Oct 10

Oct 10 When the Rug (and the Floorboards, and the Earth Itself) are Pulled Out from Under You

Last weekend I had the incredibly good fortune to attend a workshop led by Elizabeth Gilbert, as she visited the north Georgia mountains. (Quick! What’s your favorite Liz Gilbert book? Eat Pray Love seems to be the most popular answer, though my vote goes to The Signature of All Things, with a special shout-out to Big Magic and certain scenes in City of Girls. IYKYK.) As a writer, I was moth-to-a-flame as Liz shared her practices and techniques for channeling creativity; for me, the most compelling one was her 20-year history of responding to the daily writing prompt of “What do my guides want from me today?”

(Give it a try tomorrow morning. Seriously. Then give it a try for the next six mornings, but only if you want your mind blown. I dare you to keep going after that.)

As a writer for this week’s ABG, though, I made a particular note of two things Liz said that I wanted to share with you at this particular moment in our world of wine.
One is a theme from the Zen tradition, that goes something like this: One day you’re going to have the rug pulled out from under you. Then the floorboards underneath the rug will be pulled up. And then the earth itself will fall away. Then, and only then, will you begin.

How many of us, in today’s world of wine, can relate? Are you at the rug-being-pulled-out phase? Or the next ones down?

I see you.

Which brings me to the second takeaway from Liz that I’d like to share with you, that emerged from her segment on “purpose anxiety,” or our culture’s obsession with goals, productivity, winning, and to-do lists.

Liz said that there is no one great thing that any of us needs to do.
There is no one great thing that you need to do.
There is no one great thing that I need to do, either.

There are several ways to interpret that statement, such as maybe there are many great things (not just one) that we need to do, or maybe we want rather than need to do a great thing, or maybe we should all get over ourselves and thinking that anything we do is great.

Take your pick. The meaning in the moment when Liz said it had more to do with “How about we all just take a breath, and be (rather than do) for half of a second.”

See what happens then.

There’s a particular reason why I’m linking these two takeaways from Liz for this week’s ABG. Plenty of us are having the rug pulled out from under us these days, and maybe the time is right to recalibrate our own versions of “great things” needing to be done.

Think about it. Maybe write about it. Maybe ask your guides in tomorrow morning’s prompt: What do they want you to know about your life in wine today?
Look, there’s a lot of anxiety in our community right now. My point today is to encourage you to take a breath, and take inventory. Recalibrate if needed. Then do the next right thing.

Please let me know if I can help. I’m good at listening, and helping to process. I’m also good at metabolizing all the inputs, and using them as fuel to send back into our community.

Here’s where to schedule time with me if you’d like.
Namaste,
Cathy

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Cathy Huyghe

Cathy Huyghe is a dynamic media professional with a special interest in wine and the spirit of hospitality. She is also an effective, engaging public speaker on subjects ranging from wine and gastronomy to digital media and entrepreneurship.

Cathy is the co-founder and CEO of Enolytics, a big data startup providing business intelligence for the wine industry. She also currently writes for Forbes.com about the business and politics of the wine industry, and for Inc.com about entrepreneurs with a special focus on women. She is the author of the award-winning book Hungry for Wine: Seeing the World through the Lens of a Wine Glass; she was a finalist for the 2016 IWSC Wine Communicator of the Year award; and she won the 2016 Innovator of the Year award from Diaz Communications.

Cathy's writing has appeared in print and online for both general-interest and wine industry publications including the Harvard Business Review network, The Atlantic, Decanter, Food52.com (where she was the "Wine, Unfussed" columnist), DailyBeast, The Boston Globe, the Washington Post, Wine Enthusiast, GlobalPost, Grist.org, and Daily Candy. She has also been featured on the BBC, WNYC, WGBH, and Nevada Public Radio.

Cathy is the founder of 365daysofwine.com and Red White Boston, a digital media company for the wine industry. Red White Boston produced daily content, monthly tasting events, and a location-based iPhone app of video wine recommendations from their network of 30+ local partner stores. While in Boston, she also managed the wine cellar at WGBH public broadcasting station and managed wine events for donors and the public.

Cathy’s restaurant experience started when she knocked on the kitchen door at Chez Panisse in Berkeley. She also has worked for Jean-Pierre Vigato in Paris (at Natachef bistro and at his two-star restaurant, Apicius) and for Thomas Keller at Bouchon in Las Vegas. She studied at La Varenne École de Cuisine in Burgundy, France; she completed the Wine Studies program at Boston University; and she received Advanced Certification from WSET (Wine and Spirits Education Trust).

Cathy received a master’s degree from the Graduate School of Design at Harvard in 2004 and a second master’s degree in Journalism in 2010, also from Harvard. Before that, she received a master’s degree in comparative literature from the City University of New York in 1998 and a bachelor’s degree from Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania in 1995. She is also a trained mediator, and worked for two years at the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School on a project in the Middle East.

In April 2008 she founded the Harvard Alumni in Wine and Food special interest group, which provides educational and networking services to the Harvard alumni and current students. She has also served as the President of the Harvard Club of Georgia, and she has begun a term of service on the Board of Directors for the Harvard Alumni Association.

Her other non-profit involvement includes the Women's Solidarity Society at the new National Center for Civil & Human Rights (Atlanta), grant reviewer for the Food Well Alliance (an Atlanta-based organization that supports the local network of 350 urban farms and community gardens), Coach at GOTR (Girls on the Run) in Atlanta, Board Member at the Greening Youth Foundation (Atlanta), Board Member at The Food Project (Boston), and Mediator at the Neighborhood Justice Center (Las Vegas).

She lives in Atlanta with her husband, their twin boys, and their Bernese Mountain dog, Coco.

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