1/22/19

Morning Worship

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Morning air, metallic, not cold and not chilled, but still.  Somehow sweet and encouraging.  Helped start kids getting ready for their first day after long weekend.  Back at school, back to pattern and routine.  Son excited and into what needed to be needed and done but daughter not so.  To coffee spot on Hopper, mocha for wife, latte for moi.  All out door except me.  Here now, before my days starts its taxi to runway.  Jazz, latte, room with no sounds but typing on this leant laptop and Art Pepper, his saxophone.  Haven’t heard much of his work, if any considerable amount.  Unexpected and not in any way forecast, something like this.  Collecting before my first day back into routine, first day which isn’t much a first day at all.  Just a day, a day I don’t want to be “just a day” or jus another.

Mornings and I have had a shift a bit of late in our intersection and elemental overlap and principle placements.  Always wanting to wake earlier, studying the early hours, the earliest of earlier earlies and how I react to them on page.  Some just wake early ‘cause they have to, from a commute obligation or something of the type, and this is similar, this morning and the ones approaching, but a stern contrast in their composition.  How so, and what so, I know not yet and I may not for some time, but I’m here aware and conscious of my consciousness at this hour.

Was watching a philosophy professor from I believe Yale last night, on YouTube, lecturing on death.  Or, the first lecture of the semester.  Not sure what the course title was or what module specifically in their Philos’ program, but he sat on the desk, legs crossed, attempted hip or friendly, inviting visual—in fact, not attempted but quite believable and genuine this man seemed and sounded in his word arrangement and immediate tone—and spoke of death and its idea, significance.  Thought, “Why not do the like with the current, time, right now, what we have and what we see around WE?” What’s done this morning, or I think.  Jazz and caffeine, 7:35 and I have to be out that door and into my day because that’s what grown-ups do I guess. What this character need do, to support kids and family, buy next house and “advance career”.  Do I need help doing that?  Do I need the company at which I labor, a company I very much admire and respect and seek to emulate in a multitude of tunes, to see what I want to see?

Keep looking at the time.  Why.  Habit and obligation woven into one trove or planning and worry, of have-to’s.  Unplug laptop, stuff, device in backpack (like I’m a student, days I miss, I want to be a student—So why don’t you be?  Time will allow and then seem to not but you know the morning, you know the time around and present about you, NOW–), drive to office.  Keep same jazz station playing in car.  Let mind go wherever it wants, on some visual and self-encouraging gallivant and saunter through possibility enclaves.

Yesterday walking around Healdsburg, mid-ish afternoon, taught me about the Now, where I am in it and how mornings need be obsessively heeded, more carefully read.  Need wake earlier, and not just some day, Monday through Friday, but all days.  See what the morning says to me and what blessings if you would, should it or will it disclose, speak and teach to an eager and needy me.

 

8:14.  To make day even more interesting, I don’t work.  My team, Field Sales, not working, as yesterday was MLK Day and we need to observe it so we don’t work today, or something.  So now, at Aroma Roasters on Railroad Square, my favorite part of Santa Rosa which is imperative I visit or write here as I exponentially quick grow tired of this city.  Have noticed this feeling in the past few days, quite prominently yesterday when walking with family around Coffey Park.  Ordered decaf, not sipping yet as it’s blazes hot.  It doesn’t want me to sip or have her touch a single lip.

Morning continues to show me something about where I am and what I’m doing.  Class tomorrow night.  What do I talk about.  Don’t think about it now I tell myself but I can quite literally feel self lose the ability to wait for tomorrow night. Lecturing—No, not “lecturing” but sharing ideas.  People around me in this coffee house which has much more a genuine feel and literary integrity than a Starbucks I’ll say.  The morning, still cold.  A few degrees up, but not much.  Can hear the people around me even with the jazz in my ears.  Imagining self as a student, a student in my class.  Having short reactions to type then longer essays, having to keep a journal (though this semester I advocated for THREE, one for class, one for self I think I specified on syllabus, then one for wherever whenever whatever).  I’m a student but not but entirely so, learning from the morning and its holy contour of an hour, the divine direction of where this day goes.

Email notification on phone.  Old instructor friend I met I think at Napa Valley College, when I taught there a seeming galaxy and a half ago.  Ella.  Now a high school English teacher, full-time, ‘cause you can get FT teaching high school, or teaching high as I often joke, not at any college court.  She writes, “Do you have any suggestions for teaching narrative at the high school level?” Not sure what to say back, so I say, write, nothing.  I don’t want my studies disrupted.  The study of this morning, the odd and just dropped-in-my-lap present of not having to work.  And that I ordered decaf.  That I’m at Aroma Roasters when usually I’d be adjusting a formula in a spreadsheet, or taking notes for week, or…. Something.  I’m here.  In my praising pose, loving everything around me and what happened.  I shouldn’t just not answer, so I do.  “Sedaris”.

“Is that appropriate?” She writes.

Again from me, nothing.  I don’t know what to say and I don’t want to talk, I don’t want to spend the morning messaging back and forth.  With anyone.

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1/21/19

img_0285-1With family since wake.  Just back from walk to Starbucks where little Kerouac bought us all breakfast.  After the walk through Coffey Park, seeing workers rebuild and resurrect the neighborhood’s various little corners and micro-neighborhoods, enclaves and hamlets, many of them waving and saying hi and me thanking them for helping rebuild—Lost in those thoughts and conversations sitting here on couch in home office of home that wasn’t evaporated, that doesn’t have to be rebuilt.

Feeling tired from walk and what I thought about, again with my overthought but then I stopped at the Hopper-Coffey intersection—just write.  That’s it.  Moving past that quite quick, I think of wine and what I sipped last night, what I didn’t buy yesterday with a little time to self going to Bottle Barn.  I didn’t buy a thing.  Not one bottle.  Not even that red blend for less than $20 which I did actually have in my hand but just didn’t pull the trigger.  Didn’t walk it to the reg’.  Why not.  Why didn’t I get anything.  IS wine being diminished as an interest?  I think so.  In fact I’m certain it is.  But why.  Am I getting bored with it?  I’m letting that happen.  I have to make my wine story remodel itself.  Need a different approach to wine…. Play like I noted yesterday.  All my babies want to do is enjoy themselves, play, make everything around them entertaining and interesting for them.  So I do, with my writing, with everything.

After our long walk, the kids watch some Troll cartoon in the other room.  I move to office where I think the sounds and volume will diminish a bit in my favor but it doesn’t too much.  Wife naps on couch next to them, and I write away.  Could use more coffee but I want to cut back and down on that, everything from the lattes to coffee, to anything with any caffeine in its body.

External hard drive I bought the other week not cooperating, I’m still on this wife/elementary school teacher laptop, and I frustrate.  Didn’t wake when I wanted which seems to be my story of stories week to week.  Harsh, harshness, making the story leave the ground and climb at rates seemingly too rapid.  Nice being on this couch, imagining it’s my true office, door over there leads to hallway right next to stairwell taking me downstairs to a door that throws me into the sensory stretch of Healdsburg’s Square.  Decide that’s where Mike’s to write.  And write about Sonoma County from there, from where he feels is the aorta.  Mike walks down Matheson to HBG, where he orders a salad and ice water with lemon.  He takes notes of everything around him, everything, from the waitress to the bartender, to the tourists on their who-knows-how-many-th bloody mary.  Mike only lets himself write.  One hour into his sitting there in the far right corner as soon as you walk in, he’s not even half through his salad.  He thinks about taking the rest to go but he wants to remain.  He’s not in the mood for the couch anymore, not now.  He wants that bench on the actual square, the one next to that one tree, where he can clearly see the art gallery.

Kids still watching their cartoon.  Me on couch, thinking of that office, the walks around the square, tasting in other parts of Sonoma County.  Why didn’t I take sister-in-law’s counsel in ’09 and just write about wine.  Why am I thinking about this, overthinking it, thinking at all….  Last night’s red, a Cab which I did open the night before but only had singular pour, giving me more a rough delineation of Cabernet.  Not so much a brett brushing but something of the tune and tone of brett.  No declination of communication, from what the Cab wanted to say and what I was in the mood for last night, something not passive nor aggressive nor in between, it offered harmonious step and say.  With it wine made a return to my story and general composition and code as a character.  I’ll taste something new, at some point, today.  Little Kerouac may have a play date or something, at some point, wife and her friend acting as present proprietors of that present when it materializes.  May head to Dry Creek, taste some old visits and muse haunts for self.

 

Mike tells Self that wine is still very much an interest.  He tells Self that he asks why he ever fades from it as a topic, as a story.  Mike tells Self he doesn’t know and self tells Mike he doesn’t need to “know”, but merely make it his own.  Wine and its voices and scenes, hills and Roads still very much precipitate and actuate for Mike’s writing, Self notes.  Today, Mike re-opens certain wine notebooks, looks through old photos—Dry Creek and AV, Sonoma Valley, that one visit to Napa with friend Chris.  Not so much the wine that Mike wants for his work as much it is the work itself, the singularity and consistency of wine and the wineries, the people visiting, Sonoma County where he lives, the wineries down the road on Olivet, his sister and her stories from harvest, the old videos that pop up as memories in social media feeds.  Wine has formed Mike’s story, he sees.  Wine is his story, it is his BEAT, and beauty.  Composition of character and sense, meditation, thematic anchor and climate.

 

9:27.  Writing in quiet in kitchen, at counter island, or island counter.  Glass of Brandy mother-in-law gave me recently.  Unexpected gift.  Never had Brandy while writing in fact I’ve never had it before period so I’m not sure what the print will be.  Today tasting at two spots, Sanglier whom I’m more than familiar with and Lioco, a label I’ve been a fan of for years and have only been to the tasting room off the square twice.  Today being the second visit.  Wine communicating in different waves and movements the past 48 hours.  Today was thinking that thought, you know, the one about me having my own tasting room or wine shop, wine business of some sort.  But then I came across this Charles Dickens quote about concentrating on one subject at a time.  Story of my life, or hasn’t been.  What if now it is, with this book or blog on thought and knowing now, the Now as it presents itself to a writer.  Publishing and independent efforts from this house, the office or kitchen or the couch in the office.  This is something I’ll remember…. The Brandy night, with the laundry going upstairs, making that clunky clanky sound, hoping it doesn’t wake one of the babies, or both.  Thoughts, here with me at this counter, with this wallet next to me, the Germany journal, me telling self not to think so much but then that’s all I do and I laugh and scorn self to high elevations then let self fall to ground…  Took another sip of the Brandy.  Not for me, I have to say.  And why am I giving it any focus.  Thoughts hide in essays, essays I’m about to write, ones I’ve written, one I’ll try and finish tomorrow.  Thought, a sword with like eight edges, eight angry and pursuing points, after writers like me and anyone thinking.

The walk around the neighborhood this morning told me several things, made several declarative voices known to my character.  The first, stop with thought, just write…. And stop writing about writing dilemmas.  The second, Newness.  Travel.  Mike needs to get to the world, see as many corners of it as he can.  And how does he accomplish such. How does he sit on some bench in Prague and write about the bread he eats and the people he sees, the hotel he’s in.  Mike starts a new story.  He ditches and sheds everything.  Everything.  He pours the Brandy into the sink.  After one more sip.  He pulls some sparkling water from the refrigerator and starts taking notes.  Writing about writing and what the writing will do.  He’ll do all of it, all of it, for them.  Those two small, needing faces.

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Wife brought home a laptop for me.  I like the unexpected feel

of some other device but then I’m concurrently bothered.  A Pinot for night, not sure how I feel ‘bout that, either.  This say something about how the wife sees me, a serious writer, one who needs to write for happiness, for his mood to be something that’s for home, for the father and husband character needed here in this Autumn Walk Studio.

Where’s the wine.  Over by sink.  10:03.  Should get upstairs soon, to wake early.  Hear daughter coughing, poor little..  Tonight, not a night for the write, the writing of right, to make right.  Can smell the coffee I made for morrow.  Need to brew one more cup, then chill it for the writing’s soon’s I wake.  Should I set my alarm?  Should I write like the notes at work, in 3rd person?  Okay… I should.  That’s better, much more, much more for the Now—

This semester, Mike knows, knows what it’ll do.  Mike tells Self that there’s something he needs to do with this semester that he hasn’t with the others, so many of the others.  The time need be nullified, not emphasized.  I don’t want to use the word ‘evergreen’ like so many in any or whatever business or industry do, but time doesn’t matter.  Today is not today, I’m inclined to write in stray, and just plainly say.

Starting to feel tired, but don’t have much interest in bed, or sleep, or rest, or even a pause.  When does the wife have to give back this laptop.  What if this is the device I write it on.  The book, the book I finish… the book, the book, the fucking book do you get it—

There’s something.  I like the key and their song, sound, song and sound and steps, me stepping with finger form and syllables, searching with some sort of sense, with a new laptop.  Tempted to drink coffee now, but I can’t.

I work.

I’m responsible.

And responsible people see themselves in responsible affirmative.

 

1/20/19

Don’t know the date of the above entry.  Was it…. Wednesday?  Doesn’t matter.  The writer here now at a Starbucks no surprise, this time on Mendocino Avenue.  Was going to write at the Hopper spot but I’ve already been there today and felt odd soon as I left the car’s cabin.  So I drove to Aroma Roasters and there was no parking.  So, here.  A writer’s here with people walking in, only spot I could find, one of the tables with a handicapped emblem in the corner by my right elbow, now.

Small coffee ordered, little cinnamon drizzle in its composition, I placed.  Already had enough caffeine from 4-shot latte earlier, before taking both babies to the Pump It Up building, an amazing locale for kids to jump around in jumpy houses and other inflated edifices, throw dodgeball-like balls and other soft spheres at each other while jumping, go down slides that are do sped and steep that even adults could be unnerved.  After yesterday’s 6.3 run and this morning’s following their every step and climbing everything there was to climb, following little Ms. Austen everywhere she went, I’m very much in need of this caffeine.  Sip… then what to do with day.  Bookstore.  Need the other texts for the semester, start reading, read ahead of students and alongside them.  Starting with Sedaris, his essays.  Memoir, narrative.  This term, with this new geography of students the entire thesis is story, and self, and telling one’s story for sakes of education yes but as well to see, see something in the telling of You.

Was up this morning not as early as I wanted, shock I know, but early enough to get a fair dimension on the day, ahead of it slightly, and be with babies, study their moments and what they wanted to do, always want to do as I was reminded at the play spot which is play.  We need to, as “grown ups” (which is a term very much a candidate for fierce debate) need do more.  Just play.  No destination or objective targeted.  Just be not only in the moment but be the moment itself.

Having a bit of trouble typing on this wife laptop, the one from her school.  Know I need my own set of keys but the expense itself frightens me.  Need use business sense, more of it as a writer.  All cash for laptop put in that envelop.  Right now, not anywhere near what I need for new table.  Like Dad once advised me in one of our many discussions, “Pay cash for it.” Noted.  So now, I just use this.  And, how much a golden slice of happenstance this is, wife telling me, “It’s pretty much yours.” So I need to get used to where these keys are place, arranged, how the board is situated.  Only edit at end, don’t backtrack and try to amend and recompose what’s underlined in red.

Next two days off.  No run today or tonight as wife and I might very possibly have dinner in Healdsburg.  The philosophies and ideologies circling and self-manifesting and manipulating in my thinking Road, thought highway, presently, extend from age, aging, getting older and watching what my babies do.  Emma climbing a wall with little protruding squares where a child can place their feet and latches of some fabric offering a place for grip, like climbing a rock, training for youngers.  I followed her, she telling me to back off, give her space, “I can do this.” She told me.  And she did.  It was that simple, life is, she taught me.  Announce your commitment and ability, and prove it.  Show, don’t tell.  The little Beats assert the easy nature of everything.  There is no difficultly.  Difficulty and or any ardent ingredient is fancied, is something to which you subscribe.  You tell yourself something will be of some tier of hardship and you buy into it.  Isn’t that true?  Yes, it may demand work, hard work, or even loads of hard work and effort, exertions and creative pursuit, but so what.  Anything worth acquiring should.  In narrating a story, your story, you record and relay the motion, the emotion and what you learn from steps and the discoveries entailed.

Not sure how much longer I’ll be at this spot.  I do what to go investigate laptop prices.  I will have to get one, maybe not immediately, but soon.  I want one.  One that helps me with my sessions, and yes I know I shouldn’t be tech dependent, and I’m not for the most part.  But my heart knows what it wants, or it thinks it does, stemming from a certain because…  Reasons and reasoning in everything that’s observed, accomplished.

Slowing down in the coffee sips. Caffeine all too present in the writer’s wheels and engine, general and integral functioning.  11:23, more people come in and I notice more underlined in red.  Laptops have harmed my ability to write, my acuity and prowess in composing.  Kerouac didn’t use a laptop of course and he didn’t, I don’t believe use a thesaurus when penning or touching those typewriter letters.  11:27, thinking of the marathon.  February 9th.  Am I ready, don’t know.  Hope so.  And if I’m not good I’ll learn from it or the marathon itself will get me in proper condition and conditioning for the marathon itself, right then and there.

2019 has me much more without fear and anxiety or reservation, hesitation in saying or writing something, than before years.  Must be the turning 40 thing.  I’m going to be 40 so I’m much of the ‘fuck it’ mind.  That’s my narration, what I’m this year narrating, very much.  From 1/1/19 to 12/31, and then past that.  I know how I want to be read—a writer writing and reading and studying past masters and learning from them, always in the learners pose and practice more so than some proclaimed or self-anointed master or “doctor of philosophy”.

Man waiting for his coffee, standing far too close to me.  Could be the story itself telling me it’s time to switch locations.  How I wish for my own office….  Over and over day after day, then again over and over.

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1/18/19

Mike starts with the normal morning tasks.  But he sees them differently.  With more love, more curiosity, more pace intention and momentum.  Mike tells Self that today will be let to go as it will and Mike will step in only when demanded, and by step in he means grab the wheel and steer in direction different.

Mike gets the necessary items for day done with surprising speed.  He does in fact surprise himself.  He says to Self he’ll be more farouche in his creativity and composition habit for day.  And all days forward going.  Misses class, still can’t believe what happened on Wednesday happened.  Well, he can ‘cause it was raining dozens of cats and double-dozens of dogs.  He needs coffee, he needs to walk around, he needs to itemize and inventory everything, be more calculated, or calculating, tally and examine his calculations.

Weather today, not making much impact on Mike’s perspective.  He writes down three aims, visions, for day–  A thousand words, run tonight, shorter sentences.  Quite simple, to the point, contained and contributing to Personhood and character coherence.  More than self-coaching or education, instruction, or even discovery or exploration.  Self-sight.  Being participatory in his read of Self.  Self, always needing capitalization.  You need to see Self as something prominent if you’re to progress, he says to Self.  Mikes smiles.  He finds something.  And that’s another aim… always present tense.  The Now is Godly, is God, is all Gods and Goddesses.

9:04.  Mike gets another cup of coffee.  His first here at office but third for day, morning.  The morning with everyone walking around happy it’s Friday and excited about the Quarterly meeting and assembly, food trucks later, and of course beer.  Mike vows to Self that beer will not be had.  Not only does he not drink beer very much anymore, the marathon was much closer than he estimated.  He needs to get into runner mode, extremely extreme runner mode.  Get new clothes for race, go for run tonight, at the horrible least 7 miles, 10 if he can.  He tells self that he will have sparkling water, and if there’s none in the tubs of ice he’ll buy one from the market, perceive it as a running expense.

Mike remembers that he has Monday and Tuesday of next week off.  He will run both days, over ten miles each run, and NO treadmill.  The morning sings more to Mike, encourages him more, has him centered and centralized in his own eye and poetic abide.

The office, Sonic as a company and character and business poetic voice has him feeling not so much fearless or invincible, but directed, set, assured he will get whatever he sees.  His sight is strengthened by Self, Sonic, the day, the way of ways in the morning and approaching day.  Mike tells Self that he will see his aims for day, that there is no other Road.  The marathon’s closer, 40 is closer, the new year’s been here for now 18 days.  Storm, Mike says, “Storm loudly and make music never before put to sound, to anyone’s ears or eyes, any senses.”

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1/16/19

The first thought of the day is a window, a door….  A beacon, a shore.  I’m with voyage out, sailing to something.  Coffee, in office early.  Didn’t wake as early as I’d hoped, no surprise, but I’m not letting that decay the day, or pull at my loudness of yay-saying yodel.  Class tonight.  Maybe I’ll share this, how the day started, how one can shape the day.  Over and over the morning precipitates the like-motions and thought shapes.  Today, something different.  Say that a lot as well, but oh well.

Raining on way in, soon’s I stepped outside.  In office all day.  Take lunch early, go to coffee shop or whatever that café’s called down the street.  Shit, are they open today?  Maybe I should stay in office, or write at Texanita.  Why am I overthinking this, or even thinking about it at all.

Notes to self, they’ll tell you something.  Writing notes to YOU, so you can form and frame another you.  It’s not setting “goals” that on one should fixate, but aims.  True visions.  Seeing something then not merely ‘going for it’, but composing a Road to that There.  You start this morning…. You begin where you are in with what you’re doing.  You see the opportunity in where you sit, at that desk and in that office.  It’s not an ‘I’ address but a YOU singularity.  Seeing you as not you but another You.  The you that you reduce to a dream, or some fantasy, some vision.  More than possible or plausibly, but near, nearing.

Time in its motion disregards us.  But YOU, embrace it.  You challenge it.  You control it, you capture it on page.  There’s nothing in time’s pervasive placement that eclipses what you see for you.  Stop preoccupying in a task list.  Write it again, re-write it.  See the There, leave the shore, rush through the door, always create and You-compose more.

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1/14/19

Laptop suddenly working. Don’t get it. Doesn’t matter. It’s getting replaced. First day of new semester. Class starts in 4 min, 1 hour. I’ll be in classroom earlier than that, obviously, if there’s not one of those mindless instructors that is in no way aware of the possibility that another teacher may need the room. Introducing narrative, tonight. The singular idea that will dominate the semester. Narrative…. telling stories. Telling your own story. Knowing your story. Just wrote that last sentence into journal. The Germany journal. What will the students this semester be like. I keep wondering but with so much need to know. It will take a while term to know.

No lunching out, today. Must say I’m pleased with my discipline and poise, for once. Need at least 2k for new laptop. Just updated the OS, here in office. See if this does anything. Doesn’t matter like I said. Quiet in the adjunct cell… good to be back on campus, in Professor Mikey mode. Sharing ideas, knowing students and the student experience better. Put quarters in pocket to go get coffee. Could use a coffee now. Beats always drink coffee, no matter time of day or how it may impact sleep. Who cares. Off to get a cup. Don’t worry, small.

6:15. Back in office. With decaf. Decaf. I ordered decaf. Mainly from being charged and directed in energy enough from today itself, training new hire and now in my element of elements sharing ideas in the classroom.

Everything out on this desk, in this shared office like every other semester on the first day. 17 minutes for computer, in whatever it’s doing. Who knows if it’ll work— WHY DO YOU KEEP THINKING THAT? You’re shedding it anyway, that devil thing you call a writing tool and think a necessity.

Another note in journal, for class— Your decisions in how you read and write, and immediately write from your experiences, or write your story, make loud your thoughts in the present.

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1/14/19

Training a new Rep in a matter of breaths.  Productive day, to say the least, and more than productive but one of significant and exacted character development for me.  Tonight lecturing, know my direction.  Fixation on the story, telling one and writing one, reacting to one.  I must commit to logging everything, this semester.  In and most notably and imperatively outside the classroom.

Starting with a question, tonight.  What’s narration….?  Won’t have them take out notebooks or journals.  Not immediately.  Want them to relax.  Settle in.  Write in as few places as possible, note to this writer’s self.  Two journals to right, Sonic and Germany.  No laptop at moment except for this one, and the computer at home, the one in SRJC office.

Sipping coffee. Had it made extra strong.  The day has soared by me.  Adding Germany journal to stack of materials to take into training room.  Or, meeting room.  Same room in which I meet the Reps, everyday.  In mode, posture and mood and M character of characters—the writer, essayist, and I guess speaker.  Educator.  Idea purveyor.  This coffee is most profitably and pervasively working.

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9:09

Still haven’t had any coffee.  Not one drop.  Part of me wishes for a latte, but that wish and that side of me will go away as soon as the first sip is had, I’m sure.

9:32.  Team gets here shortly.  Coffee at right.  Today, of observation.  Collecting thought and thoughts in what I see, where I am.  I’m more than calm or composed, but in pages, far into the pages I write and the ones I I haven’t written that for the moment stay thoughts.

Don’t know what to do, what to write…. My son this morning telling me he’s so excited to spend time with one of his friends, that grownups have to “do jobs and kids have play jobs”, he cites and takes time to be deliberate with his thoughts.  Emma on the floor of his room this morning reading a book, going page by page, slowly, examining each image and how the characters interact with the other.  She reads to herself then to her brother, then to me, then picks out another book.

9:36 and I feel the coffee already.  Jazz in my head and soon I the car I take from the lot to transport me to SF.  This twelfth day, new year, I think this could be when discipline takes on a topic, or I make it a topic, write a book on it.  Discipline to the point of no Starbucks, no eating lunch in SF, writing in car, running tonight at gym more than the meek 4.45 miles I somehow put out under that incendiary bulb.  Why didn’t I see that there, where the treadmill was.  Didn’t I notice that it was strangely more highlighted and on-stage than the other belts?

Today, new.  New book, new Mike Madigan in character and story, such thesis to me and what I do wherever I am.

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1/12/19

Line at Starbucks, came straight to office.  Yet to get coffee.  Laptop working fine, now, this one and personal.  Cash saved from what I would have spent at bux.  Saving for new laptop, needed, and car.  Today, I will be extra obsessive about writing everything and putting to blog and deconstructing, further considering later.  Everything today, syllogistic in reality.  The money, what I want, how to get.  New habit… writing my own books on waking early, running, budgeting, Equilibrium (not just happiness).  Today, 12th day of the new year and I feel shifts in my universe.  In office now with heater on and me wearing sweater as the temp outside reminds me to pack and dress warm, that it’s pen weather, the climate for composition.

No lunch in field, other than the words, the work.  Eating string cheese right now, pretending it’s my omelet.  Or not so much fabricating but thoroughly believing.  What I see is in no way venal.  It’s primordial, from when I came to the story, my story, where I am now and what’s to be done to get to where I need be.  What I see.  Omelet done, now sipping sparkling water, 8:08, day just starting, the chapter just getting out to runway ready to take off sweater, put $6 in part of wallet, like a back slide-in pocket where I usually stuff money for saving, for something.  Hear phones in other department ringing.  Work, I tell self.  Work.  Aims for day—Lunch by self, no money spent in field, on ANYTHING (even coffee or a latte), transfer money to savings, make credit card dent again (Ahead of that, mind you, the payment schedule.), write random and crazy ideas.  True dreams and visions… the more unusual, bizarre and ‘a stretch’ the better.  Nothing is achieved without enthusiasm but as well certainly no greatness can be lived without being a bit mad.  Or, completely mad.  Made of creative lunacy and embracing whim as this company’s leader has shown.

8:14, thinking of time and each minute being its own teacher and class, moving from course to course, skating in surfing in dreams.  Need coffee, need a pen, journal, already 8:15 and I’m catching the day, writing the book on time and how to rule it, not so much control it but navigate most advantageously your own.  What’s happiness to me, how to live in joyful jaunt, starts in thought.  Acknowledging your decisions, the power of them all and how when you make one the story’s moved one way or the other.  Like with the visit to Starbucks, walking to the front door I told self that if I saw even a small line I would turn around and walk back to car, get coffee at office.  I saw a medieval dragon’s tail of a line, and did just what I said I would.  That that I’m to be commended, but I see the results of the antithetical action if I’d done so.

8:22.  Still no coffee but did some things for work, for my role here.  The office this morning seems more soundless than usual.  I’ll get up and walk to building’s other side, use restroom then get coffee, then come back and do a couple more things, then take a writing break, plan day some more, writing down the wildly seeming-stretch dreams of mine… house in Monterey, apartment in New York, writing flat in Paris, running in the Alps, marathon in Spain… What’s the composition of the bridge from here to there.  What I’m learning today.

 

8:28.  Another snack, still with sparkling water.  I CANNOT eat out in the field, San Francisco….  I paint a visual in my head, a scene, me in car writing while looking out at ocean and I mean really writing in the Germany journal and not on phone or company tablet.  Ask the waves for something, see what they say, listen for their close and concise counsel.  So many have so many ideas on goals and how to “reach” goals and live some standard of living… right now I’m thinking geography, thought, how if thoughts are assembled with certain rhythms and framing that whatever you see for self can be attained.  Bites from snack, listening to conversations around office and some frog somewhere out in parking lot.  The little guy calls quite loudly, like he’s with a thesis for me, some new idea, something to write down.  My philosophy prince, perhaps.  My Machiavelli.

May drive straight to city, not stop at gas station with sales team as we usually do but get to SF as quick as I can, write some thoughts in car, walk around the upper 40 Avenues, listen to some starting songs from the Pacific.  This morning, I’m eased, simplified, set on my Road to reasoning with self how to get that self more self.  Senses of, all that I can find and then later put to page.  A new behest, this day’s thousand, or more.

Tired of snacking, the sound in my own ears from my own chewing so I tell self that was the last bite for a bit.  Last night I wrote about wine for the first time in weeks, maybe more than a month.  Wrote about it seriously and with intimate perambulation.  How the Syrah sang, her notes, I was in a Beat that I haven’t felt in a while.  Like I was back home or has found some instrument I’d lost but now had again and could play just as fluently and loudly and accurately as I could before.  When I turned away from that line this morning I thought of that last glass, last night at the kitchen island counter, and if I would have stayed in that line the same story and rhythm would have persisted and what I want is the New, Newness in each drive to this part of Santa Rosa.  The Syrah reminded me this morning, and last night around 10, that I have time, but not so much time I can be careless.  Not anymore.

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1/9/18

Progress.  Story.  Self-leadership.  Noting everything.  And I mean really doing it.

Have meeting with speakers, later.  Gathering thoughts, thinking about what I can say no matter what topic I’m assigned to address.

With this team I manage, or supervise, I manage and supervise my own actions in a deluge of ways. Seeing everything before it transpires and when it does analyzing and deconstructing each attribute of the action.

Today writing everything down.  Fasting.  If the laptop doesn’t work it doesn’t matter.  Starting over with what tech I use for writing.  Cruising through what I have to today do, with no obstruction or interference.  Needing coffee in hopes the hunger goes away.  Progress.  More than progress, but visible travel.  Today, I travel.  Don’t need to travel to travel.  Ideas, from thought to thought and notion to notion.

Ignoring hunger.  Bathroom then coffee—

11:08.  With coffee.  Will sip in a bit.  Too hot now.  I’m certain a burn will result, if I sip now.  All these papers on desk.  Makes me look busy.  But I’m in cruise control right now, flying but more a glide through tasks, through sentences and the bridge to get me There.

Took a couple notes and now I re-focus.  Or try.  Getting close to something, I can feel.  Going to stay in office a bit longer, tonight.  So….  What do I do for lunch.  Stop thinking about food.  Think about words, I tell myself.  Finishing a book finally and travel, teaching more.  More proximity to other writers and writing books in other cities, in only three or two weeks’ time.

 

3:12.  Done with everything.  Looking around desk, finding project for self.  If I see something, it becomes a project.  Or I move it.  Office survival.

4:03.  Wrapping up this day, preparing for next one.  On tonight’s run, study form, study thoughts while running—why I run, why I continue to run, think about how much more time I have running as I do.  Notice the office starting to calm down a bit.  Notes for meeting first thing in morrow.  It’s not a matter of staying busy, but seeing what I else I can see in the projects I can self-assign, self-mollify.

Have to walk iPad all the way across the floor to safe in computer room.  What do I do between clock-out and Kerouac’s basketball practice….  Get books for next semester, maybe.  Go somewhere and write more, fiddle with laptop.  That goddamn laptop…

 

4:49.  Practice, my son’s, isn’t for another 2 hours.  Should I go run now?  Sure the gym will be crowded as a cow heard packed in a small barn.  Am I making up excuses?  Have to lead self one way or another.  If I don’t run, then I write.  Inclined to run.  Last semester on Wednesdays I’d be in class, then go get dinner then see Jackie shoot his hoops.  Run, Mike.  Run.  Find a tread, and speed.  Work in and from and for more flight.

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