Play

New Year starting with Jack getting sick, some sort of stomach bug or virus or something.  Melissa upstairs with him in bed watching a Harry Potter movie at little Kerouac’s request, and me down here with little Emmie as she plays with Harry Potter Legos and shows no sign of slowing or letting with her in the moment and breath to breath plot twists and turns and circle-arounds.

Grading WILL be done by end of day.  Will write students in a bit and let them know about my plan to have their grades posted by end of business on this first day of a new year, and I think decade.  I guess technically yes.  Latte nearly done, and I just listen in to Emma speak each character’s lines, how she moves each character one way or the other, then goes into more words, more lines.  Her in-the-moment inventiveness gives me ideas for my AE story, for MY business blogging, and several other dimensions and ideas.  First thing written today was ‘Design A Day’.  Playing with the phrase and word order in a multitude of molds.  First, design the day you’re in, meaning design each hour and each aim in those hours.  Then, each day there is a design to be written.  On this first day of 2020 I’m with unique sight and life in my now-design.  My Now, now.

Have to drive up to parents’ house to pick up something, then from there may get a cup of coffee, or maybe even a sparkling water somewhere. Starbucks at 12&Mission, and grade.  Start DESIGNING next semester.  Speaking of, I do plan on this being my last term at SRJC.  Well, possibly.  It saddens me thinking I’m not teaching there anymore.  But it has to happen eventually I guess….

Ran upstairs to get Melissa’s mocha, come back down here and heat it up a bit then back upstairs to deliver, check on Jack, Jack reaching for me, “I love you, Dada…”

“I love you too, dude.” I answer back. “Anything you need, let us know, okay?”

“Okay.” He answers, softly and with more life than he had earlier.  Wondering if he ate anything funny but no only the same ravishing apps Melissa got us.  So I’m at a loss.  And at a loss of strength seeing him get sick, and not being able to do anything.  Luckily, Melissa is right there with him, refusing to leave his side.  Now back down here listening in on the play Emma directs, I only smile and laugh a little at how amused and amazed she is by like 5 or 6 little Lego men place atop a box standing upright, the box to the Lego set itself.  “You go fiiiiii-iiii-iiiirrrrrrr-rrrrr-ssssssstttt.” In a mock-echo tremolo voice.  I laugh again, ask her how she’s doing, she turns around just gives me a thumbs-up.  Laugh again.

Self-study, in this new year.  Same way I study Sonic and what it embodies, how it came to be.  I’ve always expressed amazement, since my first week in the office, how a tech company made me more a devout, routine writer.  Going further into this amazement, this act, how Mike Madigan is changing shape and tone in character and how he thinks.  He turns 41 this year—And with the fashion of object consideration, deconstruction, any type of analysis, Sonic showed me and repeatedly reminded me of the value in seeing me not as me but as a character in a story.  Growth opportunities and invitations, doors and windows for Mike Madigan to not just walk through but explore from.

First day, first design, jump immediately into the song, the music, the beat and only beat you wish to keep.  An influx of redux…  Write more in 2nd person.  Play and make things up in the moment just as Emma actuates and annunciates her play, her characters and what she wants them to do.  She sells nothing, only does.  Makes the play proceed.

Tomorrow in the office, send more emails than I ever have.  Everything written, everything more concise.  Less is better, yes, but more so the focus in effectiveness and rich communication in brevity’s clef.  Each day in this new year to have a singular word, octave and sight, life.  Today, PLAY.  Just play… enjoy each scene, each hour, just as I do each of Emma’s words and bits of spontaneous and in the moment dialogue.

10:57.  Emma asks for a band-aid for one of her toes, even though she doesn’t need one I go on a hunt.  Don’t find one.  Back in the chair.  What next in my play, in this first day.  Post to all blogs then take notes on D.A.D., Design A Day.  Today, movement, stay moving.

Emma finally retires from her play, and demands to see Melissa and Jack.  Hurries for the stairs with a galaxy-wide smile, and humming.  Mom once told me I have more than enough to write about just with the kids, and an old friend told me in 2011 when we first met that when Jack is born I should write about being a dad.  And here I am with a near-8 year-old and a spunky little 4.  Smile to self, and even with the rough or sickly start to the new year, this is a new year.  One to study, build, compose, PLAY.

The kitchen quiet and I miss Emma’s little voice speaking for the Potter Lego colony but I have my own voices to listen and contribute to.  Mike Madigan, new character and form… write about self objectively as I did when the Field Sales Supervisor noting certain activity, punctilio, and dialogue lines in the Field, discoveries and revelations, the Leads with their monthly aims and me encouraging them and asking for a little more explanation in certain points and parts.  My aim today is to write the DAD plan, more or less even if small jots and fragments.  Today, playing but quite intent in this new year—Getting my own office, not just ‘close to it’.  Travel…. A bigger house for the family.  Getting rid of that goddamn Prius.  Don’t stress, I remind self.  Just play.  Enjoy the day.  Enjoy the music.  And, Mike will.  With new Sight and Life in his Now.

1/1/20

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1/1/20

Each day, a design for that day, and each day its own type of design. The design can be applied to certain interactions and occurrences…

When you design a day, you have designed something in your story, for that day and others.

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12/30/19

Focus is theory,

When you mention it in bulk.

Walk with more meant whim.

Wrote this write before run.

Now a couple hours after the run I’m having trouble focusing on anything.  Tired a bit, and indecisive on where to devote my creative dote.  Connecting with IT vendors in Marin and SF, organizing desk and readying for own office, at some point in this new year.  Yes, coffee need present.  Keep moving, stop trying to be so organized and orderly.

The Eve, tomorrow.  Going to work a full day, I decided days ago.  Talk of us being let go early, but I’m not letting go of my projects and efforts.  The sales I log in this AE stance and walk will reflect the effectiveness of my creative work, how I’m having it drawn, how I have it planted and playing in my thinking.

4:04 now.  What can I do…. Write plan for tomorrow.  Get here at 7:30, do worksheets, then launch into emailing.  I’ve noticed more reaction to letters I’m sending.  The writing will materialize what’s been in my eye since starting this.  Thought arrangement a little sloppy and slow, try to move effectively.

Done with sparkling water, now definitively need coffee.

Need boxes for all the things I want away from this desk area, that I’ll have in my eventual office.  Or maybe I don’t want an office at first.  Suddenly intrigued with self, that I could be mobile and starkly minimalist.  Was told the other day that one of the AEs works out of a coffee shop.  Just he, his laptop and phone.  Intrigued…. Not saying I’m going to do that, but….. what about the LAB on Mendocino, the coLAB.  Think I can afford the lower tier membership just to get in, and I can get additional hours since I know someone that works there.  Pretty sure.

The coffee tastes magical, honestly.  Work today is holding my hand to the dimension I need be for 2020.  Without any possibility of fail, I WILL wake tomorrow at 4am, and write only about Sonic, or the principles and mandates, theses here embodied.

2020 will put me on the Road, and will have me writing for life.  I’m not leaving Sonic, ever if I can help it.  There’s too much here, there’s too much to learn and create, write, from.  There’s just too much.  Why would I ever leave.  I won’t.  I’m not going to.  So I can stop talking about it now…

OH SHIT… have to pay for my bottle of Sophia’s, from Lancaster, that I took yesterday… half a bottle of it left, I think.  Tonight needs to be a wine night, and I’m looking for more ways to blend Sonic and that world, that story of mine which has been present in my present and persona, Personhood, since ’09.  Actually, before.  Anyway I need to call…

$18.  Not even.  And for a $60 bottle.  Wine’s world will elevate this one, this tech/telecom/internet field.  Work is work, and I’m seeing the technical talk and plugs are more less ancillary.  So what wine am I opening tonight, that will augment what I do here?  One of the bottles Mom and Dad bought me for xmas.  What I’m thinking now anyway… teaching myself to write more carelessly, free, and attached to my meta, the desk or the living room where I was yesterday morning around 5:30-something when I woke from some odd dream and just wrote.  3000 word essay that I still have to edit.  Add that to the project list.  May come in even earlier than 7:30… or, take this laptop home.  Thinking too much about it, I know.

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Whenever you have something blocking your writing, or thoughts, keep writing and thinking anyway.

Write about the block, think more about it.  Write about thinking about it.  Don’t think there’s so much to it.  In writing, you sit, you react, to what’s around you, to what’s in the text.  And why not blend the two.  Reality in the room, then on the page.  That’s all you need to have keys pushed, or ink lined.

Blocks have to be acknowledged in order to exist.  You decide what’s true and part of your thoughtful truth and what need be dismissed and to the side pushed.

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Back from Novato meeting.  New accrued knowledge on fiber install and voice offerings for prospective clients.  Hour and forty minutes left in fast.  When back from run, I’ll eat something.  Thinking one of the sub-par sandwiches from one of the refrigerators, this building’s or the other.  Or maybe I shouldn’t run today.  Take the day off.  Think Bill, the COO, also a radicalized runner, does on Wednesdays.  If I do, I could do back-to-back 7’s Thursday and Friday, which would put me at 27 for the week.  I think.  OR…. Do 5k today, then 7 and 7, then I’d be at 30 for the week.  Like that better.  I don’t know.  I’m going to go out, but not even close to an hour’s worth.

Decided I’m to stay late tomorrow, and come in for 2 or 3, maybe 4 hours on Saturday, after my visit to Aperture Cellars.  The workload isn’t excessive, I merely need to schedule every hour, all days.  Use Sonic Calendar for everything.

Thinking some water is needed.  No more caffeine.  Cut back on caffeine.  MY GOD, I have too much of it in my system.  Natural energy and beat, not something coaxed by the product of beans, some somehow-justified chemical. 

Seeing, the only thing I should be doing at this desk, is generating revenue and prospecting new business.  Expect my entries from desk to be shorter, curt even, seemingly less interested though the fervor and fire still is very much intact and kept.

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8:32

11/13/19 – Day Three for the second pass at 100.  In a mood this morning.  Coffee helping.  Was going to go to sbux for the usual morning latte, but traffic on Stony Point was more monstrous than I’ve ever seen, so I immediately rules NO, turned around in the street off to right, not sure its name, and headed to HQ.  Meeting in BMK at 10:30, then back to office.  Have two proposals to work on, really 3, then have speakers group at 12:30.  Somehow have to find time to grade.  Should I not run today?  NO, you need to run.  Just don’t do one of the longer routes.  Maybe 2 out and 2 back.  That would bring me to 17 miles for the week, I believe.  Growling inwardly as I didn’t wake early, no shock.

Knowing now, from work, I need go further into my truths, into my narration, I’m now understanding, looking at the clock stare back at me with numbers 8:36 AM.  Much to do in day, but I’m turning off the boat’s motor, and letting natural gusts encourage my travel, production this morning.  Really, I don’t have to move intently till 9.  Have 22 minutes.  5 hours left in fast.  16 hours, this one.  Stopped eating early last night as I was tired, done wit the day, decided to be lazy and watch one of those Paranormal shows, a mistake, rather than take notes.  Just little notes, that’s productivity.  Why didn’t I do that?

Questioning self and wondering what’s at the end of this 100-day dash.  I know, and I see it, I merely need practice and tie-in more discipline.

Grading some small works from 1B class.  Letting go of the stress and mood of the morning.  Set appointment to revisit a site in Petaluma.  Going to come into office on Saturday, finish some contracts and get better arranged and organized at desk.  Now, 4am is not something I wish to do but have to.  There is no other practice for a writer and business blogger like me, to know my Now and free self of moods and nay-saying twits around me that only complain and devote energy to citing what’s missing and wrong with everyone else rather than assemble more sight and beat in their own narrated place.

This project, this new bunching of 100 days where I’m to study each step in my character carousal to his There, to what he sees and needs and dreams, me here thinking that I’m thinking too much, and that if I were to wake at 4am how so much would be solved.  Not feeling too much of yesterday’s 6.3 miles, or the day before’s 7, so I might try for 5+ again.  Not sure, but need time to collect.  Not stress, be in my story and lead my one-man militia to liberation.  Sonic….. if I didn’t have Sonic, if I were stuck in a fucking tasting room still, I don’t know what I’d be writing.  Never mind that.  I’m here, seeing IT.  The IT to it all, all this… what I’m writing, what I’ll be speaking tonight in class.

Cup 1, done.  Time for another.

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Nothing written today, from being as busy and centered in my AE story as I’ve been.  Which is good, no?  Readying for class, which more than likely I’ll let go rather early.  8 mile run, not feeling anything right now, but know I will in about an hour.  Thinking of going to break room and getting coffee, some water for the #pozvibez flask, or tumbler.

Nothing planned for tonight, and that’s just the way I want it, the way it should be.

Sipping coffee slow, water tumbler loaded, ice and water.  Surprised there WAS any ice in the machine.  IT’s usually ice-less.  Something about that ice machine I just find funny.  An ice machine.  Don’t ask me why, or maybe you should.

Should get off clock in a bit.  Head to campus, plan something for tonight.  Like what.  Planning… planning something to write.  A narrative on you.  Start there.  Right now writing a plan with tomorrow’s checks.  Payday, hate that I look so forward to it.  The next 100 days project will be enormously focused on finances, making my money do something for me, for the family, for business.  Less eating out, buying more for home so the house will be the restaurant, the wine bar, the café, the everything.

And, another thing for the next hundred days, write more freely. Think less, if at all.  Freewriting and humor need be free and not at all concerned with inhibition or if the humor won’t land or connect.  Freedom in writing, something about it has a seductive nudge and note that I can’t ignore. I of course endorse and advocate it, speak of it with the highest of loves and esteems, but I don’t practice in a way that aligns.  Right now, I’m thinking… about what.  Yes, now I’m going to make fun of myself… about class, about what I do till class.  Tomorrow, the drive to San Carlos, the meeting with the property management guy, then the drive back and that fucking traffic on 280 or like last time on 101, then 19th Avenue, then the narrows (Novato).  Fuck I’m a mess, and not from anything around me.  I’m creating trash and contamination in head through thinking.  So, now, and in the coming project…. NO. THINKING.

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4:07.

Busy day, and I love it to its crucial and intricate bits.  Ready for class, and leads meeting tomorrow morning.  Run planned for tomorrow, early.  Thinking another 10:30-er.  Want between a 10k & 7.  8 if I’m feeling crazy.

Not much to write except for some new contract types I learned, visit to business along Bennett Valley Road, wanting to surprise Jackie at his school, say hi and give him a hug, but I had to get back here to desk and take care of what was needed.

Snacking on some cereal I had sequestered in drawer.  Didn’t write out lecture for today, so just quickly jotted notes.  Going to talk about book, writing… need to do something different. Think much the reason I’ve become disenchanted, or disengaged with teaching, or anything, is because of pattern.  Pattern is poison.  Do more than switch it up, as people say.  And I hate when they say that.. when I, say that.

Talking… learning, about how THEY learn.  What they want to learn.

All that’s left to do for me is EOD, and a couple other shifts and arrangements, re-arrangements.  Teaching self again to write without thinking… freewriting, right?  Supposed to be FREE, even of self.  So… free self of self.  What?

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11/6/19

8:01.  Had some coffee at home that was in fridge chilling from a few days past, but now some more.  This morning, my mood in the highest of atmospheres and my ambition is with fangs out, ready and hungry, fearless and formed uniquely in the early hours.  No distractions at home in morning, no procrastination, just left out front door.  Not wearing the shoes I wanted, but that’s an easy amend, mend.  Will write out aims in SW journal, but not before coffee.

Coffee cooling.  Then make list for day. What is it in this morning?  I’m flying without flapping or moving and inch of a wing.  Now… even with people around me grieving, complaining, or gossiping, I’m focused and fixated on my place, my story, here at my desk.

Will write something on happiness.  All I’m feeling this morning.  Eyes on my page, my work.  Not talking at all.  Here early… listening.  Machine-gunning through what I need do.  Happiness is something we self-proscribe, perceive. If you want to be NOT in a content composition, then you can actualize that.  Opposite is also easily attainable.  Today I’m choosing joy through productivity, and not letting others’ words get in.  This is very much in my AE log, my manual—or maybe not manual but map to AE autopilot, when you can converse and transact, interact without anxiety or double-clutching, second-guessing or self-doubt.

Cards all over desk, still. And there’s still a few I haven’t touched.  Today though is about re-terms.  Existing customers that haven’t yet signed with us.  I have a visit later, with a new prospect, that I’m quite sure will sign with me.  I’m partnering with another AE on it, one more senior obviously and I’m quite excited to see how he’ll approach and speak Sonic’s identity and set of remedies and availabilities.

Stay learning, stay a student….  Last night in class I voiced once more the idea of avoiding mastery, staying a student, developing your own style and voice through movement and constant creative perpetuation.  Today, embodies and enacted, forwarded.  Forward.

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2:37pm

Been going all day.  ALL, day.  Meet contractor at house in a bit, then coming back to office.  Prep for class, and start framing 2nd 100-Day operation.  Going to write the entire thing, if I can. Still have to finish my goddamn novel.  What a shock, I feel all over the place.  Sipping coffee, then some water after this.  Get up and go to market in back of building, get sparkling water, Blackberry Bubbly.  So quiet in office now.  Did some whole department, or 2, go to some meeting? There’s a voice, one usual loud one, then the laugh.

One aim for this next project, firm and immovable daily DO list.  How many items, doesn’t matter.  And I don’t have to hit each thing, each day.  Just attempt to touch as many as able.

Don’t want to call anymore people, nor email.  Feeling patterned.  How do I make atomic my AE steps, presence, voice, consistency of conversion.  Absolutely shock the whole fucking company?  Had an idea on my run, my shitty 3-point-something run, where I became exhausted right before the intersection of Stony Point and Sebastopol.  But I’m here, and doing what I can.  Hearing people cough, hoping I don’t catch anything… How to get There, that’s what we all ask ourselves, or the ceiling or wall.  Don’t lie, you know you have too.  Where is that throw of thought going, I couldn’t tell you.

Nearing 3pm.  First word for tonight’s talk written…. FREEDOM.  How we get it, why seek it, is it ever attainable.

4:41.  Another contract, the re-term I’ve been fighting for, comes in.  Ready for class tonight.  Not bringing laptops home.  Get here early in morrow’s morrow.  Bringing the AE journal with me, the endless falls of tips and how-to’s, musings and suggestions.  Two contracts in today, and I know I can’t celebrate.  What worked, how did I approach, what did I say. How do I amplify and actuate some transformative atomic brushstrokes?

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