Clocked back in.  Two minutes early. 

On speaking, you should be to-the-point, but not depriving audience of anything.  Tell them what they want to hear.  Have the words be kind and heaping with life.  So… don’t just say ‘I’m here and this is what I’m doing and this is what I have…’ Rather, speak more to the point of YOU, the person in the audience.  Use ‘you’ in your language, loud amounts of it…  This is for YOU… this is YOURS.. I’m here to tell you this, or invite you to this, and this is why it’s incredible…  Sales entails sales techniques, but not sales voice, not repeated repeats of something not interesting.  Entertain your audience…  Don’t sell, ever.  Sales is not selling, it’s speaking, it’s sincerity, earnest echoes sung in impassioned fastidiousness.

Just noting ideas passing through head, for sales team and next semester’s course.

Office a bit quieter.  Think some took a late lunch.

In office, today.  Getting things done and thinking of new ways to approach what I do.  I’m overthinking.  This is consequence of the inspiration I attain from just walking around this office as well as going from idea to idea.  Today I focus on speaking Sonic.  The language of this place.  If this is a conduit or bridge for what I want in my story, then I need throw self into the singularity of this Sonic story.  The office has you going over idea and another idea… speak what we do in as few words as possible, I say to myself.  At my desk not bored in even a microscopic morsel but ever active, animated in the possible ways to adjust and shape this business and how I speak about it.

Encouraged, exhausted from my own passion in this office.  This place that’s more than a place—like a parallel and utter juxtaposition to everything that we’re used to.  I call it an antithetical workplace, but maybe that’s wrong.  Maybe this is what the work place should be.  It is.  It is, that I know wholly and wildly, now.  This is a place for creativity and whim, and lucrative lunacy and revolution, but… more.  Something beyond denotation and connotation.  Talk about deconstruction and examining dichotomies and dualities, this is its own plain.  A text, a subject, a set of vocals that not only persuade but impassion beyond normal human norm.

This isn’t an office.  It’s not a colony.  It’s a language.  Its own speak.

So then halfway through my Friday, in office, not with my sales team, I have time to collect for sakes of being with them tomorrow in San Francisco, to bring what’s here to the Sunset District’s upper-40 avenues tomorrow.  I’m enriched, today, again.  Supplemented, turned around made more a voice of this place and what it speaks.

Looking through to-do list.  Everything done.  I know so.  I do.  Been through list, each item, 3 times.  So I give myself new items.  Prep for tomorrow.  Timeline for tomorrow.  Keep busy.  This new coffee cup has me especially energized and alive, written fire and fire to be written.

3:10.  Feel self getting tired, even with the coffee.  Yawn…. Phone interview/screening to prep for.  At 4, and I’m more or less ready, so time for exploratory thinking, let mind wander to whatever and wherever what—

3:18.  Coffee not working.  All work done.  Now what.  Not panic I feel but something in the same flavor isle.

May need a break.  Air that is fresh.  Break from desk.  Talking around me and my head’s in the car, on Road, in classroom, possibilities compounding in delirium-inducing shapes and plateaus.  I don’t know what to do, now.  I’m going mad, but a forming form of mad.  Nothing hindering, nothing detrimental, not at all.  This is a profuse health contract.  I’m rebuilt in my readiness as a writer.  This time in my story, where everything around me is me, for me, telling me to write something to myself that would benefit readers, somehow.

3:32.  Student life.  I’m a student here, as I am everywhere.  There never a non-learning place.  Every scene instructs.  Not sure I’m providing or depriving audience, writing this.  Work all around me, people working on what they work on, telling something to someone, educating and educating themselves whilst doing so, and me learning about what I do, here at this desk at which I everyday sit.  Back from lunch two minutes early but now I reach a point in the day where time is a self-voiding send.  So… look at clock, then at phone with its black screen, pen between forearms on desk.  ‘Nother sip of coffee, or get more coffee?  Don’t know.  Don’t think, I tell myself.  Just move.  Thinking, becoming a bit of a foe, one formidable and crippling.

This office, Sonic, with all its sounds and quick movements and people writing notes to themselves and others and logging what someone says to reference in the future, notes on transactions and occurrences in their departments…  Mom was right, everything I need is right here.  As I’ve said in class but never myself appreciated adequately—Magic in the Meta.  I won’t lie… this place fascinates me.  On multiplying and befuddling levels.  Transfixed in my fixations on and in everything from the voices I hear, to my own desk.  From the conversations between people in the meeting room behind me when I can hear them, to the laughs that are distant, on the other side of the floor, in some distant department.

I pity my past self, honestly.  Working in a tasting room, or going from campus to campus to campus—a freeway falcon—as an adjunct, or even further back working at the store, or before that in the insurance office.  I’m not even “home” here I’m just me… how I wish be seen, a writer.

4:12.  Called, no answer for phone screening.  Now I close day, prep for tomorrow which I actually already did so now it’s just a countdown to my running life.  Wondering about ten miles.  If that’s even smart to do on a treadmill.  Maybe just do an hour, then an hour tomorrow, then longer one Sunday, then back to a shorter run on Monday.  Again, more thought than needed.  Just write, just run, do both, live madly… bottom from the bottomless, or bottomless from the bottom.  Can’t remember what Jack said.  I’m beatifically introspective at this desk, hearing everything, everyone celebrate their weekend, what they’re going to do, what wine they’re going to drink.

Me, to run.

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from a journal

My “every penny project” updated.  Got to work early and came to this nook in new break room where I stationed the other day but laptop refused to cooperate.  Today, it’s loving me.  Jazz in left ear.  Right ear free ‘case someone calls to me.  Coffee in tumbler.  Writing the Now with more ferocity after this morning’s 4am thousand.  Five dollars of quarters in pocket, for literary lunch, coffee somewhere.  Thought this morning while typing that frantic thousand, yes before going backing into a climate of odd dream portraits and dialogues, that if I want to get to my There I need fiercely adopt different practices.

Grades due January 4th.  Good.  As I haven’t touched grading, really at all.  Next semester on mind, for thought and shaping those thoughts and visions of me in class and what I want….. yesterday while on 2nd and 3rd the wine shop in my thinking, that I don’t think it’s for me.  I just want to write about the wines I sip, not have to take inventory and have it all fall on me.  Why would I do that to myself.  The idea is fun, and it’s enjoyable to think about, but the reality isn’t paralleling the vision, I know.  I’ve been at too many wineries and too many tasting rooms to know that.

Now, where I am.  What brought me here.  Enthusiasm in my key pushing, from this word to the next.  Singularity.  Not just the strength of it, but the sense and fluidity, the encouragement from singular ideas.  Hence, every penny.  Every penny contributes to a dollar and the dollars will fund what I need.  Which isn’t much as a writer.  Soon I’ll need a new laptop.  That much I know and knowing my Now confirms that.  Coffee right but I don’t want to stop in these thoughts…. This, me in this seat.  A couple people walking in but not at any overwhelming or districting dividend. 

Me.  Here.  At a tech company, I guess you could call it.  What brought me here was the wine industry, I guess.  The vineyards, the business models and all the mistakes I saw being made.  And now, in this Now, I’m distant from it all.  Not stopping.  Letting nothing enervate me, today.  Nothing.  Even the fact I have to use the restroom but I’m not getting up.  Today, just days before the new year.  1/1/19 just six days from this sitting and this coffee sip if you count today.  What I want—  A trip.  More focus on Sal and Dean, on Hemingway in that café, on Didion and what she felt after he died.  Sylvia…. Everything I’ve read and everything I’ve taught.  Singular thoughts, singular words… shocking self from this breath to next.  Benison in realization of what I have, where I am here at Sonic and being in the city, walking where Kerouac more than likely did.  OR at least blocks away, merely.

Need more coffee.  Need more to read.  More jazz.  I put the other phone in ear right.  Now one of my five senses is completely kept in jazz, in music, in the randomness of the notes.  08:33.  Plenty of time to write.  Not getting up from this seat till 8:52, I self decreed and ordered.  Order for the day is singularity, lone words and observations and notes, assuaging any self-doubt or stall.  Everything a writer and thinker needs is where they are, what they’ve lived.  Human Experience, experiences random and unexpected.  From one frame to next, one street in the Richmond where I’ll be to the other, those streets that connect the Avenues, the music of the cars that pass and the Muni busses, the smells of the restaurants, the voices of people talking as they step out of their homes saying hi to neighbors asking how their Christmas was.  Everything about it is like this Coltrane track.

A studio somewhere in the city, somewhere.  Where I can write, record, invite over other writers and poets, thinkers, people of words and thought, were we can sip wine and talk, not think about money or work or any obligations or schedules.  God’s hour still with me, like I’m on that couch laying down thumbing thoughts into my phone.  Wish I would have stayed awake, but no sense in grieving senselessly over what a poet didn’t do.  I’m in my nook, with if I wanted 15 minutes left to self.  This morning, confirming.  I’m confirmed in the singularity of vision, shedding complication like complications need be shed for preservation of health’s sake.

Just remembered, need new vehicle for drive to SF.  Yesterday in Marin, Novato specifically, my van wouldn’t start.  Had to be jumped.  So I have new ship this day, hopefully.  Today in SF needs to be more than fruitful, for what I do here for Sonic but as well for me as a person trying to touch their There.  The travel, tasting wines in Austrian castles.  The philosophy or thought shape of Now compiles while remember the van yesterday not starting, thinking of this morning at 4am how I actually composed myself enough to compose.  I’m seeing the day in front of me but don’t want to look too long as I want to preserve the surprise of it all.  The drive and the stop at the Novato gas station, the five dollars of quarters I have in pocket that I tell self need be spent on coffee, find a spot for composition, for writing San Francisco….  I’m there for work, but there for work.  I’m in a postmodern and reconstructive and deconstructive dilemma.  One I love.  One I don’t want halted.  One I wish forever and in every day wrapped around me.

Everything I need, already held.  We wish for so much but don’t take the less than minute to inventory and celebrate what we already see daily.  Fascinating and frustrating.  The house I walked up in Berkeley to meet a Philosophy professor, how I never in several years would have seen that happening, especially years ago.  Time nets itself around my cognitive code, garnishing morality and ethical etching.

12/27/18

mikemadigan2 Comments

Kerouac has

all interpretation and meditations leaning toward more. More exploration, more scenes, more looking around and acknowledging Now. Nothing behind, all ahead and in front of me asking to be experienced. What am I doing here, accepting any order, any regulatory, any institution. More, on that Road, the music, lights, cars, families traveling in winter or whenever. Sitting on unfamiliar boards, me…

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No nap, today, fought against pull and push to do so. Thanksgiving over, wife out shopping at one of those shopping special eve whatever’s. Me, home. Wine. Just finished glass of Claret. The night passed with such cruel progression. Indifference. Babies asleep upstairs. What movie do I watch, my dilemma. My life’s trouble. Think of how fortunate I am with my family and to have such family, to be sitting where I am, here on this we seek to shed, new one one the way… Day of giving thanks, I need to show more giving of thanks, being thankful.

Tonight, I do intend exploring more wine. No aim to wake at 4am or 4:10 like this day. No. I may actually just sleep in. I will. What do I mean, “may”? May have to punch out. Take the night as it approaches me, describe and translate it, or in such order reversed… then wake tomorrow with more thought. More story. More ME. Tired now, forgetting I’ve been up since 4-something. Think 4:10. Has it been that long? Yes. It has. Me, that writer. Now. Time to Self and I sip wine and be here, writing. A writer.

Does the writer want apple pie or Chardonnay? Both sound like they sound, their own precise appeal and connection. I’m not torn between both but urge to be curved by both, somehow. 9:08. Feel like bed but I won’t. I can’t. But more, I refuse. Why can’t I be a human, just have dessert or drink wine. Is it that complicated? Are my thoughts the hinderance, the block and or impediment? I think it may be just that. Not in any kind of a writing swoop, and I can’t figure anything of it out. How does pine figure. What type a figure be me, I, this writer.

I feel like I’m not doing a thing, while doing too much. A mess. Should have taken a nap.

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Census

Up still.  Moving still.  I started my 4am story, the pages sequencing from this day forward with the antithesis of control.  Going to get coffee.  First expense of day.  Moving money around, toward my business, and this blogs & chapbooks idea.  Today, back in Berkeley.  Hit a bit of traffic on way back to Sonic but time highly utilized for meditation, thinking of all the projects I now have hovering over me.  Was contacted today to possibly do some wine industry consulting.  Am raising rates, as the questioned project is outside anchoring sight of mikemadigancrEATive.  I’ll see what happens.

In adjunct cell, nearly caught up on everything.  Thought I was much more behind, but apparently I’ve been as tireless as I boast in these posts.  I am axiomatic and pragmatic, to some sense.  Just a couple notes for class, so far.  Tonight I’m keeping simple.  A think tank, blended with open mic attributes, associated with just newly generated thoughts and journal readings and who knows what else.  Making a master list, a new one yes, of all my projects.  I’ll inventory which ones I hit day to day, or try.  6:17 and need that coffee.  Need to write whilst I teach and offer my ideas.  

This morning being at gym— or let’s start with waking, alarm playing its odd tune looped at 4am and me sitting up, rubbing eyes and forehead, saying to self I can go back to dreams for just a bit.  Then a commander, a sergeant of some sort in my character ordered, NO.  Don’t you dare.

So I didn’t.  I dressed, laced, grabbed wallet and phone and earphones, keys.  Out door by 4:06 I think.  At gym shortly after and on tread at 6.2 speed before 6:30.  I had my eight miles, and when done, I walked over to friend from Sonic, Mr. Abraham, who was in the corner jumping rope like an over-caffeinated rabbit, so precise and so quiet in the swings and diagonal throws with the rope and his hops coupled.  We talked for a bit, and I headed home.  Paused in the parking lot as I hoped to.  Smelled air as I saw myself doing last night when I thought about the walk back to car after 8, if I hit 8.  And I did.  Warmer than I thought it’d be.  When home, sparkling water and look at oven clock.  5:52.  All that done by 5:52.  Before six.  I have to make this habit.  Religion.  I said to myself sipping the bubbled H2O like I’d been lost somewhere remote and had only dreamt of thirsty ending the entire time.  

Now I’m here.  The typing helps, and I know the coffee will fully bring this writer back to his lively literary life.  Need cinnamon in it, anything to keep me in my character’s code and courting till home when I open that blend from Napa.  Or do I want something else?  Do I have anything else?  Need to budget for a massive wine purchase.  Talking about wine wakes me as well.  No surprise.  Very much now up, flying over these keys and laptop and to all walls and borders of this shared adjunct office.  Over and over, going over the morning.  The alarm, tying shoes, drive there and back, the water, and me now after the eight miles, over twelve hour past.

10/11/18

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I’m awake and working out.

Did first hold right before five. After that, push-ups and planks. Some sit-ups. Not really counting, just wanting to keep motion continuous. Set stop watch, not a countdown. Just keep the motion motioned, what I’m telling self. 05:12.

Conscious of the noise and mood of the morning. Everything I do on this hardwood or just wood floor make a sound, loud thin and audible. Like an airy crack, or crackle. Wife leaves for her workout offsite. I start coffee. Vowing tomorrow morning with the day off I’ll go to gym at 4-something. Not only enhance the shape I’m in, but start a new way, new story. Yes another promise, more so though a plan than remark avowing anything.

Can already feel the little I’ve done. In legs from hold, abdomen from pushups just a moment ago tallying 100, and arms from planks and pushups. Time for coffee.

Didn’t post thousand words from last night before class. Will today from whatever coffee spot I can find in the Sunset. Sight 1 for day is that, coffee and composition in the City. Second, hit a few doors with the reps. Then, a poem while walking whatever avenue we’re on. One of the views yesterday from 28th and something, I just looked out at the ocean like I saw something or someone in it. The air’s olfactory makeup told me to keep walking and keep watching. Feeling some goal or aim, some aspiration or creative desire sprint from San Francisco, for me. And if it weren’t for Sonic I wouldn’t even be there having these observations and reflections.

05:31. Waking this early, a badge of sorts. Hear son move around in his bed, and if he wakes early and breaks this sitting, I don’t mind. It’s part of the story. Part of the story but the whole of who I am– writing daddy getting in whatever time I can to write. At work at my desk between little addresses of some spreadsheet, or organizing, or prepping for some meeting. The subject is me. The story, each page, and I never need be sorry.

The workout, over. Me on couch in qualified dark, fan light overhead on my dim setting so I can have some isolator writer mood in here. I keep forgetting it’s harvest right now, and so many of my vino people are out there, right now, pulling clusters from rows and into bins, into a gondola pulled by tractor, a driver up early and away from his family, doing what he needs to them feed.

05:36. I feel like one of them, right now. One of the early. One of the characters they defies law, the expected, that doesn’t sleep in. They can’t. Their minds won’t let them. Mine won’t let me. At all. This morning I’m alive with Sonic and supersonic thoughts of speaking, words, fearlessly sharing ideas from one city to next on work, business, writing everything down and so many say that and never do and if they did, my god, it would not only help what they do but wildly and poetically shape their business and their place and placement in it.

Could go back to bed even if a writer wanted to. Hell, even if my body and functioning orders em to. My thinking’s of a beatific defiance this morning, and only accepting sentences. As a workplace, Sonic tells you to be more of you, it challenges me and how the wine industry never could– Telling me to not only keep doing what I’m doing, but intensify. AMPLIFY. Diversify. Play with form as you do in poetry, poet. And more. More.

05:41. I ask myself where the time went and nowhere, nowhere. It’s still very much presented and around me, present. Gifting me with this couch and all the musing I need for a day in the city. Will I wake as early tomorrow, or early as I have written… I have to. I know how I’ll feel if I don’t. I know my mood if I won’t. Set alarm, every movement today for tomorrow’s early steps and words, lines, however many miles I run on tread or however many reps I finish. Not waking early, and I’m citing hours like this, is in no way literary. Writers don’t sleep in. We can’t sleep, for the most part. We deplore rest, and idleness. Just laying in bed and scrolling, sitting on couch watching a show, or just hanging like a coat from some hook, some executed prisoner from a tight meanly knotted and enclosing circle.

05:47. I love this. I do. I don’t have to think about what to write. It’s right in front of me, blatantly. No sun or suggestion of it through the glass door to right. This is true morning to me. When the sun steps and straight lay stands communicating with the world, its day. It’s started. The day is off and you better find a way to catch it as right now you’re surely not ahead if you haven’t been up. I’m here, knowing I’m ahead of the day. Time again, my topic. Twelve hours from now, I could very well be in traffic. On 101 somewhere. San Rafael, the Novato narrows, Petaluma. Somewhere. I have twelve hours to do something to my story… I do it. Start the timer. 12 hours. Get to work and collect in writing for a bit, then attack tasks. Reps get in before ten, so we head out early. Quick, this Friday. My writing will equal, rival, buzz by pacing.

Son definitely awake. 05:52. I could get a stet in day, again. Teeth and shower, dress, pack, take stuff out of bag as to bring laptop for written lunch and be lighter while hiking the SF streets. Keep the motion motioned. To halt is to fall. And I can’t. Not this close to 40.

Diet for day… Coffee, only healthy snacks, no full meals till dinner, and then do note to lightly eat. Speaking of my beloved coffee life… I sip…

10/5/18

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A Meeting

Now home.  Today, sent me.  Somewhere.  Not sure where.  This is more than work.  This is more than a job, Sonic.  The place where people walk around smiling and talking with each other, where they smile and greet each other and fall into a joyous back and forth about everything.  I won’t get comparative, promised I wouldn’t do that in this sitting at day’s end.  But today, did something.  After my EOD meeting, on several worlds and ancillary topics, a conversation which I was more than merely invested in, I hurried on into the rest of the day and onto campus to give my most kaleidoscopic and axiomatic lecture yet, I think.

Sipping from a bottle Thomas gave me, and I direct further toward and into this meeting with self, me here having an inward conversation, hoping to come to some sort of useful singularity but maybe I won’t.  Maybe this is just for the sake of exploration, for setting sail into some new thought stream. Where I’ll land.  Not sure.  And why do so many focus on destination?  I know I do from time to time but even still sometimes we just need to relish and have internal dialogue and mediation on the trek itself… the voyage, the journey.

If I do manage to wake as early as I’ve drawn, tomorrow, I’ll work out while writing.  Down here, downstairs, living room, in dark.  And if one of the babies wake then I guess I’ll deal with it, I have to.  A 90 minute workout, all core-honed, what I’m hoping for.  I still feel Sonic’s office around my senses, all five, and the eighth, ninth.  This Italian red proposes something different, as it’s something different in my usual sip pattern.

So I keep with kaleidoscope’s shades and telling.  Don’t need to be yet privy to destination.  I’ll get there…. I will.

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Sonic Jot

Next day, the second where I feel like I’m on a rocket ship, just ascending and appreciating altitude.  Third day of victory, of production, producing, feeling my life and creative tide just going and rising and taking me with it.  On lunch now, peanuts and a ginger ale I bought from shop.  Stomach still a bit uneasy from that vegetarian burrito, yesterday.  Work today is more than enlivening and exhilarating.  I did feel this a couple times in the wine industry, but with no consistency.  Can’t remember the last time at Roth I had three consecutive days of pure life and topic ownership.  My story becomes its own storm, now.   Its own Now.  In this large warehouse-like quarter with Sonic everything all around me and everything that Sonic embodies, from the communicative facet to people just visibly enjoying what they do.  I’m definitely space-bound.  My work is no longer work but something that’s redefined and redrawn and re-purposed my literary purpose.

Walking someone through the office and into this break arena earlier, I could see the amazement and disbelief in her facial shape.  How the company encourages its people, how the “employees” are more so investors and partners, family members to the immediate and distant motions.  All motions overlap and intermingle, creating a creative concurrency.  Their own currency to be exchanged and interchanged…  I notice my own face change shape, sitting here.  Taking another sip, not needing any real lunch but just the snack I have and everything on either side— left and right, 12 and 6.  All these corners and visuals decide on magnifying my manuscript’s physiology, writing new one for this writer who anymore writes about work as he’s embedded and invested in work that binds to his moral and ethic etch.

I’m horribly saddened, honestly, when I hear of people going to places they hate for work. Of course someone could ask, “Why would anyone do that to themselves?” Yes, an easy question to ask, but not so easy to answer or attach any formula.  It’s not that they do anything to themselves, but haven’t found their pages, haven’t landed in their story.  What I recognize, appreciate and further analyze in my sitting here is that only now do I see.  Did I find not only a home, but a topic.  A book, and another one.  Me, a writer, literary guy, beatnik from the wine industry, now more fiery and eager and moved to words.  AT A TECH COMPANY.  But this isn’t some simple tech company, or start-up or wanna-be startup village.  This, here, the creative is basal, inherent.  Expected.  Sonic, like a university hopping around in exponent climates.  Here, you’ll hear people say how they write everything down.  You see other writers here, other thinkers, people seeking to enjoy where they work—  More than just “enjoy” it.  Live it.  Be it.  The IT, to it all.  What they do, yes, but more who they are. That’ how I see myself.

My story just arrived.  At 39.  Late?  No.  Lovely timing.  If anything, it’s more than punctual and optimal, just before 40.  This place has me forgetting I’m 39, if you should know, and you should know if I’m with your attention.  I just fixate on the day, whatever project to which I tend. The company’s name, Sonic, denoting and connoting sound, and speed, something audible, and then I think of course of music and being a literary bloke hear Kerouac reminding me that the only truth is music.  Here, in the break room and in the office proper, between enclaves and hamlets of encouragingly and electric and eclectically adorned cubes and desk, you hear it.  See, feel, then a sixth and eighth sense.  Someone you acknowledge or you think you do adequately but only know you’re there, in it all.

New writer, new vision.  New understanding and embrace of purpose.  I am writing a book, about this place.  More than a place but a dimension, a warp of time, timing.  Forgot about the ginger ale, peanuts.  Hearing co-workers talk of their projects and ideas while on lunch.  They don’t talk about any TV show, who’s dating who, where they’re going this weekend. But work.  WORK.  It’s not work. It’s more than passion.  It’s creative escalation and an impassioned saddle of axioms and projects.  Seeing each day as its own book, not just a chapter.  This is not a new chapter in my life but a new life, a new armada of books I’m about to write.  This day— what would it be about?  Learning, something new.  Spreadsheet.  Yes, me doing spreadsheets.  I was deathly afraid of them, before coming here, and up until yesterday still quite unnerved at the thought of toying with rows, columns, cells, formulae.  No longer, though.  My self-certain, assurance and general fortitude eclipse any anxiety.  Moving at a speed I’d deem supersonic, frankly.  And I don’t see myself working, I don’t.  I see the growth and the metaphysical and ontological model re-write itself over and over, from this company’s thesis. New song, everyday.  New chords.  New opus offerings and new interpretations of everything around me.  And, again, spreadsheets are part of this paragraph, part of this elasticized praise for where I now sit, in this lunching province. 

Stomach, solved.  Today did so.  Cured me of whatever that restaurants plate did.  And I forget it, universally.  I’m made more healthy and assembled as a writer in tech’s clef and step.  Anything past workplaces instilled, left, far in days behind me. Today’s book, then tomorrow’s, where I’ll be at Month 6, and yes I have a specific aim and tangible destination for such.  Never did that with wine’s world. I didn’t need to, as no such thought was ever invited or encouraged. The culture of not only writing and taking notes here, but education both from self but colleagues makes me feel like I’ve discovered some cryptozoological wonder, asking myself What is THIS? and Where am I?  Imagine that, being not merely in love with where you are, what you do, where one works, but seeing yourself as healthier, happier, more composed as an immediate consequence. 
10/3/18

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At school and tired from dinner.  Just a vegetarian burrito but still feel a bit of a food-tuned slowness coming over me.  I ignore it.  Chew gum I bought in cafeteria.  Have books with me for night but not sure how long I want to stay, to be honest.  Just talk to them, tonight.  That’s all.  Just talk to them about their Plath observations and thoughts on their essays.  Not planning anything tonight.  Nothing.  Everything on sight, on spec, in the moment, bottomless from the bottom of my mind.

Couple minutes before 6:30.  Long day, but not really.  Woke just before 6 with Jack, started shaving and didn’t have to iron any clothes so I was ready rather readily and with speed that doesn’t show most weekday mornings.

Want tonight’s class to be exciting.  Theatrical.  I say that a lot, “theatrical”.  How about animated, interesting or engaging.  You know what I mean.  You know what I want from tonight’s session.  Yes…. Rubbing my eyes… UGH, I think, Why did I have that burrito?  Focusing on moment.  My stomach has 30 minutes to digest everything and lose this full feeling.  Phone sounding, reps still in field, doing their thing, canvassing.  Feel bad I’m not there with them but I have to fulfill this, this obligation, this last semester.

Feel me get into professor mode, what to say when at class’ front, facing all the registered characters for the class I’m meant to “teach”.  Work… make it your own.  Don’t look at it as a task, but what you’re made to do—  NO.  Who you ARE.  

Have so much to grade and the stack keeps rising, heightening its attack and talk.  Another swarm to land tonight.  Life of a teacher, adjunct professor or instructor, whatever they want to call me today, this week.  How is it that they decide?  How is it that anyone or any institution or company can call me something, give a title or identity without me signing off?  You might say, “You did when you took the job.” Okay.  Though, I never agreed to a title that’s ever-changing, and I never agreed that anyone or any THING can decide when to change it.

Day catching me as it nods into night.  Feeling a bit more awake.  A bit.  Part of me does want to get coffee, but that will harm sleep.  And I’m going in circles in this quiet conference room and wasting me time to self, this time to build and collect and prep if I choose to.  I don’t.  I leave the day’s page blank and we as a class will fill it.  Idea by idea.  That will be our collective prompt.

Feeling like a professor now.  One who will be teaching independently by semester’s close.  Tell myself to stop thinking so excessively and I do.  I stop and just write, not in the Plath book.  Tell myself which quotes to offer but then retract as that’s a promise, a plan, a step back.  I just walk into the class being me, lecturing on writing and reading my loved author, and how they see her.  What’s their assessment of Ms. Plath and what she notes and narrates through her contemplative turbulence..

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Rest of day, getting certain spreadsheet things done, then sending emails, writing more ideas, journaling everything.  Recording everything.  Writing EVERYTHING down.  I do have to smile that a tech company helped me become, and I will say, more of a writer.  You never know.  You can be surprised.  Don’t judge.  Tonight in class I’m going to go through readings with students but I want to focus on some other creative prompts, write more, discuss things more.. how to write more… how to write more consistently.  Why write at all?  Why be here at all, in an English class?

Back at desk in ten minutes, stopping this current paragraph set in five, now four, minutes.  Learning from the day and my time here at the office new, how to do everything differently.  The wine industry could never do that, many opportunities as I gave it to teach me something new and give me some new path or some new assignment.  I’ve learned more in the last month dealing with wine outside its industry, about wine itself and writing about it, than I ever did while in the tasting room.  I have to laugh.  Tech now, writing, still into wine and in wine, in wine’s stance, thinking about what I taste and eager to sip from bottles that I’ve never before heard of like the one last night Thomas gave me as an anniversary gift of sorts.

Pulled into conversation.  A nice one with director of sales.  Never in the wine industry did I have days like this, anything like this, where I’m learning at every turn, in every convention, in all my blinks and breaths and turns of head.  What do I write about… I think work, now.  Work.  Not “productivity”, not “health”, not even “education” or knowledge, or philosophy.  Work.  Doing what you love.  What you want to do, as you have a singular set of time to do it.  And you don’t know what that time expanse is, what it entails.

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