journal

4/3/20

Jack watching a wildlife documentary, the one we were watching earlier on Yellow Stone and its wildlife.  Emma upstairs for a nap.  Feel like I could use one.  But I should be working.  I am, kind of.  Co-worker texting me saying you can order beer from Moonlight Brewing up the street and pick it up tomorrow.  Should I?  Need something to do… besides gather notes from inside the quarantine dome.

Sparkling water, not coffee.  Coffee and wine, wanting to cut back on both as to elevate and amplify production, as well as just be more present.  Coffee you might think does just that, and it does to a degree, but it drops you. And the fall and landing are impediments to movement.

2:13… A NAP.  No… stop thinking about it.  I am.  I swear.  No emails coming in, and no phone calls or messages.  A stall in the day.  Keep moving, that’s the not-so-secret pill, apply, coat if you would.  Would you?  Why do people write that, or say it (even worse), “… if you would.”

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Talk about wine, that always helps.

The Zin from last night.  A Zin, all I can say.  Had the jammy thing going on, high alc… Was nice, actually.  I’m distracted, though.  Thinking too much.  I’m always thinking about writing about wine, and how wine deserves much more than what the critics and name-names give it.  So here I am with the chance to do so, like in English class teaching myself to write again.  Time is fading, as is this time to finish a book on wine.  So there it is, it worked…. No more talking about the thing out there, only wine, only what’s in here, only the NOW at this desk… the smallest desk I’ve ever had to work at.

Breakfast.  No going out… Told myself I was going to fast till noon.  See a lot of people posting about that, about how not to gain like a hundred pounds during this shelter order.  Coffee’s supposed to be an appetite suppressant, or something.  But it’s not suppressing shit right now.  Write through it—or no, write about it, the fasting…. Think of breakfast, yes, imagine some breakfast on a road trip for your wine book, or papers, essays, notes whatever they be…. Jotting in your notebook like you should every morning and some at night…  Tomorrow flying to Texas.  Austin.  Always wanted to go there.  Finally I am.  And it’s wine taking me there.

Removing self from self and more deeply considering my ping-ponging thought pattern over the years, my inability to singularize for purposes of answering that question “So what do you write about?” and other efforts or trial, during this time I just STOP.  Write about wine, the tasting room….  Wine experiences, research (“research”) I might do.  I’m meant to write this, I know, so why do I do the back and forth?  Who cares.  I’ve stopped it.  Funny though, the reality, of me being here and not in the vineyard, not traveling, not going anywhere… just seeing self in the car driving to the airport for some trip to Spain, or France, or Australia. Part of me thinks wine is limiting as a singularity, a topic.  That’s precisely what I need, as what’s limited is the most promising in terms of expansion.  Can’t explain what I’m thinking, but I know what I’m thinking.  Know what I’m going to do, what I’m doing… Mike, I say to self, you’re already doing it.

Tonight going to open the other red I bought yesterday at Oliver’s…. the Kenwood, what was it… Cab?  Good. One night of Zin and I’m utterly and definitively Zin’d out.

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9:44 – After an online class meeting that not only showed exactly where to go with my writing, about wine or whatever, I’m sipping a Zin.

Yes, a Zin, one I’ll write about tonight or the wine blog.  Just checked on my daughter, and she’s still not asleep. I can’t blame her.  She doesn’t know the entirety of what’s going on but she knows something’s happening.  She keeps saying “coronavirus”.  I’ve reasoned and rationalized staying home, going to the store one last time after seeing that the next two weeks, or even two months, I don’t fucking know, could be… well, bad.  Not sure what they’re basing this on, or from, but I’m committing myself. To here. No more store, no more anything.  Going to do a wine order from K&L for wine writing assignments, and just stay here, write, finish this fucking book, the semester, and not worry.  About anything.  Lately I’ve been catching myself a bit unnerved about what could happen to me at Sonic… why.  What REALLY can I do from my house.  I have two outstanding contracts, one with whom I communicated today and giving in to a request or really inquiry he had about contract length (3 years versus 2, he wants 2)…. I’m not worrying.  Prospecting for example… big part of the AE’s life, but what can I do here besides connect and “network”, makes a list or lists of businesses to hit.  I’m doing all of that.

                Like I think I wrote earlier this week or maybe even today again at one point, I’m in a bit of a kamikaze skip into this.  I’m not running away from COVID.  No fucking way.  In fact, you know what… this is the wine book grant I had a dream about years ago… this is where I do what I’ve been suggested by SO many I do.  Just write wine, write about it, HER, and personify wine in ways these other wine “writers” CANNOT.  Zinfandel in my kitchen, formally in my glass.  Need another.  From Dry Creek, Dry Creek Vineyards… high ABV, no surprise, but an eager and connective, romantic and animated personality.  Deep and dimensional, intricate and communicative.  Why can’t all Zins be like this, I ask myself.  Glad they’re not, really.  ‘Cause then I wouldn’t recognize what I’m recognizing…. Writing about wine and speaking of a singular bottle as I am now makes me miss the tasting room.  I need to dive so far into wine that I embody the principle shape and place, atmosphere and complexion of wine… her ideology and expressive geography.  See?  Nothing makes me write like this.  Only wine, only her.

Imagining that first day back in the TR, at Lancaster, with my book already done, and out in the world doing whatever it’s supposed to do.  I’m not concerned with my position, anywhere.  Not at the JC, or at Lancaster, or anywhere else.  I’m not fearful of this weird bug that has everyone in hiding.  I have a book to write, and now I have NO excuse or escape in explaining why I didn’t write it with this ordered shelter.  The new journal, as you’d see it, or as I do, is for HER.  Wine.  What she’s done for me, what she’s shown me… how the story is to be written till my last page.

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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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11:55.

Odd quiet in the house.  Everyone gone.  Only me here.  Distracted by kids earlier, and willingly.  Playing with them upstairs, reading books, and playing some more.  Waiting on two contracts, now.  One of them requested this morning and sent shortly thereafter.

Sipping coffee.  Had eggs for breakfast, trying to skip lunch.  Only write, record ideas and wait for the return on some things.  Made a couple calls earlier, but nothing materializing.  Reminded by one that they’re not in the office, obeying the shelter order, or suggestion.

Digital Marketing, Web Design, Blog-based Marketing and communication, all giving me ideas but nothing I want to act upon just yet.  Gather the ideas in journal.  When this order is over, I feel like that will be it.  That is when I’ll launch, be aflight.

Quiet outside as well.  Hear wind chimes.  A couple kids playing off to right, up street.  Thinking of going to get some wine for tonight, some red.  Tired of drinking Chardonnay or weird white blends like the one from a couple nights ago.  Was good, don’t mistake me, but still weird and not something too much worth writing.

Sitting here in long-awaited soundlessness, I imagine my vineyard, and what’s needed to get it.  The wine I’ll make eventually from the rows.  Don’t think too much, I remind myself.  In fact, not at all. This in-place prose, seeing myself in third-person as I wrote the other day.  Me and wine… this is all for wine.  All of it.  All my ideas with marketing and business narrative, design, tech, internet-anything… this whole AE story, is all for wine.  To write it, her, and for other intentions.  Some of which, most of which, I have not discovered.

She tells me to find more story, to write more freely. Don’t work, just pen wined prose.  Or is it poetry, poetic.  Who wants a category?  Not me.  Not her.  So write more freely, I see.  Wine is not bottled, certainly not bottled poetics. It’s free verse, it’s music that continues flight, to be in-flight and flying, telling us things about our stories and where we’re from, where we’re going.

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1:40pm

Desk.  Again.  Learned that schools are closed until May 1st.  Great.  Effects of the quarantine are visible.  Loudly visible.  Made self a coffee, kids in home school mode in kitchen writing in journals.  Jackie writing about the day, effectively reminding me of the straightforwardness of such narrative qualities.  Stressed now about business, and the whole virus itself.  I need to stay up late tonight as I earlier mentioned… write my thesis on not thinking.  Noting in journal, item #11.  Been itemizing ideas, a project to itself kind of but more to see how many I can log sans interruption.

“This should be Emma and my art studio.” Jack says.  The eventual office need have that feel and texture, voice and creative climate.

Jackie and his mother leave to go back to her school, to get some chords or something for some device on which they’ll do more homeschooling and lessons, activities, ed videos and what be.  “Can I bring my journal so I can write that we’re driving to your school to get the power chords?” Jack asks.  Love his eagerness to write and how he writes, his style which may be influence by my emphasis on narrative meta, or not.  Emma stays with me and sings some song in a silly octave, in the kitchen coloring, or trying to write… she continues singing after a short-spun intermission.

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3/25/20, Wednesday.

8:12am.

Kids are especially crazy this morning.  Already telling them multiple times to be quiet, stop doing something, that no I can’t just be pulled away from work to do those pearler bead things, iron them so they congeal and make a coherent and together being.

Sent contract, now looking for vendors.  Today is vendor day.  Looking for anyone I can to be part of the agency I’m building.  News letter, have to start that as well.

Need more coffee.  May work offsite, but just in car.  The kids are what make this a bit challenging.  Why, ‘cause I want to be with them, play, not remember that I’m trapped here, told not to go outside because of some goddamn thing.  Said that yesterday and today would be no-spend days but of course that didn’t survive, that aim.  Just drink home coffee, I tell self.

Prospect viewed contract, Docusign told me.  Now he just needs to SIGN.  When that contract comes in, my mood will elevate.  The kids play loudly and not worried about distracting me.  I envy them.  I need implement that attitude into business… no fear of mistakes, no self-doubting.

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