Happy [Belated] 9th Blogiversary, The Academic Wino! (plus, a personal note)

**TRIGGER WARNING: DEATH***

.

.

.

Before I start today’s blog post, I wanted to explain my absence this past month or so. A little over a month ago, one of my sisters was found deceased in her apartment from what I can only describe as a random freak accident. I was on a plane in less than 24 hours and stayed to mourn with and help other family members with everything that needs to be done when a loved one dies. This is the first time I’ve had to deal with this sort of thing, so it’s been an “interesting” experience nonetheless, and something that I do not wish upon anyone (not like we can avoid it anyway).

I consider my sisters to be my best friends, even though we are many miles apart from one another. The death of one of them was a shock and thus my ability to write anything or do much of anything was near impossible during the early days of hearing the news.

While with my other sisters and family members during this time, we cried, laughed, reminisced, and cried some more over our collective loss. I managed to get back to the mountains of Colorado for a couple of challenging (yet satisfying) hikes while honoring my sister in the best way possible.

The hard days are not over, I know, as grief often presents itself in a nonsensical chaotic manner, however, I am at a point now where I am ready to get back to writing again and hopefully provide you with some [interesting] wine content in the very near future.

Now that I’ve sufficiently bummed you all out, on to the highlight of today’s post!…..

---

On June 8th, 2011, The Academic Wino was born! Happy 9th Blogiversary to me!

9 years?!?! That’s crazy to think about where I am now compared to where I started. I’m so beyond grateful for all the opportunities presented to me (and apologies if I may have fallen off the wagon a little bit with tasks this past year due to so many unanticipated life changes).

Here are a few social media stats to round up the past 9 years:

• 1 Year Blogiversary: About 1000 Twitter followers, and unsure of the number of Facebook “likes”.
• 2 Year Blogiversary: 2,738 Twitter followers and 488 “likes” on Facebook.
• 3 Year Blogiversary: 5,556 Twitter followers and 1304 Facebook “likes”.
• 4 Year Blogiversary: 9,767 Twitter followers and 1742 Facebook “likes”.
• 5 Year Blogiversary: 15,403 Twitter followers and 1945 Facebook “likes”.
• 6 Year Blogiversary: 17,808 Twitter followers and 2014 Facebook “likes”.
• 7 Year Blogiversary: 19,260 Twitter followers and 2146 Facebook “likes”
• 8 Year Blogiversary: 19,593 Twitter followers and 2301 Facebook “likes”
• 9 Year Blogiversary: 19,578 Twitter followers, 2551 Facebook “likes”, and 846 Instagram followers (I don’t know why I didn’t include IG until now in these stats).

It seems as though I’ve reached a plateau on Twitter, which is unsurprising as I’ve been doing just the bare minimum lately as far as interactions are concerned.  I hope to ramp that back up again.  Find The Academic Wino on various social media platforms here:

• Twitter:  @TheAcademicWino
• Facebook:  TheAcademicWino
• Instagram: academicwino
• Pinterest: academicwino

Personal and Professional Highlights During the Past Year

I haven’t been doing as much freelancing this past year as I would have liked. This is mainly due to the fact that my personal life had taken over a huge chunk of my time, and thus left very little (if any) time for focusing on deadlines or other things of that nature.

In case you missed it, this past year my husband accepted a new job across country and in a short period of time, I packed up our house and moved my whole family (humans and pets) from Colorado to our new [temporary] home in North Carolina. Then it was balls-to-the-wall house hunting when we got here, and about 5-6 weeks or so before we closed on and moved into our new permanent home.

Then the holidays came and went, vacations were had [just in time, apparently] and COVID hit. With COVID, my boys’ daycare was closed, so there was a several month period where I could do nothing but mom-related things. Their daycare recently opened back up again, so hopefully I can get in a couple of months of real writing done before another spike shuts everything down again in the fall.

Despite all the insanity, one professional accolade from the past year stands out. My article, “The Effects of Mandatory Wine Label Nutritional and Ingredient Information on Purchase Behavior“, was shortlisted for the Best Editorial/Opinion Wine Writing in the 2019 Born Digital Wine Awards! While I didn’t win, it was quite the honor to be shortlisted among such amazing talent.

Lastly, I am still Editor at Wine Industry Insight, where I am responsible for curating the news links for the daily News Fetch. The Wine Industry Insight Daily NewsFetch is free to subscribe, so if you’re not already getting this daily news brief, sign up by clicking here. If you are interested in finding information on and/or subscribing to the premium content on that site, you may do so by clicking here: Wine Executive News Premium Subscriptions.

Thank you again to every single one of you who have supported me in one way or another as without you, The Academic Wino is just another blip in the matrix.

ALSO—-If you ever hit your head, please go to the hospital, no matter how silly you might feel.

#2020worstyear

Thank you….