Next morning I get to the winery and just brandish the laptop and start typing with what 30 minutes I have.  Driving here I thought about the tasting room, why I’m still in it, why I’m not doing precisely and ONLY what I wish, what I’ve always wanted to do—  write and travel, about wine and the act of traveling, what it does to character and how I have to write more and not stop ever.  40 is on its way, just as 39 was but now I feel, this very morning, a fire and high voltage voltage-ness that I’m noticing.  Nearly fearful of.  Phobic and pusillanimous.  I utilize it for my forward, for my story.  Think I’ve seen writing as a dream, I hate to say.  Like something I want to do and will eventually do instead of something I now depend on for income and livelihood, growth and promotion and everything you’d expect something or someone else to give you— job, owner, manager, department, whatever.

This morning and this whole day I write about work.  I examine work… the ethic, the practice, the dreams of being this and that… what work is and working for someone versus for self.  As a writer I know you in many sense work for your readers, but I see this what I’m doing right now this morning before I clock in (something I hate doing and now more often cringe when I enter my ID numbers, ugh…), a statement.  An argument.  A push to IT.  The IT mentioned in Road.  Sipping my 4-shot mocha, so often do I do, and writing in a place of work.  This cubicle, where someone works I think although I haven’t seen anyone here in some time.  Not yesterday at lunch when I wrote here, for 30 minutes.  That was my project, for ME.

Wine and its industry more than about work is about chasing what you want… the industry itself connotatively and denotative demand autonomy.  Walking vineyard and making wine from it, sharing it with whomever and speaking about it the way you would.  This morning, I think is my separation, from everything that work is expected to be seen as.  No more dreaming, no more wishing, no more seeing and envisioning, no more aspiring… here you are, I tell myself.  You’re a writer.  You better move some of these projects…. Have some inventory to sell or you’re gonna be eating ants, roadkill, old shit in the fridge or stale chips and crackers in the cupboard, moldy cheese… that kind of shit.  And I’m not nervous, not afraid, not regretful of these thoughts or fearful of some backlash or response or retaliation any which way.  I’ve expressed voluminously how I value growth and advancement, how I want the same thing as everyone else yet I’m dismissed.  Certainly never approached.  So, I can do it myself.  More than an affirmation this is a stark and fanged declaration… moving, move, a movement.  All I need is me, these words, my observations and something to move, sell.  My dragnet for amelioration continues to be hushed, prolonged, ignored, resulting in NO confirmation.  Definitely no promotion.  Which, only encourages the writer and his pieces, these declarations and sights… so I’m not maddened, or perturbed or even slightly bitter.  I’m better for my experiences in this industry… tasting room to tasting room, another goddamn tasting room.  I get it.  I see it.  I see me with more artful appreciation and poetry, autonomy.

09:14, and I have just a bit of time left but you know what… I’m to clock in late this morrow.  And I will.  What’s the worst that could evolve?  For the writing and the day’s declaration, absolutely RIEN.  I have to sell these pages, I know, but for now I let self enjoy the reality the morning’s manifested and materialized, put into a cozy manuscript for ME.  Deep sip of the mocha, thought of looking at phone to check emails and whatever else but I have to WORK.  MY work.  Get work done, be in this Me, the one I’ve always meant to see.  I give notice, TODAY… Writer, my title, and more than a title just what I do and who I am and what I do to be what I am, the ‘am’ that’s healthy and more compositional in code and promise.

40 doesn’t scare me.  What scares me is not doing anything.  Is not acting.  IS not deciding that certain stages need drawn curtain.  I stop more now in sittings than I used to, as I think myself more deliberate and meditative, more connected to my prose and paragraph streams.  Work for the next, what, eight or so hours.  I’ll be writing the whole time, avowed.  Little notes and singular words and shorter-than-short sentences, in fact I prefer fragments when in a vortex like this, mirroring emotion not thought, possibly thought blended with sentiment.  I’m going everywhere, this morning and tomorrow, with everything.  On my Road, finally.  Life is the Road, as he said, and here I am… here I go.  Terrific transmutation, delicious zen coupled with place, understanding…. Feel like I’m back in graduate school, writing my thesis on Carroll’s Alice works, deconstructing and speaking from both realities.. the Me working for someone else and the Me laboring for ME.  There, I’m free.  In my illusionary construct and page presence, stride and Emersonian saunter.  Thoughts building and injecting love-life-bravado in my new job.  So with this, 40 is conceptual, and not meant for any article, even though I did just it cite.  Oh well…

I could leave, today, you know…. Leave a bit early and go somewhere to work.  Why not.  What would happen.  I don’t care.  But, I won’t.  I’ll write on the dime, while doing what I’m “supposed to”.  With that little touch of obligatory my mood shifts, fangs exposed, rattle rattling.  I’m writing my way out of the tasting room, out of work to more work, MY work.  No checking emails, no traditional laboring, now.. not what I’m cosmically scribed to do.  Another sip, thought, jazz, movement, my movement…. Life.