12:27pm.  Lunch in 2260 breakroom, after meeting CTO and having discussion on this company, and what I do, what’s to be done, how to narrate and not so much a how-to but when thinking of this company and how people see us and what we do, what we have pictured.

Got a sandwich, and sparkling water.  Under $8 which is my ideal lunch budget, if I have one.  I do today.  Not too much a fan of this sandwich, but I’ll eat it anyway.  Have to.  People eating here, going out.  Me collecting thoughts after meeting and from day so far, how I want the week to go.  Conversations.  Start as many as I can, however I can.  After this hour or just short of break, catalogue all contacts and conversations.  Log them.  May even start a spreadsheet and I fucking hate spreadsheets.

Drafted a new email, earlier.  Short than the one I used before.  Finding that will be a prime and promising facet to my approach in this 100-day project, and my Sonic story.  CTO asked me, “What could we work on?” I told him nothing, but rather contribute more to existing momentums.  I cited education.  He asked for examples, I replied think-tanks, interdepartmental educations and forums.  Why have I not done that, already, myself? Maybe I could start today.  I will.  Again, conversations.  Conversation.  Learning how to build a business here and draw it, write it, already be there before you’re THERE.

There’s more than a whole book, here.  More than a career.  More, something for people to read, study. If it’s written.  I will write it, myself.

One guy, can’t recall his name, I think he’s rather new to Sonic, just walked by and into the changing/shower room, into the workout clothes he’s carrying.  Would run today but I’m still slow and a bit sluggish, lethargic.  Tomorrow I’ll run.  And meal prep.  Noted earlier that this is to be the best week of my life and certainly my Sonic story, so far.  So.. do everything different.  No wine, all week.  See if that happens, but I need it to. Need to rise earlier than early.  Write more of this book, more of what’s to happen.

Writer in the tech office, saying hi to passing friend from billing department.

Someone behind me playing one of the two pinball machines, another reading a book at the tall counter.  Went over to other building earlier, for meeting with CTO but also to look at what food was, is, available in the breakroom and already since my last visit which was a couple weeks ago it’s changed so much, so much.  I need the same do, today and all days in this week. Write more letters when back at office, shorter is better.  Send them off, to contacts from LinkedIn and elsewhere.  Log everything, everything.

Took picture of sandwich and water so I’d remember, somehow turn into the day’s narrative.  Should title the day.  Title it what.  PLANT.  I’ve planted something, an idea a thesis a direction a something to tell and share with the babies.  I see them working in my office, our office, creating, learning, self-educating.

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project

9/4/19

Day 33.  I think.  Let’s just say it is.  Driving down to I think Novato in a bit.  Should get address, I guess.  Focusing on the consistency of movement, what I’m doing in this office and out.  Today I will be getting in front of people and propelling the same energy from the classroom.  I will be speaking Sonic as I speak literature, wine.  Whatever animates me.  And it’s San Rafael, where my ship heads. The day’s minims telling me, “Do something different.” Break all molds and predictabilities, patterns and known echoes.  So I do.  Will be out of office, the entire morning.  And when back, go for a longer lunch run.

Tonight in class, just talk.  Bring up Dharma Bums when you can, or if you remember, but talk to them about writing.  Have them write, recite, read from each other’s thought plates and manuscripts.  Write more on the board.  Call on people and have ….  No, don’t plan.  Just be present and keep moving.

The latte this morning really having a writer in his determined tumble.  49 minute the drive says, to San Rafael.  Where I’m going in the city, which is on Redwood Highway.  The Sonic story, keep writing it.  Every piece and dote, pulse and frame in this office.  My desk with all its papers, the dual phone charger the Senior trainer just gave me for the car, to charge my two phones.  Work, work….  Go in late to winery this Sunday.  So much in head, write it all, or try.  Hear people talking around me, going to the back to get coffee, start their day.

I think of my own office, where I’ll have it.  Where.. Marin?  Or… Healdsburg.  Windsor, just above KIN.  Fuck, I’d go broke, and more than likely gain unwanted pounds which would obstruct the running.  Running… yes, 7 miles today.  I don’t care how hot it gets.  Project, already a third of the way done.  Deliverables would be more devoted running (which could still be improved), solo flying in this Enterprise role, and minimizing the wine world and teaching at the JC in terms of the amount of stress and actual push and pull I allow it to have on my character.

Writing takeover, today.  Writing everything, even when I’m not writing.  In my lecture last night I talked about there being more writing in whim than in planning or predicting, forecasting.  Just how I’ll run my business.  Today I’m a kamikaze of love, of creative, or a peripatetic randomness and supernova of chance, of autonomous realizations and writings.  One of the theses of the P-O-Z, that drives it and will bring it into further life.

Off to Road.  Restroom first, gather coffee and notebook, then leave. More than likely will hit traffic, but no matter.  I’m looking forward to it, frankly.  I am. Seeing all the people around me in their cars, going wherever they’re going.  There’s so much to write… there’s so much for this blog, this book, this work, me blogging and writing about work.  But it’s not work, it’s love, it’s ME. This is what I write, this IS the book.

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project

9/3/19

Planning the day, more or less.  Forcing self back into character.  Appointments, need to make as many as I can.  Mark told me that when first brought to Enterprise…. Put stuff on the calendar, and good things will happen.  Only thing I’m going to do, today.  Call fiberoptic addresses and set a time.

More with connectedness, as well.  Set meetings and write everything.  Have everything filter down and back to this, this chair, this position.  9:09am, now.  Still a bit early to call anyone.  Will wait just a bit.  So…. Write down all ideas, all sentences and words selected.

Class tonight.  Nothing planned, and that’s just what I plan alongside the dominant ideas and thematic consistencies of Road.

May run at lunch…. Haven’t decided.  Still feeling yesterday’s 5.33.  Could do a short one today, not yet decided.  Noticed I want a lot to happen quite quick, too quick in the day. Irrationally speedy.  So…. Slow down.  Re-reading an email Mark sent me, about this role and certain panaceas to conversion.

People talking around me again and I stay glued to the vision for day.  Month 3, starting today.  ALL ME. My appointments, my times set to calendar, and my conversations.  Have two addresses written, that I plan on visiting, so far.  Was about to ask other AE what’s on her plate but it doesn’t matter.  The P-O-Z Agency is officially, quite officially and loudly open today.  For business.  MY business.

11:54.  Taking a break before my, well, lunch… break.  Tired, sluggish, and I still have class to prep for.  Don’t have too much to do in that regard, but it’s in my head.  Wondering…. Do I have the lunch I packed or go get something.  Indecisive, as I just told co-workers as they talked about what they might get.  I can’t decide on anything.  Nothing.  Mexican doesn’t sound like anything, not a burger, no the Vietnamese place… nothing.  Can’t ignore how slow and weighed I am.  Don’t want to eat in the breakroom, so that eliminates the pizza possibility.  OR, does it.

12:34.  Ate the little pieces from the pizza Emma made at KIN yesterday, and now at desk.  Was outside for a bit, on breakroom door’s other side, at a metal lunching or break table.  Chewing gum now, hoping it wakes me.

Just sent syllabus to 1B students.  What to do, now.  Get out of office.  Go canvass down the street like Lincoln, a senior AE, suggested.  Will, for sure.  Cards in pocket, all I have to do is walk out the door.  Want to have specific addresses written down, targeted.  Don’t want to go out blindly.  Don’t want to do anything blind, anymore.  May get another cup of coffee.  Not just yet, but soon.

Feel like I’m without feeling, without connection today.  Understandable I guess after a 3-day weekend but I don’t want to use that as even a minor, microscopic excuse.  Where I am in the project…. Where I’m going, specific points and pins to hit.  Reminding self.  Writing self.  To and about SELF. What is Mike Madigan doing, what does he want, where is he going, what else can he do?  Create opportunity, set YOUR appointments.

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project

12:24.  Hunger starting to register and fold my attention to my advantage’s antithesis.

Hear people laughing in office.  Just the atmosphere I want at the P-O-Z.  I’m at three vendors for day.  Going to get outside the IT focus, and hone something else.  What. What else can I target.  Not sure right now, day 28 of this project and last day of month 2 as an AAE.  The director just expressed in an email what a ride it’s been for him watching me settle into this role. Next week, my intensification and amplification of effort will surprise even me.

Hungry.  Today’s pizza day in the office.  Every Friday.  Was thinking about running, but no.  Legs still feel yesterday’s seven.

12:42.  Pizza still not here.

1:01.  Think it may have just arrived.  From whenever I get back from lunch till 5, more vendors for P-O-Z.  Will move into real estate, and commercial insurance I’m thinking.  Then, going to go WAY outside the box.  Like…. What?

2:48, after some salad and veggie slices I have things coming together.  Seeing and more importantly FEELING certain ambition parcels coming together, forming this supercontinent of expression and identity.  About to get another coffee, as I want to charge into the five o’clock door like a runaway tank, just breaking through walls and conformist structure and stricture.

3:50.  What am I thinking about, everything.  Digital Marketing firms and allying self with them, and then other professions.  Been flying over and through about a dozen different professions looking for points of connection and intersection.  And, frankly, studying business types, and how the businesses are assembled and spoken.  Today has been a self-educating dose for sure.  I never bore or tire here, as Sonic has my mind in too many places, too many tells, and with more story and creative fire than I ever felt in the wine industry or at least not how the industry had me in the industry focusing more on the industry than the wine, the stories.

Now alone in the barnyard.  Other AAE gone, now tech trainer leaves.  So I’m alone in my words, with them, having them teach me, I don’t know, something.  Walking to restroom and back, many have already left, and some on phone or watching something in their cube.  3-day weekend visual quips, everywhere.  I’m not leaving early, I tell myself.  I’m not tuning out.  Setting a strict martinet stricture, set of habit and pattern, more than just productivity in my remaining riles.

Still sore from yesterday’s run.  I’ll get back out, tomorrow, in the morning at some point more than likely after wife lands back from her workout.  Forget about tomorrow, I tell myself now, in this Now, at desk while so many flee to holiday, or some staycation.  I’m thinking of writing, wine I’ll write tonight, at some point.  Auguring my present and what’s just a few beats beyond it.

Part of me wants to leave early.  And do what.  Don’t know.

Think I thought of something.  I think.

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Project

25.

Quarter of way, MY way, through project.  Going to be on phone a bit today, I feel, and have to prep for class tonight.  But as I explained there won’t be much “prep”.  With how this semester came into my caress, there won’t be any stress, there won’t be any angst, it will be cruise control, the same control I see principally at the end of this project.

I do see self running at lunch, leaving just a bit after 11.  Going to rile self for more than 5 miles, but if the heats upon me sneaks, I don’t know and can’t assure any outcome.  So as now I start the day, not really working, and still telling self “you got this” like so many over and over repeat, I realize I just need to keep talking and keep moving.  No, I do know what I’m doing, I do have a sense of the tech around me and the varying products there are in my book and on some sheet of laminated or fancy paper, but I get that nervous village of nerves in my actual nerves whenever hearing about the tech, or having to.  This is all in my head, I realize when in a conversation as I more than my own hold.  But… the village is there.

At the end of this project of sorts, those nerves, the village, will be erased. Either by actual knowledge or such a comfortable curve in my character when speaking about it that neither you nor I would be able to tell what’s what, and who you’re talking to.  “He just knows his shit.” Or something like that you’d say.  And why am I thinking about the end of the project.  I don’t want this project to end, in doting multitude of ways.  Giving me something new, some Newness to do and swim in.  MY way, that’s what this is, at my desk.  The P-O-Z Agency…. Coming to life.  Humor, music, the time I’m in itself….

Needing new words.  Synonyms or something.  Mom says I’m too wordy at time, and I guess on paper she’s right. But, writes can easily tire of their own vocabulary.  Won’t allow my writing or how I narrate, my SELF, give to any desuetude.  Ever.  It’s rather hilarious when you think about it, a writer, mostly of wine, in a tech office.  An Account Executive, no less.  I love this new story on several notes, but I’m in a self-discovery or realization roundabout.  I’m one of those ADD people that’s not ADD but may be, especially with all this new story and stimulation.  Taking notes…. On everything.  Calling or emailing.  I’m everywhere, I know, and instead of combatting it or attempting to clean it up, why not wholly and wildly embrace my own madness.

I am I will I do I can.

Done with latte.  Think I might need more coffee.

Appointments, appointments, appointments.  Taking kids to school, then having an appointment tomorrow right when I get it.  Prepping for tomorrow, today.  Which makes today mostly tomorrow-y.

Make sense?

To me, neither.

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project

Day TWENTY-THREE

Starting at Jimtown, as often on a Sunday in my wine life.  Since shooting from pillow and sheet, thinking re-start, and re-write.  We have ever opportunities and invitation for re-writing the story, for starting over if we elect.  Right now, more decisions to be maddened closer to Day HUNDRED, so much of the page stack not yet written, and unread.  So, proceeding forward into horizon.

Thinking of essays this morning, what this day is, essay-wise.  The argument.  The centrality, and reality, manifold duality.  Where I am, Jimtown.  What I’m doing, writing before Week 2 of the semester that wasn’t supposed to happen.  What I’m learning, already—no rush.  In this re-write, I see more.  I’m calm.  There will be certain facets certainly cut off.  The idea of work, what it is for so many.  What it could be, why so many don’t let themselves be happy.  Why they don’t create madly, and let the vessel go to crashing.  Making decisions, this morning.  About everything.  Everything for my positions, for my identities, narratives…. Writer in a tech company, as an Account Executive no less, and me in the classroom.  Write everything.  The new bridges won’t frighten if not allowed.  Everything is everything, and the every-ness of each stretch is connected.

Back room at Jimtown, wine life Sunday but there’s more than just wine and this 23rd day in the project.  But…. Place.  More music, more verse, all opportunity and doors open sing to me, to US, this morning and all days.  Stress is permitted.  In this room, in your room, wherever you are, decide to be MAD.  With your story fiery and tireless, moving to your frame envisioned.  I share where I am and my work story from wanting for others to make theirs completely under their compositional control.  Thinking too much will not lead to creative, will not lead to production and the architecture of your aptness.

Just now, caught self thinking, and overthinking.  This morning is precisely what this “professor” needed.  Readings starting this next week, for the two classes I somehow inherited.  Teaching, and teaching what.  WORK.  For students to not only take ownership of their work, but see it as a self-educating ebb.  In my staying thinking at this table, I wonder if anyone else has ever written here.  And what discussions have been had here, and on what.  Who has sat where I’m sitting, what families have been in this part of the back room, and what did they talk about.  Where do they live, full-time.  What brought them to Sonoma County.

What I do for work, blogging and writing about work, but thinking about more than what’s to be thought of, irrelevant of what the clock was, is.  Dismiss my inner-pessimist, and have the day speak to me.  Where I am, what I’m doing in the back dining room of this market, quasi-restaurant.  9:16, should get on the Road in a bit…. Walk a vineyard, let the clusters help me ideas muster.  For the day, for the week.  Can write anything into tangibility in your re-start and re-write.  Looking at every antique and tool and thing in this room, where I’m working.  Seeing the images, work to itself even if not written.  It, they, assist in compounding and composing character.

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20

8/22/19. 

4:47. 

Just now back in office after being at a Small Biz Expo in the city.  Definitely offering ideas and new perspectives to things in the business world and life, but as well what not to do.  I do want to lecture and speak, but I never want to communicate or come across as this one guy, or should I say kid, 26, did.  Talking to the audience with condescending bend and always telling them to say ‘yes’, when he’d ask a question.  I could only question his expertise.  But, one idea of his, or two rather, that I did value was the stress of simplicity and not thinking.  He offered the idea that if someone goes to your site and they think too much, they’ll leave, or they won’t purchase.

Dad was right.  Even the village idiot holds a gem.  Or in today’s tell, 2.

Today stressed creativity and conversation, listening, and singularity.  Nothing I’m at all unfamiliar with, but still the presence makes me take notice, and a different form of notice.  Going into class tonight thinking about my creative, the day and how fast it passed.  How I need to, we all need to, inform and continue to educate our own creative tides.

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18

Seeking to understand and absolutely, definitively embody the Enterprise Experience.  That is the only way I’ll be any “good” in this position, and land those whales that were mentioned in yesterday’s meeting.  Keep moving, of course.  Even when people around me want to come to my area and talk about something, like the struggle of students in the college forum today and the adjuncts and what they’re faced with, something frankly I’m tired of talking about but anyway….

Shaking a mood I had earlier, all over the courses this semester.  Will I keep them or will they be taken back by the lazy tenured rodent that was assigned the class in the first place.  Maybe I won’t keep them.  Maybe this is just the shove I need to turn professormikey.com into a real platform and business, a way to lecture everywhere on writing and reading, on literature….  Didn’t read last night.  Fuck.  Just snuck in a couple lines of Destiny Thief.  Will read at lunch, or tonight.  Definitely tonight.  Oh wait… won’t get home till late. Well, that’s perfect.  Read over dinner, to the rest of that Cab on the counter.

Writing this morning, toward this Enterprise character.  Focus on the most disruptive and profitable product.  Done.  Stay on the phone, and don’t sell.  Just tell them you want to meet them.  That’s it. You want to meet them, and tell them a little about what we do.  Sonic is all about communication and community, but more so than that, creativity.  And, an understatedness of things.  Don’t be so obvious.

Writer in a tech company.  A literary guy speaking and I guess selling internet and phone.  No.. I don’t sell internet and phone.  I don’t sell.  I communicate, I create.  I’m learning this new identity.  Richard Russo says that college is like a witness protection program.  Not sure I agree, but I understand and am entertained by the analogy.  With its own demarche, this building and this desk, me sitting at it wanting to fulling understand this identity, story, experience.

Need a box of some kind for these business cards that I’ve accrued since starting in this division.  Where do I get one?  Just asking self questions, not necessarily expecting an answer, but just posing them to pose them, to make them official or something official-y.  So no, you’ll never find me listed or named in some punditocracy.  I have too many questions.  This blog, if anything, is a question avalanche, waterfall or flood of inquiry. How else will I understand this story, this new position or role, persona, identity, figure, voice….

9:03.  Thought of having another cup of coffee, but that’s probably not the best motion.  Water.  Discipline, remember?  Getting a sparkling in a second.  Then make some calls.  Have a meeting at 11, then a lunch meeting at 12.  Not so much a meeting from what I gather, but just a gathering.  Will need another coffee before too long.  And one before class tonight.  “Class tonight”.  Didn’t think I’d be writing that, anymore.

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