to clock out early and collect.
Have a glass of wine and on day reflect.
Businesses need be built, but letting ideas stay in pause and simmer often proves surprisingly beneficial.
A wine thought.
Laptop again giving me grief.
So I open the bottle of Monterey Grenache I bought at Bottle Barn a bit ago. Not letting it sour or soil the soul of this sequence of time I have to Self. First sip, and I’m spoken to by subtlety’s illustrative principles.
It’s still not speaking to me, doing what it’s supposed to do. This it. An it. Not capitalizing, not surrounding in any quote marks, even the singular. It’s a thing. A monster. A devil. Guess I have to buy a new laptop.
There is no happenstance in patterns.
In YOUR patterns.
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
Nothing dictating how my day
forwards but my own beat and sight.
Knowledge.
Storms of it.
In your own pages.
inward jot
9/21/18
Coffee. Didn’t think I would have any but a nice bloke named Art helped fix the machine. Something with the paper inside he said. Not sure what that meant and I had trouble finding his repairing ability and magic powers but am cosmically grateful for the cup I now enjoy. He had his dog with him, Murphy, a mix of pit and rot and German Shepherd or something. Cute little guy that I though a puppy but really 8 years old. Want a bigger property to have a dog for kids. Working on it.
Out in field today, again. Meant to wake early as I always do but needed more sleep, waking at 630-something then ironing some pants, into shower, getting coffee and wee treat for wife as she has day off, recovering. Me in break room. Saw co-worker who also enjoys Kerouac’s work, walking her dog as I approached front door. Asking her how her morning was and she told me great, woke at 4:45 to go to gym, workout, and here she is. The mornings, I need something from them. More hours, more time, and I have only self to cite for not waking when I want. Prophesying the next 8+ hours. Selling with team, walking around the East Bay today, I believe. Want today to be wild, more wild than any day this week. Written, written madly. Bag on table, person behind me getting napkin from some odd and stray little stack. Writer at a tech company. Love it. Love this place. What it does and what it stands for but I try to find more. Not letting self get breakfast as I did the other day, and yesterday. Yesterday having some croissant sandwich with egg, cheese, meat… felt disgusting afterward. So none of that. And none of the doughnut array a guy who next to me sits brought in this morning. Was tempted. Told him, “Maybe later.” But no. Going for a bit of a literary fasting, ration, penury for sakes of prose today.
An office, versus a tasting room. Then thinking of every job I’ve had, reflecting only now at 39, and where I’m going as I seem to in every entry… Do I want a snack? NO. Fast.. deprivation, a sort of literary and page torture training. What will it do to the psychology of this writer, how he touches the keys, how he writes… what will it do to the book, book? 08:30. 20 minutes about, to collect. People come in here for morning fixes, one man just now grabbing some dry cereal and some cold caffeine or coffee drink to pair. This place fascinates me. The video games, stacked chairs, a jungle of deliberation and fascination, like Duke and Gonzo in the casino, at the bar surrounded by lizard monsters. I look around and see business, me building my story and “brand” if that’s what you want to call it. I just want more, like everyone else. The coffee to me speaks in radiant and radically riled voice and unspoken syllable sets. Going to write everything down today. From today’s poem, poems, to notes on team, the field, sakes ideas, me-ideas, everything around me secures the affirmation of dream-actuality transformation and actualization.
In ten years, I’ll be…. Don’t want to say. By the end of the semester, well, I do want to say. Teaching on writing. Teaching independently. Independent and NEVER dependent on the JC for classes and teaching opportunities. This break room teaches me to write faster, write more, about the coffee and the coffee machine, Art and his dog Murphy, the people getting their breakfast bites, and me here writing like a beatnik having finally found his his IT, moving with supersonic insistence toward a storm of ideological adorned page-forms. Seeing something, then writing it. Living it. Odd embodiment of passion and presence, passion for what’s in front of me and present.
Feeling a but of a famine rumble. Ignoring it. Writing rethought it. If I had something to eat what would I have. Certainly nothing in the fridge. Then what. What do I want. What will I do if this ravenous inner-stomp heightens in any way. Not sure. Just keep with the words, the— TODAY. Today is the IT, the IT of it all. The coup de foudre, for me and this book. Not failed, in any pour, in any sound, in any movement or issue. Today is all any writer should be focused on. I’m here, at work, about to share ideas, about to speak to people, about to learn, about to be more me than the bloody wine industry could ever echo or hasten or hurry. I’m finding not only work here, and nuggets of knowledge, but visuals that confirm the reasoning for why I’m here now.. to work over or about an hour early and diving into pages, a book project.
So many of us fear work. I see that as a decision. I see that as a surrender. What do you want to do for the rest of your life? The answer should always be “Everything.” Try everything, experience everything, WRITE everything. That’s what succeeds in solution, answers, happiness with I think everyone quests. Everything…. “Try EVERYTHING” I started the semester with. And now I the like enact.
More coming in for snack, something to eat. The writer tempted, but I find gems in this starvation and deprivation, a re-allocation of self and functionality.
08:47. Want to be back at desk, soon. Start day. Initial tasks. Notes for field, for me in field, observations from yesterday. Coffee already going cold. I think of last night’s wine. Which one. The Rosé, of which I only had one glass, and the Barbera of which I think I had maybe 1.5. OR two. I deserved it, I reasoned, keeping the 1A class over 90 minutes which made for a 12-hour day, give or take.
Again quiet. Sip again.
Leftovers and red…
Wine never needs to frame complicated. Wine should never direct prolix. She’s inviting, approachable, narrative and affectionate. What’s surrounded by curved glass reads a presence, a prophetic face and storm of versifying lines.
After a day, working, wine waits, debates her approach to me, my life and day and immediate room. The room, now, connotative in resonance, assurance, a perceptive seat. I’m at a table with her, being instructed, listening,eating leftovers and coaching me on Now, this doesn’t have to be layered or codified, and sort of sophisticated set.
Haven’t touched this glass. But the visual and nearness has me. Inward recite, and known night, thrown toward a lone vinified light.
9/19/18
0502
That’s better. Still not 4 but this is the kind of hour I need to wake at in order to get that kind of start in and on day. Today, to be a long one. Starting in office new then driving to SF, then back to office, Santa Rosa, then to class later, 7 to about 830. The solution, not that there needs be a “solution”, as there’s certainly no problem, is to write everything down. What a surprise I say that. But how about actually do it. Not that I don’t, but how about more zeal this time. More singular and definite words, short sentences. More specifics in what I see in the city, on my drive. Where is my voice recorder? Hate using this phone while driving, if you should know, and you should. Not sure why you “should”. Truth, I’m reminded. Truth in the day, these long days. Not sure why it’s on my thinking’s terrain to points of sleep inability. Why am I up? Why am I not asleep right now? What’s on my mind I ask myself. What. Is it the office? Is it the day itself, the drive? Any angst with this new job? I came downstairs to write, hear kids talking and I tell them to go to bed, both in our bed. What am I thinking, this writing daddy, this writer who sees something in the present present. But what. Sip coffee. Not yet. Wait. This hour, the dark of the room and the outside, and everyone out in the vineyards now harvesting their lots. I SHOULD be up. And not just this morning, but every morning. Think I recognized it– It’s that, this. I’m writing a piece on the morning itself, being more tuned in the morning, for it. There is nothing to fear in this day or any other. I have more than a head-start or head’s start on Tuesday. However you write it. I already have the whole day, or have the opportunity to. And it’s not even 05:20.
Coffee. Slow communicative sip, pull from dark puddle. Me, couch, no sound. Awake to have more of day itself. Challenge it. Have it. Know it, already. Beat it at whatever game or field, board it thinks its own. It’s mine, I promise self. All mine. Had a thought of calling tonight’s class, but no I swear to self. Go. Go in tired. Remind them, show them, those enrolled, what a long day is. Teach, if anything, about work. About self. About deciding what the day will say. The day itself has NO say. That’s all us. Me, up now, thank the Craft, not so much collecting or gathering thoughts but being with self. Quiet time, like I tell the babies when they have an unreasonable volume about them at an inappropriate hour or any hour.
39. 40 next year. And still in a search of sorts. Think I found something, actually I know I did, with tech. This new office. A tech company and office and being around characters with more technological acuity and awareness than I’ll ever have. Not that I can’t be them but– No. I can’t. And I don’t want to. I shouldn’t have to. No one there is making me, which I love and more or less can’t believe. They want me to be me, this writer and blogger. They hired me for me. Realizing that this morning could be one thing keeping me up, disabling me from going back to sleep aside from the coffee. This morning I’m 39, tomorrow I will be too, but one morning I’ll be 40, then older and older. Age is only age if its acknowledged and credited. What if I stopped crediting it. What if I decided age is unaccredited. Like some two-bit, hair-brained for-profit college. I can do that. This morning teaches me to only see what I want. To work harder. Just now, I grieved a bit, that I didn’t start writing right when I came down but rather used the restroom briefly. 04:50-something. Can’t do that. Here I am, I’m awake, what are you going to decide to do. Am I “figuring out life”? No. But I’m definitely not letting it tell me what’s possible, what I’m allowed to do. What I’m capable of doing.
Waking early puts you in a different world. In a different role. You’re not yourself, not the same character if you’re used to doing this. There’s a challenge and a stress to it but with concurrent ease, meditation. From where I’m sitting in this house, what used to be my office, I won’t be able to see the sun rise but a gradual lighting and progressive brightness, brightening of the day itself. Which saddens me, but only if I dwell. I don’t let self. I listen to the nothingness heard in my home. Son sniffling a bit, the fridge humming behind me, my thumbs tapping on this phone, its screen. Being in the city, San Francisco, wakes me. Those thoughts. Thinking…. office, drive, walk around city with sales team, meet with them, then drive back…. when lunch? Maybe I won’t get one. Grab something, maybe. On go. No fast food. Haven’t had in over a year and the last time it made me quite sick.
Mood turns. Not sure why. Time rushing. 05:40. Only so much time left. Typo… fuck. My frustration compiles like my pages. What do I want from day. Where am I going with this entry. In tech. With writing. With teaching. With 39…….. Stop. I fracture the inward scold before it holds me, holds anything. Yawn. I’m tired. No I’m not. I’m eager. For the day. For work. For more writing. Speak into phone if you can on drive down. Be careful of course, but don’t fall into a complacency mitt.
More meditation, more questioning, more drawing of what here is now, a month ago in the wine industry doing the same thing over and over and o…… And now, this. Waking before six. A thousand words and for what. What will I do with this. What will I do with me today, these opportunities. The day will tell me, I’m sure. And I’ll tell it something in return– I’m deciding and writing how everything’s to progress and situate. The pages are mine, all of them.
9/18/18