New instruction.
New edge.
Precise and concise write.
5pm
Leaving office in a bit. Feeling self getting stronger in the AE character. Everything from contract progression to speak of the services and everything we offer, as well as the day-to-day movement of someone in this character. More than building a “funnel”, or prospecting, or even selling, but new and decided acknowledgement and study of your abilities. Ones you didn’t know were there. Ones that surprise you irreversibly the second you discover them. I’ll write it here, again, this is all writing. It’s all narrative, the excavation of your own psychology in your work. What you do, and having it be more than just ‘what you do’. Who you are, the composition of your Now. Could be said that this has been one of the more educating weeks or my life.
Brainstorming new writing routine… points every day to hit:
1 letter
1,000 words
1 haiku
1 poem
Write in newest journal, any length, could be as short as a sentence, or even singular word
1 blog post to bottledaux blog
……..
If I think of anything else to add to list, if you know me, you know I wil.
14
8/16/19
Busy day and I can’t get enough of it. One appointment, found a prospect, and am working on another interested prospect. More comfortable with the technological dimension and consistency to what I do here at Sonic. Learning a new language, culture, way, manner, self. Again, new story. New character. Character development and shift.
About to take a lunch. Pizza Friday, of course. Not having to buy lunch always puts a smile on the writer’s mask. Desk more organized. Day’s like today teach me to study why they’re days like today. The composition, the complexion, the pulse and the assembly of realities.
1:38pm
Back from lunch, and still tired. Sipping from the last coffee I got self, which was the first, from the breakroom. Made one call, straight to voicemail. Want to transact…. Want to fucking SELL. Can feel myself getting impatient, and this IS valuable to readers in sales. Don’t get impatient. Don’t let yourself get lost in your impatient form of self.
Start with the people you know. That’s all I can now muster and see and promising, beneficial.
Get enough sleep. Tonight I will be sure to be in bed as soon as home. Definitely before 9. In order to know my Now, and control it to a point where I’m freed, I need adequate rest. If I can get it. You can probably tell that right now I’m a bit wandering and sluggish, more than usual. So… keep working. Get back on the bloody phone…
Keep projects in perspective, and have each your project narrate a certain and specific perspective. Show life in your work, show self in your work. Have your work show who YOU truly are, the most truthful talk and form and finite framing of your voice. You are the work, you are the projects, and through such you are FREED.
8/14/19
Focus on your day, your steps, your sight.
You WILL get There.
Number coincidences, with the times in the article, and the word count being 529. Today is speaking to me, telling me to break from wine’s fuckwit industry and only be and write here.
3:26PM. First deal closed, today! I’m celebrating and rejoicing a bit, but I’m very much tempering it. Have to “keep the party going”, as I said in an email. Made a couple calls, now to make more. Haven’t done much else but make sure everything is in order for this transaction. Nothing on books tomorrow but a couple calls. Will be on phones but the aim is creative… creative approaches to conversations and interactions, creative ways to prospect. One guy I met said to write down as many people as you can, that you know closely and well and not so. Don’t look at people as prospects, look at them as people, people you want to get to know. The literary approach… get to know their story and narrative. The literary approach I have with wine will even more prove useful and relevant in this business. Writer in a tech office… of course, of course!
Eating PB&J wife made me, just now. Tired a bit after workout, but not to a degree with impedes my motion’s place and application. New ways to speak this company, what it does and what it means, more than the simple list of products and services. That’s certainly part of it, but it’s NOT the entirety. This sales teaches me that I need to even more break any mold or template. Not that I’m sticking to one, but write more post-it’s that define Sonic, that speak and SHOW Sonic. How can I catalog and list, or even post what I’m thinking right now, after this first sale and after a Senior Account Exec told me I NEED to be in front of people. She called my speaking eloquent and strong, and being on the phones is absolutely NOT the only path to what I’m after.
A Walk to the Front Door
Words, having conviction. Conviction is not only what “sells”, but what proves memorable. First sip of coffee, off. Off into the journal, on the Road. Was thinking something yesterday, about travel and moving, movement. But the specifics are lost on me this morning. Plan for today is simple—Calls. Speak on Sonic, speak on ideas, ideas for businesses, and writing– THAT’S IT. Yesterday someone messaging me, asking me if I want to go on a writing adventure with them. They concerned about being a good writer, they don’t know writing well, they’ve been told for years that their writing isn’t mighty. I tried my best to quell their concerns and anxieties. I urged them to just write. Then I told myself that I need do the same. Today at lunch, writing and reading. Writing about my reading. After receiving the message last night while tasting some 2016 Landmark Pinot which surprised me with its attractive act and tap, I saw Jack upstairs in his room beginning his new Harry Potter book. Can’t remember the title, which one it is in the series, but the thick one. Or the most meaty, weighty page stack I’ve seen him bring home to day. I thought the reading and writing adventure are, or should be, always in helix.
Not sure I was even walking to the front door of the building, after parking. Felt like I was floating. I nearly hovered past the door. Why. What’s causing this meditation about my character and in my inner voices. There’s like, I don’t know, a student and professor chant about the morning. I’m learning, with a learning curve that doesn’t indicate any compromise or handicap. Now that I’m through the door and in the building, I’m moving. This Mike Madigan knows what he wants but doesn’t know too much about it. Hence, I suppose, the nature to this project. On this 6th step of it. What now, and to where.
The wine last night put my visions and meditations in a number of noted tumbles, forcing more thought and words, conviction in wine. Chardonnay and Pinot, and whatever else. The conversation around me currently interrupts the inner recital. Wish people would just be quiet, but they’re doing their job, and well at that, what I should be doing. Okay, I say to self. Note everything, like one of the people talking now that minces my concentration. He showed me a photo log of sites that he’s inspected and where installs have been transpired. I was daunted by his photos, not just by how many there were, but the variation and expanse of focus. Am I aiming to be the top sales person in this division, I thought last night with the Pinot? No. Not necessarily. But I will make an impression, or have my story read. Not so much a story on sales, but doing something different. Writer in a tech office. Often I sense some quake in my character grieving, “I don’t want to write about that….” Or “Don’t write about Sonic.” But ever, that’s all I think about. This new character, the new story.
A thousand words, Friday’s beginning. Have to send flight plan, as I call it, to Mark. Then, off into day. Prospecting, yes, but building… story. The story and how I write this new story is how “success” will be gripped. Appetite for associate words and sentences, more pages in these business cards, this messy work area that I wish somehow I could find time to organize. May come in on Sunday, before winery. Shit… forgot to bring new journal. Wonder if they have any here, like the ones I see Tasha with, or other people in Marketing. Checked, and no. No matter. There are legal pads, and I swear to not start as I have in the not so removed past where I begin penning on one and don’t reach the last page. Remembering that movie, Crashing, where the writer only used legal sheets, writing on the couch of those two English students. Miss being a student, miss going to class and writing, having something to turn in. Then why not do it again? Okay…. I’m a student. Studying, well, THIS. The Now. Tasha told me those little journals were from a TedX event years ago, and they’re all being used or have been used. I have legal sheets, Elephantine plains that want my words, or I’m telling myself they do.
Reading Road again, as I noted the other day. And already it strikes me differently. Not just with Dean in how he’s presented, but the narration and how it always returns to Dean. That is the singularity. He is Sal’s Road, even when he’s not on page, or at all in a chapter. Reading now as my son does his Potter manuscripts. Just thought, while reading a bit of Road that I should use the blog as my notebook. I don’t need another legal pad. Already have one on desk, to right next to elbow under a little notepad. Need more coffee. Already.
Projects beginning to surface. Wondering how much more writing I’d have to page if I ceased using paper. Apart from the legal pad. Or, what if I decommissioned that, too? More space on desk…. Post-it’s under forearms. One of them reading, “Before you write—Where are you and what are you doing? In one word, and ideally one syllable.” Think. See. I’m seeing where I want to go in this AE walk. Keep everything simple. Say less, listen more. One project, one word, Sales. How it should never be sales, how what so many want to do is convert before contributing to a conversation, a new association and relationship. Right after I walked through the door this morning, I told myself, “Today, no selling.” When I call down these lists, I notice myself getting at times unsettled, or anxious. And I’m not even on the call yet much less through the door talking about what we can do for them. No selling. Just call and say HI. That’s it.
8/9/19
9:16pm
In bed.
Earliest in a time so long I can’t even begin to remember, recount.
Tomorrow, changing the story’s directions and projections.
Day FOUR
Latte. Again the only one in bullpen as phone trainers leave. Technical Trainers, I think is their actual title. Headed to San Rafael, in a little over an hour. Notes, today. Only aim. And put each note on blog or into some something-spere. Aujourd’hui, que du bonheur…. The only way I’ll move and perpetuate my story. Last night offering writing prompts and instruction to a friend in another department, feeling a bit not so much hypocritical but flawed, or not aligned with what I was assigning, if that’s clear.
Committing self to a standalone piece before leaving for SRafael. About what… about opening a shop, of some kind. A stationary story. Don’t want it to be about wine, I know that’s what everyone expects. So I want to do something different. Maybe a fishing shop…. Fishing equipment, like the stores my Uncle Stevie used to take me to in Summer, fishing north of Sisters, Oregon, or in Sunriver, or along whatever river that was where we took the guided tour, escorted by a guy who wrote a book about fishing, fly fishing I want to say. I’ve never lost that visual, and remembering the boat ride down that river, stopping at certain banks and casting into the moving water. The singular piece has to be about something like that, I feel. Something where someone does something that does something for other people…. Like a teacher, or a fitness coach, or instructor.
Love this part of the morning, in the office, and when the morning is shaped this way, with little sound and little intrusion. Ransacking my thoughts for anything that can be in the story…. Me teaching, that one semester where I taught seven classes across I want to say four campuses. Of course, I know now, no way to live. But I have done it. That was in ’07, twelve years ago. Like more than eternity, a endless galaxy and time, solar system of time. Latte waking me, think my solitude is about to die, as my friend approaches bullpen. No… someone else passing. I’m in a condensed and confined area, here, and can’t see who passes. All the more reason for me to be out, as I wrote yesterday. Need a vehicle switch, I just remembered, so I can charge my phone but also listen to something other than what’s on the radio.
Now I think the story should be about wine, a wine shop that also stands as a tasting room. One that locals flock to on weekends and make it a point to visit during the week, to make the week more tolerable. You know what I mean. The story is dialogue-supported and commanded, like a script. But not. Character has tasting room/shop in downtown Windsor. The first year was a struggle but now in year two the matters are different. There’s talk, there’s magnetism, there’s a place where people depend on what the place provides aside from the obvious wines and their taste patterns and easing effects. He refuses to be a business manqué, the same way I will not let myself be that type of penner.
8/7/19