Perception, in the kitchen.

Running in the morning.  Ahead on timeline.  IF you could call it that.  Great day in meetings, dinner with parents.  Still hungry but not eating anymore.  Writing novel on her… her… the one wanting more… the character changing jobs, going for creative and not the expected.  I should go to bed, she orders.  I resist knowing I shouldn’t.  In Kerouac beat mode, on beat time.  So what then… more story, more in this kitchen.  Cards for the babies, Valentine’s Day.  What is that.  I’ve never known.

Going to have capping of night, then to bed go… running in morning.  Have to write more on the run, the run is life, is love is reason, is the counter to the counter, the counterargument to anything pessimistic.

Sitting in this kitchen, at the parent’s house… some could judge, and that’s fine.  I’m so focused on my control and centeredness of things.  Some will argue, object and counter-cross-object and puff their legalistic language in so many climates and shapes, but I just don’t listen.  Right now, I’m righted in my Now.

More than simple perception or sight, I don’t know how to define it and I really don’t know how.  I don’t care to.  I think of the poets I study, and the diarists I admire, like Ms. Plath and Pac, Hem with his letters, and Mr. Sedaris, and I find so much funny.  I’m going to delight in life, knowing some will say something.

Distracted by messages.  Should go to bed.  And keep with my stance, keep with my keep, assert the sight and acknowledgement of everything around me.  The world is funny, Humans are funny and barely deserve that capital.  No one in this kitchen but me. Running when it’s dark. So.. go.  Light jazz in back, and me just going from thought to thought, possibility to new newness with this new movement.  Some would maintain a detriment in my narrative, but the peripatetic jabs are only a lucrative tell.  Somehow, they ought be.

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Last day of year, and getting here later than I wanted to from waking early this morning with Jack.

Poor chap having difficulty sleeping.  Checked on him and Emmie before leaving, both not awake or interested in the world.  But just in their respective dreams.  And me eager to get to the office and tackle these labs, the hypothetical scenes and circumstances where I would offer services to clients with certain setups.  Meant to test me, somewhat, but as well meant to see how I’d react, see where my familiarity with the tech of this AE act is.  And I see it developing, getting stronger, becoming more fluid and fluent in my words and language.  Of course I’m not a Sales Engineer, and I’ve actually been told don’t get too hooked on the tech side of things, go up to the cliff but don’t jump off. But, what if I were to be a mock-SE?  An AE that’s as equal parts SE as he is AE?  My mind goes in a million different hurdles and poses, mold and directions with this story, the one I’m writing… the acronyms used to scare the shit out of me, but now…. No.  Not at all.  I’m excited and delighted and feel divinely and highly invited.

Two more labs to go.  With these last two I’m going to get a bit more creative, less focused on beating whatever price tag is on the current service of the hypothetical client and focusing on the value of what we do here at Sonic with our consultancy approach.  I remember Field Sales, all those days in the field walking up and down the Avenues and Streets of SF wit the team, and hearing all the conversations at the door.  This is still very much that face to face interaction… Field Sales and that tell as Supervisor outlined all this understanding of AE life and the overlap with SE practice.  All it is, really, at least in my application, is product familiarity.  And there’s a diversity to our menu that enlivens my steps.

New Year’s Eve, eve of what.  I’m already quite deep into my plan, into my principle motion and mode.  9:20 in the morning but I de-emphasize time, and what it does to me, how I see it.  The Mike Madigan character re-written, and put to page differently.  Thinking of going out, working offsite, mimicking the setup I’ll have when I leave the office.  With the other AAE leaving, there’s more focus on me.  Which I am only pleasurably and lovingly shoved by.  Write more like Kerouac I tell myself, bottomless from the bottom of my mind, my character and immediate form.

Get grades turned in, soon.  Maybe even tonight.  Start drawing next semester’s outline.  And rubric—or no, don’t use any rubric.  Why did I think I would?  Have everything be truly about READING and writing.  Expression and narrative, have that bleed into this AE role more, and wine as well.  This new year so much to happen and within the first half.  Like what I ask myself.  I know what.  I know precisely WHAT.

Logging every thought in the moment as it presents itself to me and not doing anymore doubletakes.  Everythought, one word as I disregard every grammatical and syntactic inhibition and rule.  Would get on the phone now, but I need to follow these ideas and thoughts, musings and notes, wherever they go…. The location, this office and what I do in it… Sonic, a character that’s like some character blend idealism.  I mean, here I am, being the most ME that I’ve ever been and….  Should get on phone, call at least ten businesses, just wish them a happy new year or something, just check in.  It’s not cold-calling if you don’t sound that way—but this is boring, writing about that.  What should I do… starting to get bored and tired and frustrated with my sentences.

Get out of the office, a voice says.  Go somewhere.

Where.

I have no idea.  Just keep writing, keep thinking… telecom, being a Sales Engineer, and learning more of the tech, what used to scare me to death’s door and table but now realizes me and convinces my character of more action, more pursuit of curiosity.  I was told recently to stop doubting myself when it comes to tech, and certain corners of my AE story.  So I see the unlock-er as movement itself.  That is what will make anything and everything happen.

You know what, I am going to go for a drive.  Work from a Starbucks or something.  Practice doing it now otherwise when I’m forced offsite it’ll be too much of a shock.  It’ll be like me working for my blog, for me, my company… finally.  The P-O-Z Agency.  Everything that’s embodied and entailed in its composition.  Produce On Zoom…. Or ‘Passion Only Zeal’.  Something like that, or maybe not make it an acronym.  Have enough of those in my life already, in this AE put.

Made a call, going to make another….  And, look for a certain type of company, find a way in… test my “networking” aptness and acuity, movement and versatility.  Found a lead, in a certain industry. Researching now… I should have research done by the time I get to office, but I won’t be having to ‘get to office’, before too long.  Going to go offsite in a bit, to coLAB.  Try and negotiate a rate, some deal, some something.  Use that as my base….  More ideas.  Maybe they need connectivity.  Getting ahead of myself, and distracted.  Get your office, and motion and speak from there.

Day, off the ground. The new year, already here.  I’m not waiting.  For anything.  Intensifying, Amplifying, and Diversifying my prospecting, business, principle approach in the AE life and everything.  No editing, only writing… only lines, only composition, only positive pulse and progression.  Looking for new projects, new approaches in every turn and every inquiry.  So now, more.  More of everything.  Need a break, but a break to produce, not stop in production.  EVER.  Engineering self to a new self maybe but one more with altitude and vocal, hunger, an utter absence of apprehension.

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Playing at the park up and then down the street, down a little hill,

I’m definitively into my zen tilt and happiness takeover and project.  Sipping Rose in a plastic cup I found in Mike’s cupboard I think about wine and what I want with it.  Again.  Kids unaffected by this, this evacuation.  To them it’s a getaway, a vacation, something that has no flames, or threats, evacuations or dangers.  It’s fun.  They make it fun.  Actually, no, they don’t MAKE it anything.  They just see opportunity for enjoyment, to relax and play on that slide and those swings.

Not going into Sonic tomorrow, and I feel guilty, but then don’t.  I want to and need to be here with the babies.  Write. Get out of my comfort zone as much as I hate that phrase, but that’s just what I need do.  Saw a bench at the park or rather just in the not-too-distant distance in front of and on the side of a large grass field that you might think is used for polo but I think it’s just a grand and nearly overwhelming grass field for kids to play on.  Soccer, chase, tag, what be.

This house I could see as an office, or some property I’d own for either a rental or just an office.  Rather big for just an office but it’s what’s smattered in my inner sigh sense, blogging in here for weeks, just locked in and forcing self to produce a book from the blog.  The blog has to come first, and the realizer and readier for whenever I’m stuck or feel I’m recycling the same sentences, is the Now.  Write the Now.  Where you are and what you’re doing.

Jack and Emma watch the Grinch, one of the dozens or hundreds of versions, and eat some Cheerios from a red cup, the kind you’d see at a frat party.  Jack spills some and I tell him to pick it up and he tells me he will after he comes back from China.  I laugh a little but try to be serious and then tell self fuck that.  Have fun with them.  Be one on and of the playground.

I need to play more.  Not think so much. Not work, but only create, write, stay up late and pepper the manuscript’s streets with verse, pages, my phylum of music.  Keep pushing these keys and refuse to let self stop, the wine tells me.  Don’t allow distractions, obstructions.  Poetry is the vein, the blood, the beat, the blog, the Now ME.

Playing with the wine, the pink puddle in the plastic cannikin.  Turning left, seeing Broncos play Raiders.  Thinking more of my office.. what I want in there.  Anything that antagonizes, promotes, encourages creativity, bringing something to life.  This bought with Sonoma County wildfires plates a dose of déjà vu that I wasn’t expecting, to just live and write wildly and edit nothing.  Kids getting restless, and me too.  To finish this fucking book, and light MY story on fire.  Several fires.  And be so lovingly monstrous that it can never be extinguished.

Cuz F This S …

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10/27/19

Again evacuated.  2017 on repeat. Up since 3-something-AM but I’m now awake from latte and writing this in Haley’s room.  Melissa’s little cousin now not so little in Med School.  There’s something everywhere, I know, but I think I’ve had it with Sonoma County.  And wine.  Wine people and the industry of course…. Driving here just after 4am, thinking to self this is the first day of the remainder of my life.  Meeting a man earlier, 90-something (93?), and realizing that I will no longer edit, censor, hold back, but be more profuse with happiness and elevating echo.  And poetry.

Writing about blogging, blog about writing, everything on blog… embrace more and tell more the role and “title” of blogger, what it means if anything.

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Day SIXTY-SEVEN

Feeling a bit overwhelmed, and scattered and stressed with all these projects, with all these directions.  No matter, no weights slows this writer.  Craving my own office like I never have.  With plenty energy today, not having a drop of wine last night and going to bed stupendously early.  Think… think…. What to put out next, in terms of story….  The morning, the coffee, the pen, the paper.  That’s it, like I always stress to students.. Where are you and what are you doing?

Mapping out day, even though it’s most mapped.  Going for a run at 11:30, then back in office and head to Petaluma.  Set appointments.  I want at least two, for the day.  Log everything…. Places hit, self-evaluation, notes on what to say even though I keep it not so much simple but succinct and unassuming.

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sonic jots

Sonic fires new fire into my thought plain.  Seeing tech as not just tech but a foremost arena and surface to propel in ideas, with new ideas… that encourages those reach impulses.  That never stops.  More than the technology side, but the human side.  The community and communicative curvature.  I see this, all of this. Me in my role and not just a “role”.  Hate that word, frankly.  This is beyond some simple role to play, and I’m not playing.  Or maybe I am, but with purpose, sight, a result of the collective and pervasive invitation of the office and its tongue.  Sonic instructs me to not focus so much on the tech, to stop stressing about it as I sometimes do.  What are you, it asks.  I’m a writer, and maybe teacher.  So, then, Sonic says, do that.  And only that. Learning new things is never of detriment but trying to distance yourself from the purest note of you is unhealthy.  Unwise.  Don’t do it, the company around me commands.

I’ve always said this company is about not so much solution but remedy, and a connectedness you don’t find in other business practices, other places of work.  Antithetical in so many regards while concurrently proving more productive and efficient that other spaces. What can I say about where I sit, what I hear, what I do day over day.  Love, yes.  Curiosity, of course.  But there’s something else.  Something for which I don’t yet have words and maybe I never will. I’m not a techie, I’m a live-ie.  I’m living, with more full form and forward.

Sonic encourages its encouraging barrage.  Even now, at end-of-day, I’m not ready to leave.  And I arrived at 6:20-something if my tired memory is properly serving, to attend a tech event in Oakland .  I’m still in the chair, I more than care, I’m more than connected.  This is the office and what it does to writers like me, people not from the tech world and at one time in their life thought they’d never be in this wheel of work but here I am.  And here I’m planted, connected.  The communication and encouragement, creative, is too delicious.

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project

9/10/19

Same energy as yesterday.  Quick, elevated, hungry and fucking fearless.  Got a parking ticket downtown while at meeting at SR Chamber.  Totally my fault.  Was suggested I make Sonic pay for, but no.  I’m owning it as lesson to self.

Found company I very much want to know better, work with.  Just gave info to reception, and who knows if that’ll ever get to where it’s intended.  Not a shot at the lady that answered, that’s just how it goes.  Keeping my movement with a bright blaze that strays all ways.

Looking at another company, now.  And I’ve found to prospecting when you’re too diagnostic and not enough curious and conversational, human, then you’ve detracted from your potential to achieve whatever it is you want.

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13

8/15/19.

Going through business cards.  Building community, today.  Writing about writing, in other project.  Tired from waking just after 5, and long day yesterday.  Novato mixer, tonight.  Keep self moving.  ‘Nother cup of coffee from office.  Too hot for a walk, or any “fresh air”.  To me, air is never fresh when it’s hot.

Tired, and not as functional as I should be.  But I keep working, moving… need to accelerate other projects.  Winery this weekend, time on Saturday to tend to certain projects.  Lunch now, some training later, then Novato event.

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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

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Day FIVE

Oneness Again Promised

Meeting with leads group this morning.  Shot quick video.  Productivity already producing and profuse, this morning.  Hoping to run at lunch, but I’m considerably hungry.  Can eat right after the run, telling self.  Keep the movement noticeably to self, and educating.

Garmin charging, workout articles under desk.  Everything I need for a lunch run, right here with me.  No excuses, like so many of my running connections say.  Leaving for Petaluma meeting in twenty minutes.  Then back here for some calls, creative prospecting work.  Creativity, conversation…. Last night I decided to prove more that I can actuate what I advocate.  Produce more through control of character, story, control the character and you control the story.

May have to cancel afterwork meeting, today.  Not happy about doing do.  Today on day 5 of my mission to the office and Road and whatever else, I’m seeing the story with more glimmer and promise.  And that waking early, earlier than usual needs to be a set practice.  It’s more than philosophy, more than discipline.  It’s right here, in the Sonic office with me.  What I do for Sonic and how I approach business.  Creatively.  It should always be creative, and ever-moving, changing, evolving and vocal, narrative.

Last night before going to bed, I decided to change the story.  How I see everything.  Hoping to maintain it indefinitely, if not eternally.  But there needs to be a shift in disposition.  A takeover of yay-saying presence and speak.  I want my first signing, in my new post in this business-to-business department.  I feel it nearing, but feeling isn’t material.  I’ll just force it into immediacy.   With poetic business hand.  Not so much doing the job less, but speaking and utilizing self MORE.

Anymore this could be a business blog, not a wine blog.  But it’s wine that taught me to study more closely the Now, where I am and what I’m doing.  Wine precipitated and initiated all this.  This is a ramble, I know, but that’s what the morning has caused and promoted in my story.  The movement tireless, and I can’t stop in the composition of my principle composition.

Challenge to self, today… more singularity, more focus.  Promising self, ONENESS.  Containment.  Support and speak the thesis, like I begged students.  I would always tell them, start with and return to a singular word or thought.  This morning reminds me, as does the Sonic office.  Shifting character, mood, approach, disposition like I said.  A set practice, yes, but one trenchant and repeatedly told.  Taking off, like Kerouac.  For the Road, my Road, my character and story revisited.  Writing about this office and what it provides in way of prose and specifics… the pens, files, notes, folders, notes to self, folders with self notes and visions.

8/8/19

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