journal

5/27/20

Wednesday.

7:58.

Left bed and went for a 7.15 mile run.  8:39 pace.  Jack woke early and asked if I were waking soon, I told him no, he went back in his room and I remain there thinking… Why am I not up now.  Why not change things, change everything, with a single run.  So I suited, tied shoes, put some water in hair to suppress the quarantine cloud on my head, and I was out.  Starting quite slow, and noticing a bit of difficulty finding a breathing pattern that was comfortable and lock-step with my actual steps.  Finally finding it on Coffey Lane, after the Hopper intersection.  Later in the run I felt again like I was in Sunriver, running along the Deschutes, past the bridge and toward the lodge for a bit loop around the resort (thinking that could be about 13.1 miles if I stretched it or looped a couple streets). I needed a run this morning, and when I decided just after getting up that I’m going to alter a few fragments of my identity frame and general go of life, I knew I would have a run that would mean something.  That would do something.  I need to write more about running, I told myself coming back into the Coffey Park neighborhood West of Waltzer, south of San Miguel.  I thought of running in other states, a marathon early in the morning then having the rest of the day to write about it.. collect self and more or less relax in hotel room, or at some hotel.  Write about everything, how my back felt, what I’d have for lunch after the run, people I met… everything running. Looking up Oregon runs, one in Sisters.  Obviously cancelled from covid.  Something to note for later…

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journal

Emma this morning wanting me to brush her teeth, and carry her upstairs with her two little pigtails by her mother made.  Another, and I knock wood with this, health.  Not going to today, of course… but I can run.  I can run 8 miles around this house, with not problem.  No fatigue or pain or even minor compromise.

More thanks…. Put this into play, during business operations.  Just thanked a referral partner for two new contacts, and one from the San Rafael group for his referral.

Leaving house for errands.  Put a collared shirt on.  I’m forgetting more frequently what I have on.  Nearly left the house the other day in running shorts and a white T.  I’m going to do my hair, actually.  Much I can do with this covid mop.

Okay… leaving.

12:43.  Lunch at 1.

Had to reschedule an appointment.  Did a sales call as soon as I came back from winery and taking Jackie’s bike to get repaired again.  In the nineties outside..

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7:24. Week I turn 41.

Asking self how time flew past me but I know I don’t have any such time to sink into that perception.  Sanguinary, this week.  In a good way, of course.  Haven’t done budget yet, as I saw that becoming a pattern.  Need to do all different, day to day.

Director emailed me and said he did some gardening over the weekend.  I remember my aunt, Linda, had a garden.  That house in Sisters, Oregon where my sister and I spent a few summers.  She would take us into town, buy us seeds and plant them with us when back at the house.  On her deck you could see the three sisters, beyond a considerable stretch of trees that must have extended for ten or so miles.  Maybe less, hard to tell.  Linda would be in her garden every day.  There were actually two, one just on the side of the house which you could see looking down from the kitchen, and then another about twenty or thirty yards from the house, beyond the kitchen-sight garden.  I’m sure it’s relaxing, even with all the labor involved.  Our next house, I’m set on such a project.  PROJECTS.

One of the neighbors rolls our their trash or recycling bin.  Jack tells me it’s going to rain at the end of the week.  WHAT? I thought.  Then he tells me today is going to reach 94 degrees.  Definitely no run today, I tell him.

Setting sights on 200% of quota by week’s end.

OH YEAH…. Jack says in some funny voice with a forced-lower octave.  Be playful, I remind myself again.  Don’t think too much about conversations, or anything.

Sipping coffee made last night. And honestly, I find the odd and off lukewarm temp quite supremely easing and appeasing.  More than that.  It’s perfect with my operational orbit this morning.  Self-appraisal, but not to too extreme of heights.

I’m going to have a contract come in this week.  Two of them.  I’m going to seduce such into tangibility.  Thinking about what to get myself, birthday gift.  Part of me says new camera (just thought of that…) Another says some 15-pound weights and new running shoes (greatest contender), and another says take a massive flight of cash and invest it in something.  Something that has the risk of going up or down.  A little daytrading.. something different. Why not.  That’s the aim here, isn’t it? The GOAL?

Should do budget and finances now, now that I’m settled in.  Approaching 90k words in this new journal written in and around this “new normal” that people keep talking about.  Sick of people saying that, and hearing it, but they are saying it and I do embrace and always step in pursuit of Newness.  Kerouac thoughts, sentences scribbled and typed in the moment….  Sales role, not sales and not a role.  A medium for everything I’m after.

Three full days before I’m 41.  Move quicker… slowed by nothing.

……..

9:04.  Already with three referrals, phone conversation with IT partner, and an appointment scheduled with a potentially large client.  What else can I do… some more finance.  Done…. Kids outside playing, house quiet… haven’t felt this ahead of a day in a bit.

OH, email students.

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Growing a certain and acute fondness for this corner work area… this quarantine view I have.  This small desk, with my coffee tumbler and receipts, multiple journals, phones and wallets and pens.  The area, the lens it provides, a preview into my office.  The office I want to sit in and write, where I want to build narrative and business efforts from.

This week, the week of my birthday (Friday, 29th), putting my work habit and practice in a new containment and octave.  The envisioned and tangible, in new helix.  Inventory action and shop arrangement.  Keep thinking of the kid yesterday, his bike repair shop in his parents garage.  A real business, serious practice from everything to how the shop was arranged, to the lo-fi beats playing, his invoice, and the shirt he was wearing boasting his brand and business name.

This corner urging me that way, to learn more from that conversation and transaction with the 15 year-old creative.

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Blogging

Some people hate the word, the term.  I sued to be one of those people.  I didn’t like it so much that my first blog I saw as an anti-blog… ‘mikeslognoblog’ I called it.  Some people laughed, others were interested in why it had that name, why I’d name it that.  Now, ten years later, I see humor in it…. And, value.  Don’t have your blog be like other blogs… have it feel like more a genuine, REAL, heartfelt conversation.  Not just a documentation of things or events, but a real transportation somewhere, to something… where you are and what you’re doing.  The ‘Magic of the Meta’, as I see it.  Blogging doesn’t have to be blogging, feel like blogging, the same way sales doesn’t have to be sales.  What happened to being human, truthful?  Do that.  A lot more of that on your “blog”.

5/25/20

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4:05. Back from drive.

Couldn’t walk on beach, with all the orders in place.  More than just a couple Sonoma County Sheriff vans, cars, and even on helicopter Jackie spotted.  Me, only getting a couple mental touches of the waves and sands having to drive.

Now, no idea what I want to do.  Zoom call with Jesse, my closest ami in the wine industry and pretty much anywhere.  Oh, at 5.  So 53 minutes give or take.  Sparkling wine tonight, nothing red in house.  Need a beer after drive, and after kids complaining about drive length back…  Jack in trouble for behavior, which lately show those quarantine angles, sounds and motions and colors…everything associated with this thing’s everything.

Kids outside playing, different family.  Are they supposed to do that I don’t care I’m just trying to focus on myself and this, this Sunday, a holiday weekend which is irrelevant and barely a felt reality.

Need a place to write, outside this house.  Mom offered their home here, with them in the Sunriver home, but I need something.

Want to do the drive again, BY MYSELF… no kids.  But why.  Even if I could there’s no where to park along Highway 1’s side.  I mean, there is, but the SCS will tell you to move. I can’t park and write like I did that one time in Monterey or Pacific Grove.  I left the house but feel like I didn’t at all.  The kids with me… not blaming them, but that was the house in the car with me.  The short beach sight I had told me I need to get something by the water, somehow, soon.

Jack still in his mood.  Afraid he gets that from me… rejecting everything, sharing and audibly expressing his indignation.  Melissa tries to appease him, offering to make something with him from a kid’s cookbook.  It’s more or less working, much I can tell from the office corner.

Writing during the day, on “weekends”, is near just not something that can physically and barely mentally done.  Am I turning into a “daddy blogger” in this quarantine?  Maybe a little… everything directed by and from their moods, health, requests, sayings, interactions (if you have more than one), proximity to you.  Shocked, to be honest, that I have this time.. this sitting, this time in the corner before my call with Jesse.  Sparkling wine sounds magical… needed.  Need to pretend I’m celebrating something.. speaking some other language, from and in some other room.  Need to feel un-whelked.  Don’t want to sound in any way like that blogger I saw yesterday, just grieving about her kids and being in the house… SO, I need to more follow my own counsel.  This quarantine is for composition, incubation… growth.

Bottledaux now takes more the shape and place of a publisher…  Think to more altitude, I tell myself… scribble in the notebook.  (AND STOP USING FUCKING ELIPSES.)

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journal

5/24/20.

Sunday.

8:19am.

Coffey Park, Santa Rosa, CA.

Drove to get gas, then coffee.  Realized I had to go inside to pay for pump.  Place rebuilt, since the 2017 fires.  Not sure I’d been in since it opened.  I look around for someone after approaching counter, couldn’t see anyone then saw a young girl stocking and wiping down a shelf, mask worn.  I felt bad, like I’d interrupted her piece of peace, no one in building and light music playing.  Asked her gently for “Twenty on 7…” No problem, she said, I thanked her, back to car.  While filling, I heard and looked up to see a car, think a mustang or one of those Mustang-looking Dodges, speeding noisily South on 101.

“I need a car… I need to get rid of this fucking Prius.” I said to myself.  Not sure I even know what I want.  I’ve started looking, but…. Writing questions down for self.  Five days from my birthday, and don’t want to be driving that car anymore.  Probably going on about this too long, but this is where you’ll find my thinking.

Woke this morning and thought I’d have some quiet, but washing hands in downstairs bathroom with door closed I could hear Jack ask for me, wanting to tell me that Emma was asleep on the floor, that she’d fallen out of bed at some point last night.  Then, not even a minute later I hear her voice, greeting her brother “HI JACK” and asking what he’s doing.

Fly in the office, for the first time in a while.  Fuck, two of them….

What do I want from today…. Writing.

Looking at houses, where is my little notebook?  The little red one?  In here somewhere.

Step away from desk, little Allergy attack.  Can’t find it now.  Whatever…. It’s fine.  Nevermind.  Found it.  Thank goodness..  Taking with me, getting breakfast for family.  Need another drive, some more music.  More poetry, my thinking tinkering in ideas rowing glowingly.

Today will do something.

IDEA:  Article, short, on journaling.

IDEA: Article, short, on sales, selling.

IDEA: Article, short, on meditation, wellness, health, mental health.

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