Up at 4:53 but went back to sleep, now 6:06 and I refuse to let my head touch that pillow after bringing Jack to our bed. Downstairs now in this dark and I’m set on making today one of writing and content and money– yes, ‘money’. I need to fill these income gaps as I’ve said and produce more money for myself, more importantly my family. Writer dilemma, here in the earliest of morning, or not the earliest the earliest would have been at 5. Was so close, but I’m here now, reader. Writing. And the day, the day is right there, and I’m in control as I noted last night, as I thought last night driving home from Mendocino, before being accosted by that CHP officer (he telling me to slow down, which I did otherwise there was no way he could have come to my window to tell me the obvious, the the road crew was working and that it’s a bloody mess on the road, 101, and that ‘we’re all gonna get through this’). “What?” I thought. I pity him, his life, what he was out there doing, after our lovely interaction, his invisibly pushing people onward with his flashlight. That’s his job, when I’m sure all he wanted to do is being a real police officer, not a glorified hall monitor, patrolling California Highways. Neither there, nor here, or anything of importance.. I’m here on this couch and I hear Alice wake or at the least stir, probably toward the shower as she always does, leaving Jack in our bed but I can’t imagine him staying too still, me having just brought him to our bed and him asking last night “Where’s daddy…Where’s Dada?” Alice told me. I don’t mind this sitting being interrupt at all really, as I’m just warming up as a writer, this is my meditation, my inner collection and warmup exercises I guess you could say.
Meeting Glenn at Punchdown at 9:30– have to charge phone, and camera, need a new notebook, or no I don’t I’ll just use the Fall ’15 one. Week 10, dead. Thank the Craft, onward now, onward into my wined story and growth, and that ‘end game’ as Kevin said. Which is, I think, my own wine. And I’ve held that vision for some time now, truly, so that has to be it. Something has to be IT, right? I’m 36 with a daughter headed straight for me. Yes.. the model of the big ad/media/blogging/content company then the side project, the “passion project” (hate that, yes too cliché, but that’s just what it is). My winery. Starting with SB, Merlot, as you know, and then maybe jumping into Syrah which I love and perhaps even Pinot, or some Rhône blend, some Rhône-something. Wine’s a path to just be walked and enjoyed, not over-thought. I’m in control. And I don’t know why, I have to again note, this is hitting me at 36, such realization. Why did I have to wait till now?
6:09AM, Friday, but it’s hard to see Friday like normal people, esp people who don’t write or blog ‘cause we’re always working. Content is everything to us; life and family, and me now with this “daddy blog” idea, or startup– no, just a blog now, maybe it’ll turn into another “startup” like the vvv idea, but I want to explore and share, and LEARN from and TEACH MYSELF, and maybe others though I’m hardly an authority, on parenting. How Jack, and soon Ms. Emma (whom I still call Ms. Austen, even though the ‘Jane camp’ is long, long gone– when there were so many potential names for my daughter I called them camps; the Jane camp, Emily camp, Emma camp, Catherine Elizabeth camp…)… Just parenting I find so interesting now, and this is a direct extension and demonstrative of who I am and how I think, as a professor, yes, just more so one from the Literary world and seeing everything differently, processing life as an Artist, one with an ever accumulating book and journal.
The white wine I opened last night, an unlabeled bottle of the Cuvée Blanc from Glenn’s label. Nice fruit, simple but not too.. just the type of white you open at the end of a long day, which I very much did, in fact I even thought of how I’d reward myself with that bottle, a couple glasses, last night. And I can remember precisely when: walking from my car to the building where they have me in another goddamn adjunct office, shared obviously, crossing the street to the building, in that crosswalk, a car waiting for my self-removal from street, to my right. And there I was last night at the kitchen island eating the salmon Ms. Alice had waiting for me, that little pasta with cheese & broccoli (which we call Jackie pasta as he used to love it, not so much anymore, which is another interesting reflective province of parenting– keeping some sort of reasonable, non-frustrating pace with their preferences). Little Kerouac’s not too bad, but who knows what Ms. Austen has planned. And speaking of Jane.. and books….. Think I’ll order some today– no, have to get through the ones I have here on my desk, my reading list which includes that new Kerouac book which I’ve barely touched (‘Sea/Brother’). And as I pity that hallway supervisor last night on 101 South, I as well some adjuncts that are convinced it’ll get better, that they’ll be tenured when clearly the system has no plan of that for them. And why should it be about Them having a plan for Us? Why can’t WE have more control? “You need to be more involved,” one person told me, but it’s unpaid involvement. With a house, and another Madigan about to land, that’s unreasonable of anyone to as THIS Madigan. I need pay, and I need more, and I’m in control with my projects and writing and blogging so don’t worry… I’ll get it myself.
(10/23/15)