that’s just me being stressed out me.  Started writing a poem in class, while students were in groups.  Hopefully will remember to finish it later.  Not in much a mood to go to Healdsburg but I’m going to force myself to work harder.  Will need coffee.  Much more coffee.  Well maybe not “much more”, but certainly more.  Was reading an article today that instructed on success in sales.  Was somewhat template and trite, but nonetheless valuable, and I guess encouraging.  One of the pillars, if I can call them that, was attitude, or general disposition.  And I thought of what that insurance agent told me years ago in San Leandro—  “Your biggest problem is your attitude.” Seems that it still is, sometimes.

Going to pack and leave after this sitting… giving self 8 more minutes.   I know what’s held for rest of day… sell wine for client, finish that poem…. gotta move— not feeling this conference room, and hearing the other instructors, the full-timers which could never understand this adjunct’s angst, start to annoy me.  Need to move, need to stop writing for a bit, return to this later— break patterns and find newness… be confrontational with the day, demand goals materialize, be more poetic, settle for NOTHING—

9:06PM.  Home, done with dinner, babies and wife asleep.  Me with Chardonnay, brainstorming move next with wine.  What if I turned into—  No.  Don’t give away the idea.  But I have to write it down.  Shit… where the fuck is my pen?  ‘A’ pen, for whatever’s sake?  No, don’t write it down.  If it’s meant to stick, it will.  The Chardonnay I’m sipping has me thinking of a trip, a trip to the East Coast where I’m by the water, back in my hotel room after a meeting, and winding down.  I call my wife and babies, talking to their visuals through my phone, already eager to be back home.  But I have work to do.  Wine brought me out here and I have to follow through with the story.—  Tonight’s a night of reinvention, the entire day, especially when I was thinking about where I am, about to turn 38—  I sat in my car eating some shitty lunch in Healdsburg, in a quiet spot behind the Safeway on Vine St, with a view of 101.  I could see the cars speed north and south, and wondered what each would think of my thoughts on wine, about me as a brand, my thoughts on wine and literature, how wine is entirely literary, that kind of thing—  AND, how my son will see me when he’s my age.  Need another glass.

I have another glass.  My evening’s last.  Want to get up early and work out here, home, strengthen core, lift weights, meditate.  This Chardonnay reminds me I’ve changed.  I mean, I used to tell people I wasn’t just one of those ‘ABC’ people, but I downright hated Chard.  And some would say, “Well, what about your sister’s?  Didn’t she build her career on Chardonnay?” I’d dodge the question whenever that happened. I’m different now.  I don’t know about more mature, or more open-minded, or what, but I’ve changed as a wine drinker.  And Chardonnay is one of the voices I look for on restaurant menus, on store shelves… everywhere, and for whatever justification I see ought.  Yes, there are still some interpretations of Chardonnay that perpetuate that stereotype and type I’d rather not drink, ever.  But right now I’m in a positive spot, sipping this Monterey version from ’15.  Not going to launch into descriptors ‘cause that’s just getting to be some exhaustive overplayed bullshit.  I’m enjoying my evening, out of any mood that started this morning.

Need my pen.  I’m going to forget that idea.  Not before another sip.  Ah, I love THIS attitude, this altitude.

(3/7/17)