Nurse the Hate: The Sarah Heller Situation

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I receive this daily email from “Drinks Business”.  I must have been looped in via the WSET wine program as it is a British based alcohol industry tip sheet that has almost no relevance to my life.  I generally look at it, even though I don’t always understand the context of these posts.  It’s always things like “Hogsbreath On Green Launches UK Gin Championships” or “Turnbull’s Announces .5 Euro Increase”.  Sometimes I will click on the article when I think “What or where is Hogsbreath On Green?” only to discover that it is a one location restaurant with 14 tables that is going to have 8 blokes judging gin.  I like to imagine how very tight ass and English the event must have been.  Hey, we all have our internet vices.

Yesterday I clicked on an item that announced that a woman named Sarah Heller MW has been appointed to run something called Vinitaly International Academy in Hong Kong.  The woman in the picture looked 21.  I clicked on the story to discover that this woman was actually 29, the youngest MW in history.  She is also perhaps the most competent person in history.  From the article…  “After graduating from Yale University, Heller began working in the wine trades in New York and Hong Kong, also wineries in Italy and France, is an expert in e-commerce, wine branding, design, and communication.” 

So then I’m almost pissed off.  Who the hell does she think she is?  I was excited to put out a 7 inch single on Estrus Records when I was 29, and she is an MW?  Then I made the mistake of clicking on her website.  She has educational wine videos with 3 million students.  She has a boutique design agency and is collaborating with Lucaris Crystal.  She was going to graduate Yale 6 months early with a fine arts degree, and then decided to become a chef.  She secured a stage in Italy (of course), where after mastering that, she decided to get into wine in Piedmont.  She had an accident there, had to "convalesce in Hong Kong" where in that down time launched a seemingly wildly successful consultation firm.  She speaks English, German, Italian, and French “with some proficiency in Chinese and Spanish.  Her goal in 2018 is to tackle Korean.”  She is attractive.  She just had her first child with her undoubtedly fabulous husband.  I'm certain he's wealthy, handsome, smart as a whip, and plays a great game of squash.  She doesn’t note it on her bio, but I suspect she always smells like jasmine and cotton candy, is a world class banjo player, and is spectacular in bed.

Now I contrast this with what I have going on.  I am sitting in a bleak cubicle looking out at rainy Midtown Cleveland.  I was having difficulty reading the article on the computer monitor without pain.  This is because right before waking, I was having a dream.  I was in that spot shortly before you wake up, when you are still deep in dreams, but at the same time you realize you are dreaming.  I was doing both at once.  I was dreaming but I knew I was dreaming.  In the dream I was scuba diving.  I was thirty feet down under the boat in clear warm waters.  At this point, I had a conversation going in my head.  “I need to get back to the boat.  Hmm.  I’m going to have to wake up for work soon.  It must be almost six.  Wow, that coral reef is beautiful.”  In the dream I knew I had to make a sharp turn to arch back to the boat.  It was at this point I pulled a muscle in my neck because I must have actually tried to turn towards the boat.  Not in my dream.  In bed.  I woke up because it hurt so fucking badly.  I must have flexed my relaxed muscle so hard, so quickly, that I strained it.  The dream had become reality.  At first I couldn’t move.  I thought I was paralyzed.  “Well, this is how it ends.”, I thought. 

I slowly and painfully eased myself from bed.  I went to work, doing that thing where it became necessary to turn my entire shoulders towards a conversation like I was Frankenstein.  It was impossible to find a comfortable position in a chair.  Every angle hurt.  I would like to once again stress, this is due to an injury suffered while sleeping.  Absolutely pathetic.  I had sunk to a sorry state of affairs.  This is when I began to debate with a client on the phone about the relative worth of running commercials on “Live With Kelly” as opposed to “Pickler and Ben”.  We were going back and forth like it was nuclear negotiations.  It hit me like hammer to the face that while I was locked in a life-or-death struggle regarding the merits of a daytime talk show, Sarah Heller MW was busy “tackling Korean”.  What kind of life was I leading here?  She was an MW at 29 and I'm thinking about shuffling to the vending machine for a power bar.

I need three things.  1.  Intensive massotherapy from a team of experts.  2.  Try to pick up the pieces and forge ahead.  3.  Never again click on a story on the Drinks Business newsletter that isn’t about some cheeky Brit mixing cocktails at London Gin Week or having something to do with a restaurant that sounds like something from a fucking Harry Potter book.  It will only make me feel badly about myself.  It’s much better to live in a self delusion where it seems like I’ve accomplished something.  Call my people.  Have them bring me muscle relaxers and a pint.  Get Sarah Heller MW on the phone.  I want to hear some Korean.