about the AE thing… what can I do.

I’m prospecting, networking, doing everything from this fucking chair.  I can’t speak to people anymore.  I can call them, but no one wants a call right now, and no one’s in the office for the most part.

A beer will help.  I’ll help self to one in a moment, and the rest of last night’s Shannon Cab from Lake County I think after that.  Wine, the vineyards… taking myself there.  That novel I want to write, or started taking notes on the other day.

Jackie putting away vacuum.  Can tell he’s annoyed.  I am as well.  But then I’m encouraged.  At one minute thinking the whole ‘what do I write’ pit of thought then I’m into a full yell of self-knowledge and know in the Now.  Almost 5..

This new journal is from a new state, new sight, sense of everything around me and with all the updating, none of it ever good, I try to compose composition when my character’s assembly and composition is threatened.  So, I’m in a kamikaze state.  Write, write about wine… this new journal, the regular journal… letters, and the novel about Eric and him leaving real estate for wine.  Starting a wine community, a family of wine-loving people.. no more pressure to transact, to go to those stupid fucking conventions or galas, or whatever they are…..  Tonight writing on the legal sheets, what he sees, the wine he sips that first night, at the hotel on the tasting floor with over a hundred small producers from everywhere in California and a small circle of Oregon and Washington houses. With a beer finally open, 4:51, I celebrate the realization that this ‘stay in your fucking house’ stage that’s been set by a dystopian spell is giving me a book.  A couple, actually.  And a new end-aim, or sight.  Writing about wine as I don’t even know how many people have told me to do.  Still need to post the Desmond Pinot page.  Write about the Shannon from last night.

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Jackie

riding around the half-block loop twenty times, counting each lap to me. His only priority right now, his world, his only sight and sense. Envying everything in his life right now from this porch, sitting in this cheap plastic chair.

You should see him. Relaxed, composed, sure. He stops, comes in for or a break.

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3/31/20

A call at nine, and that’s all I have scheduled for today.  Kids are playing with each other in living room.  Loud, but at least civilly.  Going to write in journal in a bit, page for the day.  Last night’s class, speaking of journals, making me think more.  Revisiting certain projects and missions.  Hard to write right now with kids as loud as they are.  But at least I don’t have to separate them or be the ref for some scuffle.

Last night a couple of the students making jokes about the quarantine, using the same kind of humor they find in Lawson and Sedaris…. Then I started thinking about it, about this whole thing.  A pandemic named after a bad beer, or the official name, “COVID-19” which sounds like a Star Wars robot character that didn’t make the final draft.  I’m stuck in the house with crazy kids, or maybe they’re not crazy but just want to live.  Want the same thing we all do and that’s for shit to get back to normal.  They just communicate differently.  Think that’s all.

Shaved finally, showered (also finally), and dressed like I’m going out to the field.  Giving me a sense of if not normalcy then like I’m not trapped here.  No Starbucks run today, not letting myself.. what day is it I wonder.  OH, Tuesday.  ‘Cause class was last night.

The room got brighter.  Think the sun’s appearing and I think both kids just noticed, Jackie coming in here and asking if they can play outside.  Jack knows I’m working but asks if I can watch from the window.  I tell him to brush his teeth and check with his mom.

Last night woke at 3-something and couldn’t go back to sleep.  Had a sharp suggestion internally that I’ll either be laid off because of this covid shit, or there’ll be some seismic opportunity from this quarantine.  I don’t know, I can’t see any sort of future, and neither can you or anybody.  Kids laughing upstrair laughing about something.  I want that, I want to be able to see humor in this, but each day is harder.  Am I making it difficult?  Need be more lawless and Lawson about the quarantine.

Why do I want to work so hard?  Like Dad even suggested the other day over the phone, What do they expect you to do?  Not going to make my quota this month more than likely, but it’s not my fault these fuckwits aren’t getting back to me or turning in their contracts.  Even if one landed, I’d be fine.  So I’m doing what I’m supposed to, like a good boy.  That’s me being a growling journal-goblin.  I’m in a mood, I know… TOPIC NEXT.

Kids going outside.  All they want to do is play.  Jack tells me he’s like an adult and can watch little Emma.  I tell him to look out for cars, and that I’ll watch him from my quarantine view.  He says okay and heads to the garage to get something for Emma.

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… there was so much from yesterday I meant to write but didn’t get around to it.  Like how Emma would go out our driveway turn left then go up the closes driveway on her left then do it again.  Was her own little lap, loop, on her “big girl bike” as she’s so quick and eager to call it, share with other people that she has such transportation efficiency.  And Jack with that race car that Mom and Dad got him.  The green one that’s a total beast of a remote car for a kid his age.  Just perfect, really, as he loves to drive it off sidewalks, into his sister’s bike, into puddles, around the block with me walking.

Businesses are people.  People are not businesses but people, stories, lives, love and pain… past and the current pages.  I have to remember this when I sit to write as I am now or when working, prospecting but not prospecting, but looking for people to know, meet, somehow work with.

Again quiet.  Jack in the other room reading while Emma naps.  I sip this coffee slow so my energy is assured, or more or less expected.  Just heard from a prospect, not going with our services.  I expected that, honestly.  More an SMB opportunity than something Enterprise level.

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Monday.

Something like a day without a name and you only know it’s Monday ‘cause someone else said it.  Sending emails, looking for connections, contacts, the same.  Prepping for class tonight in a virtual sense virtually has me certain of certain things.  Like what… well, where I’m going. What I’m meant to do with my pages and words, this quarantine, the blog, the books, the books that come from blogs… can a blog come from a book?  I don’t know if there’s an order, or anything in this type of day.  Monday… the first of the week where I’ll run all days and wake up at 4 going forward.  How will I do that.  Bed earlier than I ever have.  And no matter how cold or chilly or whatever it is outside I’m getting out there, and running.  No excuses, no thinking about it, just running.

Writing in the quiet house with family gone… relieved, and already missing them.  Yes, this quarantine if that’s what it is has me wonderfully all types of all fucked up.  Should be prospecting, should be networking, should be should be SHOULD BE…..  Taking a break.  Already lined up one appointment, followed up on some email communication, and now what.

How much do I have in wallet.  Not sure why I’m wondering but I am.  Shit, okay, like six bucks.  Shutting down the spending.  Famous last words that I spoke as recently as I don’t know yesterday…?  The quiet forces me to consolidate, simplify, recognize what I’m taking with me when this period passes.  Quarantine indeed, from several attributes and realities, exposures, character voices and intrusions.

Monday in its metaphoric step and street assures what comes next.  And, frankly, it’s everything.  Everything I’ve written that I will and would do, see myself doing, presents itself to me and me to it when this quarantine’s over.  Frankly, I’m celebrating the quarantine, and you should be too.  And if not celebrating it then seeing it differently.  See the boon to it, the boost in its anatomy and what shape it takes in your day.

You need to stop thinking, completely.  And just start writing, creating, moving, changing what you want changed.  It’s Monday, so start in this sitting, where you are and what you see in front of you.  Looking at phone, don’t make calls.  Call to self… collect.  Where are you going… what do you see for yourself.  What story do you want to be read?

Education in the day, in what you’re doing, how you deal with this whole thing… by not “dealing” with it at all.  Living in it, creating through and out of it so that reality you see and have always seen for self finally lands.  Something landed, today.  A Monday.  Another but not another… the contract, the speak, the Newness to it, to you.  What will you do.  What new and renewed truths do you pursue?

Think it’s lunch.  What do I get, make, look for.  The indecisiveness in this quarantine has a rich and unexpected value-quality to it.  Need explore that more.  You, AND myself.

3/30/20

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from this morning

Drinking coffee from home, here, from that old ass Keurig thing.  Did I spell that right?  Guess I did.  Want a latte, this isn’t as tasty or literary, or animated, sexy like a latte.  Latte is just fun to say.  Coffee is boring.  What’s to this cup but something hot and containing caffeine?  Should I do Starbucks, just one last time? Swear I’m going to quit, just not swearing on anything, like a book or relic, some person’s lungs or anything like that.  Yes, one last latte. I will even title it so, the last latte, but with caps eventually.  Looking at my cup here on desk, and want it to go away.  I feel it just oozing boringness and more stress into my story and this desk, scene, workstation homed.  So yes, I’m getting wallet and some cash, and going.

                Kids… how do they stay as lively and excited as they are?  I guess from Jack’s way of not caring so much.  And haven’t I encouraged others around me, sales reps and community college students, so?  So…. Do so, Mikey.

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3/29/20, Sunday.

8:23am.

Slept in a little.  As did kids.  Made them both breakfast downstairs, Jack some cereal and Emmie a bagel.  Then they back to play.  I get an idea for a novel, or story, or something.  I need time to write, I say to myself.  Start a new doc on lap—NO, don’t do that.  Reminding self of no new anything’s.  Use what you have.  So I tear off the yellow pages used on legal pad to left, and start jotting notes, world and life of a character in Redwood City.  Real Estate Agent, commercial mostly.  Very what you’d lament as successful.  In the business for over 20 years.  One night goes to a function at hotel, one side of floor, or one room on one side, a real estate gala for top producers and fancy glossy shiny characters showing off all their money and what they’ve done, their numbers and what not while on the other side is an event of over a hundred small family producers.  The character, Eric, buys a ticket on the spot to get into the wine event.  He sees all these small producers from Sonoma, Napa, Mendo, Carmel, Santa Barbara and the areas surrounding…. Lake County even, and sees the simplicity of it.  The family framing of it.  He’s always taken to wine, “collected” I guess you’d say, but never appreciated the love and family, the farming nature and step to wine.  He decides to take a step back, down… at first he wants to sell his business, or just quit and get out.  But no…. he wants use real estate to aid and abet and beget his wine sight. He wants that… may be too late in life for a family for him, single and 45-ish, but he wants the vineyard(s), the walks, he wants to be around family wineries, family people… THIS, whatever it is…..

Just an idea at this point, born in quarantine.  Raining outside, sipping my second cup.  Going to do some budgeting and more noting of this Eric’s echo and rush toward wine and being what he said.  Jack bounces a dying and deflating balloon around me… Jack calls to Emma, she yells down, “What you need me fo’?…. You call my name loud.” She says.  Jack tells her she’s hearing things, I laugh, ask what he wants… he tells me a PS4.  I say, “No dude, from Starbucks.  They don’t have PS4’s at Starbucks, bro..”

“Dada… hold on, don’t look yet…” Jack says behind me.  Me, a bit nervous, agree to wait.  “Say hi to my new friend…” he says, then showing me a face drawn with permanent on the balloon and a hat on the character’s head.  He has fangs and am told he’s 4 years-old, he loves watching baseball and loves the Angels, Jack furthers.  Jack reads what I just wrote, I edit from his reading noting slight flaws and exposures in the prose’s complexion.  I look out the window again, back to my Eric notes.  Finish a goddamn book, I remind myself… this quarantine is just what a writer needed to finish a book.  Not stopping this new journal, but noting that I’m noting new notes for another world and thesis, new voice and sight, climate and cause.

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