One of those mornings where everything is on your mind.  Everything… the future, money, kids, money, work, the future, more money, when will you get a run in—  Just fucking STOP.  I decided to come here to Peet’s coffee.  No table when I walked in, not for me at which to station so I thought, “Oh great, just what the morning would have for me, bloody nothing.”  But after the wait for the mocha, I saw this corner table, the one I was hoping avalyaibe finally boast its unoccupied reality.  So I’m here, thinking not of troubles but potential.  The potential to sell writing, sell wine, sell me as a brand and tireless writer, to change everything.  The other day I started a 365-day project for me, which would take me into the last days of January ’18.  Today’s day 4, and Day ONE of this rebuilding.  Rebuilding of attitude, of outlook, of projects.  First major push, run more often.  I’ll be at the gym tonight on treadmill and I won’t leave till I have 7 miles logged.  “So, eat light today,” I tell myself.  Won’t starve, but won’t stuff self either.  Then, tomorrow, a morning where I lecture, wake at 4, to give self writing time before class.  This is not a joke or one of my usual ‘I’m gonna do this’ promises.  This has to happen.  Putting this writing frame in a life-or-death perception and fancying relativity.  Two from 40, that’s how I have to treat it or nothing will change.

Listening to Hutcherson, “Waiting”, one of my favorite tracks of his.  And how appropriate, as I’m bloody done waiting for anything.  I’m going to take everything I want, starting today.  Just had an idea… motivating or hoisting haikus, 3, sell for $1.  Why not?  Just as an experiment.  See if I can sell.  Something before day’s end.  Have to think more like a business person, and less like a writer.  I’ll always write, but I’m demonstrating more business sense today.  Re-Writing how I talk about the wines, how I personify them, and what foods I’d pair them with.  I’m to sell by not-selling.  That is, elevate the mood of the person on the other side of the bar.  Show them, not convince them, that their day is better for being there.  Not that I’m to credit, but to robustly expose the positivity and yay-saying rows of the moment.

I so very, very much needed this moment of collection.  We all need to.  We need to collect more often, not make such a big deal of everything.  I noticed when arriving at kids’ school that we just got there—  “Where did the drive go?” I thought.  “You know where it went,” I said, “you spent it being pissed off, grumpy, quiet.” Taking Emma from her car seat she looked up at me and spoke, in her entangled goo of syllables.  “What am I doing?” I thought, being

grumpy as I was.  I’ll miss today, their childhood, my whole fucking life if I continue like this.  So…. STOP.  Already see Self on treadmill later, rushing toward mile 7 and writing new haikus, thinking of my babies, how Day 4/1 was utterly controlled by this writing father.