Sonic, again showing itself as a paradigm business providing shelter to its various departments.  Excatly what a business should do.  Not sure what I’m going to do, today, with one of my prospects in Santa Rosa, and two others, actually three, outside the area, not much to do.  Will be at desk adding notes to book.  No thinking, just movement, writing.  Have to get in a run tonight, at gym obviously since air outside is horrendous.  Hungry now, what do I eat.  Nothing.  Fast.  Till lunch.  Go at noon.  Where.  Have to do budget…  Thought this morning on writing on money, budgeting, some strategies, but I should probably do M budget first, huh?

Again, not sure what to do today.  The office is off, you can tell.  But incredibly comfortable and safe-sensed from everything Sonic has in place.  Going to enjoy coffee, not think or overthink, or even partially meditate on this.  The day, and the outside air and sky from fires light a horripilation, slight but still noticeable.

All these notes on desk.  What do I do with them.  Send follow up emails.  Sent a shit ton of emails, letters today… one to old friend, and another to another old friend.  At some point.

First, going to check in with re-term attempts.  Then, send emails to leads. Start conversations… don’t think, just throw kindness and community into the air.

My current book project, CFTS, you know what that means if you’ve been reading, is about not thinking.  Being tired of your own patterns to a certain sway, but as well resolving for something much higher than what you’ve had.  Sonic taunts me to do just this, and doesn’t provide so much a platform but a playground and practices to employ, embody, consider trying, to write my own.

Emails sent.  Now to send another.  Want to organize as best I can this desk.  Or, don’t.  Actually, don’t.  That requires thinking and time away from conversation, creativity.  Keep contacting people.  Start the conversations.  8:45am, and already restless.  WHY?  Cuz I’m thinking too much.  Cuz I’m thinking, period.  There needs to be a partial dismissal of self if you’re to be “successful” in sales.

Tonight I’m going to write for as long as I can without stopping, when home.  OH… budget.  Do that now.

Done.  In better shape than I thought.  The thing about money is to use cash, I’m finding.  Don’t budget from your debit card, ‘cause then you’ll be to the wheels of “Oh, I can take a little more…” or “I’m fine, I’m fine.” With the cash right in front of you, AFTER YOU”VE BUDGETED THAT CASH, it’s either present or spent.  That’s what I’m finding I have to do.  Not boasting self as some personal finance expert, as many who know me will tell you I’m not, but I am learning more at my more advanced age than I did when younger.  Not that Mom and Dad didn’t try to teach me, they DID teach.  I just didn’t adequately listen and incorporate.  Anyway, topic next…..

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…each measure and note, chord and riff.  I become disconnected from my typing, writing, what I am and who I’m saying, what I’m saying.  Not that I don’t like it, but I don’t feel it as I think I should.  Is it the words I’m putting to page, where I am?  The air-conditioning in this store coming on and apparently blowing right on me.  Struggling to struggle, bumbling in my own thoughts and wishing I wouldn’t’ve come here, stayed home and wrote there.  Hemingway looking right at me from the cover of his book and ordering more fortitude, for me to toughen to not have any kind of mood, t hat I can’t afford it— and I know I can’t afford it.  New beat and new beat from me on this page, this day before a new year of self-study and sensibility.

New Year, new book, new me…. Go for a drive.  Leave this Starbucks.  Take your mocha — or latte, sorry— with you and be in the day, enjoy freedom, look left and right and see your new office.  Weather outside, encouraging, bright and sagacious, suggestive and antagonistic.  Suddenly feeling awkward sitting here, writing here, having brought self here.  The air now is aggressively and metallically frigid.  Can’t write like this.  But Hemingway did, in that Café and elsewhere, where the odors were consuming and the weather was “bad”…

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Closer to 37

I step, the less I fear it

The less I fear anything

It’s not even fearing less

But not at all

Not punctuality

Or bills

How I’m seen

Nothing

By now, by this age

I’m this me

Till curtains

Till applause 

And they will applaud

Or at least sympathetically put

Hands in front, shak shak–
The morning goes quicker than me, but I’m behind to still

See its sole back and upkicking.

So more hits on drum, sun

Through window

In eyes

A lecture

To the new number

Add them and you get 10

What does that mean?

Probably nothing

Just me looking for more meaning

More story and symbol

I was a teacher, you know–

Now I’m being instructed.

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What do you do when

You have too much time?  

Is that ever an issue?

I have over an hour to just relax.
And I’m

Not comfortable with it–

Why?

Why do I always have to be working?

Do life writers and bloggers always have to be at a keyboard or scribbling madly on lines?

Ugh… What do I do?  What do YOU do?

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2:56AM–

Couldn’t sleep, so came downstairs.  Still quite awake.  Again with the fork, left keep going, right right back to bed.  I’m going right, in a minute, just sitting in vehicle enjoying the view, quiet.  Other writing fathers know the addictive nature of moments that are so slated in uniqueness that they have to hold them, like the babies, just for a couple clock blocks, small but significant.

Final in the morning.  In class before 7– “Go to bed, Mikey!  What are you, a fool?” Starting to think I may be…  But we are the ones who just act without think, just create from whatever’s around us.  Fridge humming gentle, some clock down here making the most cliched slow tock-tock (not much tick-y to its sound)…  Then the fridge stops and I should go back to dreams, if I was dreaming.  Was I?  Can’t remember.  Don’t think I dream as much as I used to.  Well, not when asleep anyway.

3:04.  Fuck you, clock!  What if I just went at that coffee I made last night, stayed awake, and write even more than I did in yesterday’s advancing morning types?  Not this morning.  Not attacking the 4AM province.  Not this morning.  Know I could, but I’ll bask in last morning’s push a little longer.  Stay just outside its borders and know I could.  But am holding off, just a little longer.  Till tomorrow. That victory sort tastes much better.

(5/23/16)

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I could do it right now.

Just before 4.  3:53 with precision.  And I’m going to let myself fall back into sleep.  What is the remedy for this, this 4AM war?  Back at work today, for what more observations.. Fighting self to stay awake, typing on my phone, laptop in other room, don’t want to walk over to study and get it.  Could wake Jackie, or further antagonize him if he hasn’t already fallen back to his sleep.  Just transported him to our room after he called me in for a quick change (too much water last night before bed).  I was laughing as he chugged his water, saying “watch dada… One… Two…. Three…” Counting every sip.  Tilting his head back quick then calling off the number.  Don’t know why but I found it hilarious and could’t hide my giggles so he kept doing it, me knowing I’d be called at about this hour for the change.

3:59 now.  Think I’m a bit more awake than I was a minute or two ago, but sleep still appeals.  If I had even one sip of that coffee in the tumbler, that I made last night, I’d defeat this devilish hour, but then would go into the tasting room bitter and loathing self.  OR, I’d feel a victor, knowing I finally beat it– well, for the second time, but ONLY the second time.

Almost erased this whole effort, selecting the text then copying to see where I was, word-wise.  Why I hate typing with my thumbs.  This isn’t writing.  But I did write something, right?  I mean, I do see words above this line.  I’m a verve away from rising and tipping and toeing over to the coffee, taking a couple deep pulls of its matter, its dark expanse into my curvature.  “Could do it right now”…  I did, I think.  I don’t know ANYONE who’s done this, certainly not doing this now, at this hour, with the urge to at this quiet hour capitalizing on savory silence, this consumed by and dedicated to their pages—  too tired to edit.  I did it.  A few words at 4, actually starting before.  And in the phone, so stealth that even I forget or don’t realize I’m actually doing it, IT, my It…  The writing life I need to perpetuate, so this can’t be the only scene, doing as Sylvia and Ernie did, be on their level, me being read in the same American Lit classes as them– ma parole, could you imagine?  Have to be extra careful with these thumb pushes, be sure I don’t erase my words’ advance into 4AM’s ground.  Can I save this, my progress?  Should be writing by hand, ink and sheet while with pillow and this red blanket on the couch.. That’s what Sylvia did, scribbled with coffee before her kids were up.  Just one skips all it would take…  But I’m afraid of how tired I’d be later…  This 4AM war is not for the week writer, the idealist… This is for the fighting writer.  The hungry.  The one who wants IT.

Taking a wee break to look through messages, social feeds, other shit, now having to use restroom, maybe get a little further into 4’s territory– hear that word, territory, in my head with British inflection…  Terri-tree… Sounds better, certainly more interesting.  Short bathroom break–

Was told recently this is a fool’s errand, aiming to rise at 4 to write, that I need a good seven or eight hours to sleep, rest, collect or whatever.  That would be what it is in the mind of one who doesn’t write, always wished they would have tried to live this life, enjoy the luxury of judging me, those with my aims.  What IT is, is what I have to do, this is the only in the day I can experience such quiet, peace, and I’m doing IT right now, sub rosa, no detection–  4AM didn’t stop me this morrow. Maybe if would have had Jackie not had all that water, who knows. But I’m here, now, with my sentences and visions.  The only fools are the ones who judge us, make their jealous so visible that they are more blinded by it than us that actually write.  No errand, this is a mission, in a campaign much larger anything the self-knighted judges could ever enact.

Breathing…. Deep like a wave. This time, mine.  If I have just one sip from that canister, just one, I could reach two or even three thousand words…  But word count isn’t what I’m after with these harsh hour sessions.  It’s the act itself, the substance of It.

Now I can go back to some sleep, some rest before the eight hours away—

Heard someone at a neighboring house start their car, go to work maybe.  On a Sunday?  That’s what I should do.  Just get up and go to work.  Before going to work.  This, my IT, is my call, labor trade practice craft—  No pedestrian errand.

(5/22/16)

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