Sipping a hazy, foggy, swamp water-looking IPA, and letting new ideas teach me about my next motion, what and HOW I step next.
Writing is everything to you
if you call yourself a writer.
You let no ideas escape, you scribble everything.
There’s no such thing as a nothing, as something can can’t be penned.
Your sentences should convey your obsession with your story.
Moved desks. Was opposed but I rationalized
that if I have more space to operate and plan more opportunities are possible. Nearly done with the move from the incubator to here, my new more human desk and workspace, but still some things pinned to cube wall.
Going out to dinner after this with family, to a spot that I might be able to land as an account, but I don’t know for sure what kind of speeds or pricing I can get. After my Salesforce training with one of the Coordinators (Sales Coordinator), I’m thinking more technically, more technologically. Yes still as me a wine writer but with more expansive and inviting vernacular palate.
Might come in tomorrow morning… blog about the morning, the quiet office, how this work, what I do here at this tech/internet company will solve, fortify, and abide whatever I see, have sights on. This desk is where the P-O-Z Agency will start. What does POZ do? Connect and Compose. That could be our actual worded thesis, not decided yet but that’s where my thinking is.
4:44.
Leaving in a bit. Just sent EOD email. Desk a little cleaner, but not impressively.
Circles, Paths, Questioning. Then, PRISMATIC. Two post-it’s from my old cube I just moved over, part of the POZ philosophy. Here on blog so I can throw the post-it’s away. Or do I want to keep them? Throw them away, I tell myself. No more of this packratting wackiness.
4:56. Thinking of a glass of….. what, that red blend? Or the Albarino? May go tasting/prospecting in wined territory tomorrow, but….. where. Mauritson, haven’t been in a while. Even Wilson I’d be willing to hit. Anywhere where there’s a story, and the stories are everywhere.
Today, not productive, but profuse and promising.
Just realized something…. Everyone’s an Account Executive. For themselves, for their passions, convictions, for their projects. What they want, where they are and what they’re doing with that precise heartbeat. THAT pulse.
This blog, about work, but as well about using all realities and connectivity in your story. Sending emails to prospects and reading about businesses, and how they came to be… this one guy, I think younger than me, having his own real estate firm on RR Square, here in Sant Rosa. I have NOT forgotten the
P-O-Z Agency. Starting to take more shape, with this morning. Lunch with prospect soon, and I know exactly what I want from the meeting… find ways to send him business, to speak his brand, his expertise. Not so much the giver’s gain like BNI, but collective narration and sight, narration.
10/18/19
Morning. Day start. It’s Friday so what. Lunch at noon which I’m quite looking forward to. Kept thinking and thinking driving here about what I do at Sonic, and how to make it easier, how to make conversion more consistent and more my weekly if not daily culture. And I figured it out… be an AE of ME. Sell Mike Madigan and don’t even think about Sonic. See how it goes. Will start prospecting at 09:30, thereabouts. Salesforce training put off till later in day. Submit expenses and do my own budget. Get through the stack of papers in car. Everything today for sakes and senses of waking at 4am tomorrow. No more dreaming about it, or anymore hoping. Just doing.
Building my collective conversation with vendors and business owners, implementing more creative. There’s no reason why I shouldn’t be out there just selling. Maybe I will. Maybe I’ll go walk around Airport Blvd, knock on doors and just say hi… OR, target specific businesses. Doesn’t have to be in our fiber territory. That’s another thing that hangs me up, or stalls me. Fiberoptic, has to be fiber…. NO IT DOESN’T. A reader has to understand that just now I have I believe to be a “dream job”, or not even a job but something more promising and promoting than I’ve ever encountered, so there’s only a climb, there’s only profuse promise in what I do.
Friend sent me some articles on prospecting, sales, as a resource. Not sure I need them but I’ll surely check them out. No sales this week. Met yesterday with owner of the photo lab in Berkeley and she wants a proposal, but it’s not ink. Quite sure it will be ink, but I want it sooner. I know, I know… play the long game. Like being in college again. You want to be in grad school the day you enroll in the community college. Just doesn’t happen that way.
8:42. Latte making its effect felt. Have an idea for today…. Then I shed it. Time to write another, and another…. Starts with this desk. This area, how I was asked if I want a bigger space and I said no I rather prefer this incubator. The day, started. Morning. I have hours to compose. So, compose something. Need some office supplies, I think.
Thinking I should just write a fucking book about prospecting… that would speed things up. And I know some are reading and saying be patient, it takes time, things to that throw. But what if I want to accelerate, excel, move a little quicker? Nothing wrong with that. So…. Go.
But before I do, thinking about what to say I realize is absolutely NOT the right approach. Prospecting should not be prospecting. A veteran in the department told me he just walks in, says hi, asks if anyone needs internet, and goes from there. Not so certain I want to be that airy in my speak, but the casual and friend form I absolutely aim to embody.
Need more time to self, to brainstorm. Then have that brainstorm have an immediate or proximal return. MY business story, like I said yesterday in my BNI talk, is just starting. 9am just now and not quite ready to leave office. Want to take a few more notes…. Notes to self, notes for day, jots for what I not want to say but how I want to feel in interactions.
So tempted to go home. See my babies. What is this class doing for me. Really. A lot, Mike. I need to play it better… idea… post more to the professor mikey blog. Yes. Today, all day in the BNI meeting people calling me Professor Mikey, saying “What’s up, Professor Mikey?”
Just did budget. Still healthy, but want more money to come from me. Need more bookings… more speaking engagements. Not that I’ve had any ones that pay, ever. Will soon. Feeling ornery, this evening. Ordered a glass of some red blend. They don’t have the Grenache…. Goddamnit. I’m NEVER coming here again. Stomach not hurting anymore, and feeling a fine note of famine. So…. Don’t want those fries… too much, too crumby and salty. At end of night, I want to have …. Shit, a poem. A verse. Have to do that, first.
Where did poetry go in my story. No where.
Bring it back. Needed this. My regular spot at S&H, wine on the way. That Albarino…. No way am I finishing that novel this month. A month extension warranted. I always have been my favorite professor….. This place, I could write about it over and over… the people, the umbrellas outside blown one side to the other by today’s sudden bluster. Fall…. And the wind really wants me to see it. She puts down water, the waitress, says “It’s not quite wine, but….”
“Aw goddamnit…” I say.
She laughs, I smile. Back to writing. So tempted to call class tonight, but I want to speak. Not entirely please with my talk, this morning, on Sonic but really Narrative, and how narrative brought me to Sonic. Which is more or less the truth. It sounded good, to me, when I gave the speech or talk, or part of it in my head. 5:02, plenty of time here. One poem, my aim before leaving. First sip of wine, more texture, touch and flesh than I remember. Keep thinking I’m 40 and how I’m 40, I’M FUCKING FORTY… is this where I should be? No I’m not in some mood, or funk, or depressed. Definitely not depressed. I don’t think.– AM I? No… just wanting more. What I told the director of Consumer Sales at Sonic when he asked what I wanted at the company. I said, “I want the same thing as everyone else. More.”
Even after the first sip, I feel more composed, more whole and vocal. She’s leaving me to think about her while remaining here in the seat. Thinking next I’ll get a Grenache, if they still have it. Pretty sure they do. Didn’t look like the menu changed. I should finish a book here…. Start one first, then finish it. OR, stop focusing so much on a fucking book. Fuck a book. Write… put it out into the collective people presence as soon as done. That’s the beauty of a blog, right? Maybe I’m exaggerating, maybe…
Couple sits next to me. Were sitting right in front of me, square table, but I think a bigger party’s coming, or already here waiting to be seated. Always wondered if I could wait tables. A friend of mine used to work here, and in a more financially-tentacle-wrapped time for me, showed on social media how many tips she tallied one night, easily over $150. I was tempted. I did ask her about availability, and she responded with a contact name I believe but it went no where. Glad I didn’t pursue, or push, but I still wonder what it’d be like. I partially have a conception from being in the wine world and walking out to tables with pours, flights, to talk to guests tableside. But it’s not the same thing. Actually, I know I’d hate it. Especially now. Fuck, really? I’m 40. I think about it, that’s it. Story ideas. That’s it.
too day-y
10/17/10
Taking a break from NaNo project for a bit. Just want to write, in a free spree of me. Will have it done by November, the ACTUAL NaNo month. Tired, I think both from early wake, that I didn’t sleep well last night and having run over eight miles yesterday on lunch. Today has been nonproductive yet incredibly frenzied…. BNI meeting this morning then rushing down to Petaluma for training my first client on new phone systems. Which, I don’t know, makes me smile and giggle a little, for some reason. I didn’t do the training. The person who did, Will, was incredible. Really into his material and instruction, and I thought he did great. What makes me laugh is that this company is so bizarrely generous and wonderful that we offer a complimentary training session, which can last as long as the client wants. I’m not an evangelist, per se, but no other telecom company does that, or does like we do to my knowledge.
4:02pm. Should leave. Need to get here early tomorrow morning, get caught up on stuff. Have a lunch tomorrow at noon, then the rest of the day is the rest of the day. Still haven’t sold shit this week, but have held appointments. I am setting calendar dates with more regularity, which is a correct and promising step.
Can’t shake this tired. Need to write more poetry, like that one student in my 1A section, Frankie…. One piece at Steel & Hops. OR more. So much shit to grade. Just need to relax, have time for me. Poetry, wine, my usual seat at S&H. Be Hemingway, be Kerouac, Sedaris, Plath, Hughes. Going to get another legal pad, and I said I wouldn’t do that. But I will. Just this one last time. Heard one of the trainers say, “I need to get out of here.” She does? What about me? Sending EOD to Mark, and I’m bouncing out of here like an astronaut in even less gravity than the moon.
EOD sent. Post-it’s fucking everywhere on this desk. Why is it always messy here. Also, makes me laugh. And at my SELF. Will get legal pad on way out. Don’t put it in backpack, Mike… you’re notebooks always get battered when in there. Need more music in my story, and the music I write, verse, has to be on clean, non-crumbled sheets.
Starting to wake up. Wait, am I? Breakfast burrito at a nice little café in Berkeley, with the prospect I met. He owns a printing shop, where he does prints of any size of client photog. The café at which we at shares a wall with his shop. We ate there, but didn’t. He, Rob, took a small patio table from his studio, two chairs, and set it right in front of his doors. We went in and ordered, walked fifteen feet or so back to the table, and our plates were delivered. First time I’ve ever seen that. See my office having the same nearness to a café, wine bar, or both. Where I’d always write. So then what the fuck do I need an office, or studio, or blogger shop for?
Attitude challenge…
Starts NOW.
Not just for me, but for you too.
What, and how, are you going to do?
10/15/19
Okay. Leaving office soon. Walking around San Rafael, Petaluma. Seen as the speaker of Sonic, the one always out there speaking about it. In the street, rarely in the office. Finishing latte, break in a minute, move some money around for blogs. All well and wonderfully right in my written world.
More than likely will hit traffic. Not worried about it.
Latte done. Thousand words for morning, for NaNo book. Will write at lunch, no run. May even eat. OH, brought leftovers from the other night. Not sure I should eat them, though. And, it sounds more fun having something in San Rafael. That one place… what’s it called? Where I had the omelet? Oh that’s sounds amazing. So hungry. Maybe get breakfast first. No… go get in front of people.
Getting in the car in a bit. Teaching people how to prospect, then sell… Into the day, my way.