ideas as I can Chaos Theory. And I can spend all night bullshitting about Robert Mapplethorpe or Frank Zappa. They mocked Rocco DiSpirito recently about being on Dancing With the Stars, wondering why the hell someone so damned talented doesn’t just “stick to cooking.” Sound familiar, Gary? If the dude wants to dance, let him dance…do you really give a shit, and if so, why? It can be as base as not buying the same reliable bottle of chianti you love to have with your meal, and picking up a barbaresco instead, but we only get one ride on this merry-go-round, and staying on that one pretty horse SUCKS. Me, I’d rather jump off and maybe head for that pink elephant, even if it means I may lose my balance as I spin, and Gary winds up beating me to it. I’d like to continue believing that if you step into darkness either you find you can stand, or you learn how to fly.

Tagged as: Gary Vaynerchuk, Wine Library TV