Feel like I’m up horribly late, as it’s not 4, but I’m up after wife leaves for her workout or boot camp or whatever kind of fitness class. Coffee made last night, cinnamon dolce late cups from Safeway, the Starbucks type. Woke restored, rested having gone to bed well before ten. Had trouble falling asleep I should note from late night coffee before and during last night’s 1A. Took last sip of it around 8:50 something, latest. That instrumentally disrupted my falling into any kind of useful sleep.

Dog barking outside somewhere and I just hope it doesn’t wake one of the babies. Jack asleep in our bed, Emma in her own. The train passes. “SHHHHHHHH!” I think. That could wake them, too. Hasn’t in the past but I don’t know. Love Fridays, this semester. No class and I can just focus on my work in the office, in the field. Enjoy my drive down and back and think, use all moments as a writer should. Think I’m, WE, are in Sunset again. Where Dad grew up. Looking forward. Will get down to the beach, hopefully. Want to write near it as it did in car yesterday on 24th I think it was.

First sip of cinnamon dolce. I need to wake, more. Wednesday night not getting much sleep, and I think I’m still impacted. Directly affected. So what now in this dark room, this sort-of office. Working tomorrow as well. Sunday and Monday now off for the time. Where I am– home office in dark on couch sitting up with blanket across upper legs, fighting for energy. If I didn’t have this coffee the writer would not be a writer, would not be writing. My mood now, stumbling, as if drunk off the effort itself. Why can’t I be up earlier, at my enamoring hour of 4AM? Quite an order, I know, but so many at the office have told me they wake at such a clock arm arrangement. Girl from Belmont and the other local who wakes at such time to go to gym to work out.

Want to cut back on coffee, work from energy natural. Told self yesterday only two cups, but had a third before class, the one that interferes with rest. No wine last night and I think that could have done something as well. Trying difference, contrast to the pattern. Inviting the unexpected and irregular. Another sip… I am tired, there is no misconception here with me. Typing this on phone so the key sounds and taps of laptop work doesn’t shake my littles from their rest. Autocorrect doing the most odd of oddity things. Trying to ignore and set goals for day. Visions. More than goals. What I for self foresee. Yesterday it was 25 yay-saying notes and two poems. Hit both. Today, I round down, put less. One grand poem. One large and vocal. One to read, one to brag, one that reminds everyone including me that I AM one of poetry. Of verse. An affirmation of sorts, a reminder, a re-birth and punctuation of character.

05:39 now and I find a beat in this sitting. Having only a veggie burrito last night for dinner, before class, my abdomen growls at me in precise fury. Okay… so what then for breakfast? What about more sleep? No. To both. Maybe some dry cereal but no big breakfast for this writing. Not this morning or any other. Looking to get more fit, closer to 40 I get. I breathe, accept the day, this dark and quiet room. Thinking, I need several full days of writing. Just writing. Then take them, I answer. At work, write. In car, use voice recorder. Before you leave SF, write. Type at night and in morning. That’s respectable. That I can actuate. So…. nothing stopping me. No blocks. From anything. Books. Touring. Music. Poetry. Running more. More time with babies. Nothing.

Writing my way through morning and notice the tired falls into some dark flat. It goes away. I’m more than awake. Sipping slow this cinnamon so I don’t have more than two cups in this day. Two cups in tumbler I sip from, now, so my plan further pervades.

Think son is waking– No, outside sprinklers. Someone’s. Not ours. I collect in the quiet, on couch. Wife works out, I write. This is difficult to have if you have even a glass of red, or white, the before night. This morning I’m more of what I see, what I dream, what I have for self put internal and mental, prophesied pages. Smile on face this morning from all this morning is and says to me. Writing, the act of, confirming my character and the room around me. The poem I write today will be story-shifting, will alter my world. Will be the equivalent of “Daddy”. Saying everything, attacking anything holding me in place, what kept me in the wine industry for 12 years. So relieved to be out, to be away from all those people, both sides of the bar. I’m actually out. Can you believe it? I barely can. Friend Thomas not calling me in days to help out in his tasting room, and I’m relieved. I’m done. Easy as that consulting or mere assisting gig is just off the Healdsburg Square, I don’t want the industry in my life anymore. Not to say I won’t present myself as industry to get 30% off, but the tasting room and I have seen our final day.

05:54. I am hungry. What do I want. Do we have any of those breakfast sandwiches in the freezer? Should I just snack on some dry cereal, avoid unnecessary calories as a someone in the office and in the field with me yesterday does? Answer obvious. See myself changing. Character, sight, habits, ways, writing, everything. Even in last night’s first lecture on Plath, I felt it. More vigor, less humor, more analytical and cautious with what I offer. I’m getting closer. To my There. Today’s poem, oh today’s poem. It WILL decide me. The next year. The next ten years. Jesus, I’ll be 49. Yes, there is no time to play, no days to just let happen or roll with, no nights to just enjoy wine and make little hits. This is my job. My life’s work. Writing. Being the act of writing itself. Not only epitomizing, embodying, but being KNOWN as writing. Understood that I am act and dream of living by and from and in words.