But not stopping.
I won’t.
I have MY work to do.
Number coincidences, with the times in the article, and the word count being 529. Today is speaking to me, telling me to break from wine’s fuckwit industry and only be and write here.
3:26PM. First deal closed, today! I’m celebrating and rejoicing a bit, but I’m very much tempering it. Have to “keep the party going”, as I said in an email. Made a couple calls, now to make more. Haven’t done much else but make sure everything is in order for this transaction. Nothing on books tomorrow but a couple calls. Will be on phones but the aim is creative… creative approaches to conversations and interactions, creative ways to prospect. One guy I met said to write down as many people as you can, that you know closely and well and not so. Don’t look at people as prospects, look at them as people, people you want to get to know. The literary approach… get to know their story and narrative. The literary approach I have with wine will even more prove useful and relevant in this business. Writer in a tech office… of course, of course!
Eating PB&J wife made me, just now. Tired a bit after workout, but not to a degree with impedes my motion’s place and application. New ways to speak this company, what it does and what it means, more than the simple list of products and services. That’s certainly part of it, but it’s NOT the entirety. This sales teaches me that I need to even more break any mold or template. Not that I’m sticking to one, but write more post-it’s that define Sonic, that speak and SHOW Sonic. How can I catalog and list, or even post what I’m thinking right now, after this first sale and after a Senior Account Exec told me I NEED to be in front of people. She called my speaking eloquent and strong, and being on the phones is absolutely NOT the only path to what I’m after.
If a passenger in a car, or anything,
don’t nap.
Don’t just scroll through whatever.
Stay creative, stay self-directed, motivated, impassioned, connected and projected.
Don’t let yourself slow.
Don’t let self succumb, to anything.
Use each mile for production, crEATive, YOUR work.
Give yourself new
projects.
Always antagonize more crEATive.
6:10pm
Quiet
Stay busy,
through lunch.
Keep writing, have your story speaking louder and reaching far.
Find lesson in what’s around you.
The place is your place, where you are self-placed and paced.
6:04. Back from Field
and ready for home. Rain in Berkeley, my sweater still a bit damp. Office thinned, with people working. Quiet, but not. The Inside Sales team of course animated as always. This place with it being a work spot of energy and technology, creative, never truly stops, or sleeps. With me writing about it, I notice the difference between morning mood and atmosphere to now, 6pm and later. There’s a contrast, but not. Maybe it’s just a different collective character in the office. I study the texture and language of this office, even when I should be clocking out, going home, getting running components ready for coming day.
Now, walk across floor, all the way to the other side of building to room where Field Sales is based. Put tablet in safe, make sure closed, then more steps back to here.
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.
Taking this lunch to regroup
not that I need to, but more accelerate in the momentum that I’m in place put for self 
today. Cruised through the to-do I composed, the list that is, on Saturday and a bit last week, and feeling alive this morning. Just noted that I won’t let the semester stress me, and I have been. Not sure why. This is my last, and I will enjoy. Talking to students, today. Nothing to rush-grade, so that’s a relief. Thought this morning on “writing the book on”, as it’s said with so many things, waking unusually early to get more a jump on the day, what I have to do. What I have to write. To do yoga and stretch, my pushups and planks. To see the dark of the room, waking earlier than anyone I know and bringing to fruition more than anyone I know before they’d even have an option. There’s definitely a competitive edge to this writer, today.
Going to talk to class today. About the paper. About writing. About the day. The essay… understanding what it is. Understanding where we are and what we’re doing. More a meta discussion and ideas exchange…. Seeing me here in this break room which is also a warehouse of sorts right now with a forklift moving about and boxes being moved to one side of the floor then other, driver honking that odd, meek and metallic-sounding horn. Me smiling in love with where I work now, everything I can do with words in tech. Tech. TECH. Yes, I’m in tech. My tech revolution and reconstruction you could say for my literary life and being, practice. Nearly done with lunch, or eating what I brought, but not my literary lunch. More to write, more to reflect, reflect upon, the poetry of everything I see and hear, one of the guys to my right finding a pingpong ball, bouncing it a few times, walking to the other side of the lift to be sure the driver’s measured and aligned most optimally. “Safety is the most important thing right now, safety is THE most important thing.” He says. I note it of course and wonder what’s most important to me right now. My kids, family, MY business, this business, my mission here.
Still over 40 minutes left in sitting, so I’m not concerned with time. Not at all. But running out of observations in this room. So I go outside of it. One Ginger Ale in fridge. My eye on it. Still a bit hungry after what I brought. Not letting self buy anything. Saving. For business. Other things. Life, I guess. Saving to save as a friend said to me years and years ago. Not that hungry anymore. Only for words. For verses. That poem I wrote the other night in class, with the 1A crew for an open mic activity. Looking at the fork’ and the driver and wondering if I could do that. Never did get certified while in wine’s industry. Not sure I would have wanted to if I really had to. In fact tI was pretty vocal that I didn’t want to get cleared to do that. Could see myself puncturing a box, some pricey case or putting some oddly-shaped hole in a wall, or barrel.
In re-grouping, I’m everywhere in thought. Eager for the semester to end then saddened by thoughts of not being in a classroom. But this is where I am, this is what I want. Wanting to sell the services of this company, speak its language. Be fully present and learn from what it teaches me. Thinking I might have to leave… the talking is getting to me. I should leave, sit in one of those space-age-looking seats just outside the door. In re-grouping, wanting creative discussion tonight, on writing, on self, on health, on work, on getting what you want, on making something your own.
In one of the space seats with just over 28 minutes left on my time, time for me and if I am regrouping figurine out its objective. Whatever that means. I have no idea. I’m just delighting in the day and the cup of coffee I just made on floor to my left, smelling it but not yet sipping. Could write forever about this chair, or pod, open-egg seat. I want to swivel and move around in it, play, but don’t want to look funny. Had a thought for tonight, on feeling funny about writing, feeling odd when reading your work, the odd relationship even the most practiced writer has with writing. Finding out more about self in my writing life, my writing practice, why I’m spending my entire lunch break, essentially, and ACTUALLY, working. Yes on a project for self, but still working. Find out more about ME as a character and writer here in the first 3-4 weeks at an ISP than I did in the 12+ circular, repetitive, terminally lateral life in wine’s business. If you could call it a business. Told T the other day, and a week before that I think that wine isn’t a business, it’s bullshit. THIS, is a business. The office, was citing.
In love with this chair, how it feels to sip coffee in it. Just took first sip. Not too hot, thankful. Rest of day, more note taking. Been scribbling since I git here, everything from thoughts to the time, to what exactly I was doing, to… well, everything. I write about happiness now, how I find it, or thinking I did. I left wine’s industry. That was meteoric in movement significance. Co-workers walk by, ones I’ve never spoken to, smiling and comfortable, no stress or at least visible. And me, here, feeling comfortable and eased enough to post in one of their Jettson-y chairs. There’s something here, for me. Something. Everything. The remainder of my life. No more jobs, no more applications, no more waiting, no more interim. I’m home. Just getting started, at 39. I have a life to write, that’s why I write about. And everything assembled to resemble and radiate, read from and for happiness. There… I’m more than “re-grouped”.
9/17/18
8/23/18
Noticed a typo in last night’s entry, to the ATLAS Peak Merlot I was sipping, but I’m not going to change it. On property. Last day in the industry, at this winery, working with this company, and onward to the new office, the new assignment… Working in “tech”, I guess you could say, but I see it as building community and contributing to an already-astonishingly impressive client relations and customer service culture, at Sonic.
Not sure how long they’ll keep me here today, as my final check’s already been cut and overnighted to the TR. This is it. I’m leaving. Tomorrow at Sonic, and I only want to learn, meet other creatives, and expand my story, learn more about myself and business, people, and what the community wants.
09:19. Should be packing up, but I’ll give myself a couple extra minutes. In a cubicle, in cubicle-ville, villa. How many writing sessions and sittings have I had in here stretched backward into 13 months or so. I feel… I don’t know. Amazing, yes. But a bit in disbelief of my reality. 12 years in the wine industry, over. It’s time. I’m not excessively reflective, just in study. And I, in now way, failed. In no respect AM I failed, in having so much of my life in story in this industry, behind those counters, in all those tasting rooms. Truth… that’s what I accumulated, pocketed, appreciated. Finding that I don’t anymore need be here. Even Stephanie, the new Tasting Room Manager here at Roth, someone I’ve very much if you must know grown to admire, inferred that I’ve graduated. Coherence, cosmic. The Story is speaking directly to me, offering new directives and dimensions, telling me to write, capture everything today, your last day, and purpose it all for tomorrow, the new story. The new people, the new assignments, new KNOWLEDGE.
Hear someone coming up those loud steel stairs. Mick, the Cellar Master. He and I talk about all the barrels that still have to arrive before harvest. Think he said like 300 more? How are they going to fit all of them in the warehouse? How will they survive this harvest, which is schedule to be I don’t know how many more hundred tons than last vintage…. See? I still care. I still love wine, and even the industry. But now, I just write it. My heart and attention, my cognitive epicenter, is at Sonic, with what technology and the internet, what information can do for a home, a business, a person… a community. COMMUNITY. Now, I’m always with sight, and never a lowered lid.
09:27. Ugh… need more time to write. Left late, a bit, this morning with babies taking them to school, in Bennett Valley across town. They teach me more than I can ever write or inventory. They are my knowledge suppliers, those that go to throw me the sagacity fix, feed my beggar’s call for lesson, for new thoughts and gems, philosophy, life, all of it. There, now I’m ready to walk down the stairs to the tasting room from this villa of cubes. One final flash.