Monday.

Something like a day without a name and you only know it’s Monday ‘cause someone else said it.  Sending emails, looking for connections, contacts, the same.  Prepping for class tonight in a virtual sense virtually has me certain of certain things.  Like what… well, where I’m going. What I’m meant to do with my pages and words, this quarantine, the blog, the books, the books that come from blogs… can a blog come from a book?  I don’t know if there’s an order, or anything in this type of day.  Monday… the first of the week where I’ll run all days and wake up at 4 going forward.  How will I do that.  Bed earlier than I ever have.  And no matter how cold or chilly or whatever it is outside I’m getting out there, and running.  No excuses, no thinking about it, just running.

Writing in the quiet house with family gone… relieved, and already missing them.  Yes, this quarantine if that’s what it is has me wonderfully all types of all fucked up.  Should be prospecting, should be networking, should be should be SHOULD BE…..  Taking a break.  Already lined up one appointment, followed up on some email communication, and now what.

How much do I have in wallet.  Not sure why I’m wondering but I am.  Shit, okay, like six bucks.  Shutting down the spending.  Famous last words that I spoke as recently as I don’t know yesterday…?  The quiet forces me to consolidate, simplify, recognize what I’m taking with me when this period passes.  Quarantine indeed, from several attributes and realities, exposures, character voices and intrusions.

Monday in its metaphoric step and street assures what comes next.  And, frankly, it’s everything.  Everything I’ve written that I will and would do, see myself doing, presents itself to me and me to it when this quarantine’s over.  Frankly, I’m celebrating the quarantine, and you should be too.  And if not celebrating it then seeing it differently.  See the boon to it, the boost in its anatomy and what shape it takes in your day.

You need to stop thinking, completely.  And just start writing, creating, moving, changing what you want changed.  It’s Monday, so start in this sitting, where you are and what you see in front of you.  Looking at phone, don’t make calls.  Call to self… collect.  Where are you going… what do you see for yourself.  What story do you want to be read?

Education in the day, in what you’re doing, how you deal with this whole thing… by not “dealing” with it at all.  Living in it, creating through and out of it so that reality you see and have always seen for self finally lands.  Something landed, today.  A Monday.  Another but not another… the contract, the speak, the Newness to it, to you.  What will you do.  What new and renewed truths do you pursue?

Think it’s lunch.  What do I get, make, look for.  The indecisiveness in this quarantine has a rich and unexpected value-quality to it.  Need explore that more.  You, AND myself.

3/30/20

mikemadiganLeave a comment

from this morning

Drinking coffee from home, here, from that old ass Keurig thing.  Did I spell that right?  Guess I did.  Want a latte, this isn’t as tasty or literary, or animated, sexy like a latte.  Latte is just fun to say.  Coffee is boring.  What’s to this cup but something hot and containing caffeine?  Should I do Starbucks, just one last time? Swear I’m going to quit, just not swearing on anything, like a book or relic, some person’s lungs or anything like that.  Yes, one last latte. I will even title it so, the last latte, but with caps eventually.  Looking at my cup here on desk, and want it to go away.  I feel it just oozing boringness and more stress into my story and this desk, scene, workstation homed.  So yes, I’m getting wallet and some cash, and going.

                Kids… how do they stay as lively and excited as they are?  I guess from Jack’s way of not caring so much.  And haven’t I encouraged others around me, sales reps and community college students, so?  So…. Do so, Mikey.

mikemadiganLeave a comment

3/24/20, Tuesday.

Is it Tuesday?

7:53am.

Just finished editing JPR.  Sent it to management, or HR.  Have to get out of house.  Raining outside still, I think.  Doing more of this objective analysis or furthered consideration of self is showing me something this morning.  That’s what the JPR is…. Job Performance Review.

Pack bag, and pack light.  Work at coLAB for a couple hours.  Then bring lunch home for family.  No, there’s stuff here.  Save money, I keep telling self.  What did I buy yesterday….  Groceries, and a bottle of Whitehall Lane Cab, 2016, Napa Valley that I wanted to try.  That yes was a bit price-high, but I reasoned it as writing material… an article, which of course I haven’t yet started.

Thinking about the blocks thinking provides.  Thinking about category, and length, how to write and what direction to take a project.  All that impedes.  Last night working a bit on phone, posting a couple bits of narrative, staying up later than I wanted, I saw the lesson and peril to thinking in a more realized radiance than I ever have prior.  So today, logging my lack of thought, and embrace of whim-spun action and creative.  From my home office, in the quarantined corner.

Jack making another visual with those “pearler beads” I think they’re called.  Nothing obstructing his mood or movement.  He just goes.  Hits the runway and flies.  I need to be at the LAB, I tell self.  Go get dressed, writer.  Then drive there.  Treat yourself to a coffee, I mean LATTE.

 

9:23.  Breakfast for wife and I, me a latte, breakfast sandwiches for babies and I’m at desk.  Not writing aims for day, but rather will log everything that’s done rather than to-be-done.

Sent estimate to potential new client.  Now time to prospect.  Where do I start?  Novato… everything in Novato and San Rafael invites.

Can hear kids getting restless already in other room.  Quarantine… wrote earlier there’s more to glean.  Like what… what I always emphasize and remind students of, myself as well.  Magic in the Meta, where you are and what you’re doing.

10:55am – After Jackie having a bit of a mood crumble and avalanche, I’m finally back at the desk.  Not even thinking prospect or prospecting anymore.  Starting to become annoyed with both those terms, frankly.  Just hoping to start conversations, and let them develop and evolve naturally.

The quarantine is staring to shape my head and thinking pattern a bit..  Need to set aims, I’m thinking now… first, one poem.  Then another, another…. Go check in on Emma, and little Kerouac.  Designing day, new architecture and production climate –

By Noon, three poems.

By 1pm, ten new businesses found (in addition to what I’ve already graphed).

By 2, writing new notes in journal.

By 3, all letters to other AEs done.

By 4, plan tomorrow hour to hour.

By 5, office-clean done.

mikemadiganLeave a comment

Dream Call

So much to log from day…. Running 3 miles with kids, wife telling me earlier that she wants to as a family thin or get rid of, pull, the weeds in the back yard.  Jack and I took the lead, surprised how into it I fell.  Wanting to pull everything, work with Jack, compete playfully with him, saying from time to time “JACKPOT”, and he wanting to get a jackpot.  Toward the end of our shift clouds move in, rain came, but only lightly and what felt like raise the humidity.  Later, before going to store for some quick gets, thunder rumbles that were the most significant I’d heard in a while. I ran back in the house and got both babies, just as Dad would’ve done when I and Katie were little, when there was something to see.  Both were exhilarated in a way I’d never seen.

When back, Thunder still playing its tracks for me. And a couple bolts seen.  I again ran back in the house to get them, holding Emmie and telling little Kerouac to put on his shoes.  Emma distracted by kids from the street riding around the circle didn’t see the flash Jack saw.  Today speaks to me, in a new quarantine dialect.  Sipping a Little Sumpin’, Lagunitas, and wanting to collect more.  This episode in our history, this “pandemic” and the reaction to it.  Escalating my value of time, my life… more thunder, write more it tells me.  Storm on the page, in life, tomorrow at work working from home in how I prospect, look for new businesses.  Build MY business… educating self in my Now and sharing ideas with others.

Letters… will start with one now.  Not disclosing name… telling character how it’s been far too long, too much time separating a letter back-and-forth.  Of course life happens, but still.  I fault myself.  I fault me wandering sight and wanting to take on everything I can.  In the quarantine, or whatever this is (not much of a quarantine as I went for a run with both babies while they rode their bike, see life differently.  When you can normally do you can’t.  No wine tasting, no dining out, no seeing friends, or family.  Mom telling me that her and Dad want to do a curbside visit.  They want to be safe being older I guess, which I want for them as well, and want the kids and me to be safe, I get it.  There’s a shift, though.  Don’t wan to go over and over the whatever this is in the letter.  How are you… What are you targeting?  Feel like I don’t know your character as I used to, and even then I should have known it better.

Letters need consist and constitute more of what I do as a writer.  One letter every day.  And yes, that can count toward the 1000-3000 word aim.  Letters…. With the prospective clients as well.  Show them that I’ve done research on their company and show, not just tell, or better transport them to my interest in wanting to work with them.  ‘Nother baritone throw of thunder….  That means I’ve found something.  Cemented conviction.

JACK. POT.

mikemadiganLeave a comment

Scoundrel Juror

3/20/20, Friday.  7:47am.

Day three of whatever-in-place.  Woke this morning with a bit of an attitude, but I want to capture more of this.  More of what this is like, to be kept n place as the result of an order.  A couple people posted to a prompt on one or both of the blogs, as I posted the same prompt on both, to narrate what’s happening.

Had some wine last night, a Grenache from Inspiration just up the Road.  Bought it when up there during their mock-barrel tasting the other day.  I, as many, just want to be able to do that.  THAT, just go out and do something.  Yesterday getting takeout with Jack and being able to have a beer and little Kerouac a lemonade made the day, make it more normal and literary… we were moving, we were doing something other than being locked in the house.

Just after waking and standing on soles, I thought how this thing has alone taken out all three income sources.  It hasn’t, since I’m sure the JC will issue a check, and I know Sonic is going to still pay, but not sure about FFW.  Even if it does as the other two do, this thing has prevented me from doing much if not all of my work, what I do for these bodies.  I can’t be in the tasting room or on-property, I can’t be in the classroom, and I can’t walk from business to business saying hello and letting them know I’m in the area.  This thing has taken out a monumental parcel of my production.

What this tells me…. Write more.  Rely on the writing, this blog, all the blogs… just put everything out onto the pages and into whatever sphere.  Forget about waiting, I tell myself, waiting for some book-type page collection to be collected.  Everything out, NOW.  There is no more waiting, there is only taking… taking what I want, what I need do.

Response from Director, saying I have a solid plan for the day.  Great.   Just hope it produces something.  A lead, a conversation, a response, or even some new knowledge, some new business facet or field to address.

I’m a bit becoming undone, but that’s when you write.  That’s when the true and enriching freewriting momentum materializes.  Have coffee, but still cold.  Laundry going upstairs…. Putting self on a fast for the day.  Nothing, all day.  No latte, either.  Only coffee straight.

Kids playing upstairs, giving self project atop project.  Now after 8am, and the day is off the runway.  In flight.  Alive.  Sipping whatever blend out of son’s coffee cup, the Spider-Man one.  Never could figure out why his name is hyphenated.  The cup I bought one night after or before getting takeout from KIN as I did last night.  Been using the cup for the past few days, definitely the whole time being told to create in place.  Something about the Spiderman face on the front, and the eyes, how my son at a younger age was obsessed with this character.  What he did with the webs being shot from hands and more or less flying from building to building.  Kind of how I see myself as a writer and blogger, going from topic to topic as some have noticed and felt the need to remind me but I’m still Mike Madigan.

Locked up, ordered to create a new reality in place, from this new reality.  How I interpret.  Hear kids playing upstairs, going a bit batty. Now I want to as well.  Why work when I could play.  Truly, it’s my incarceration, and MY day.  Write about that Inspiration bottle, that event, what brought me there.  Plenty of work on this third day in the capsule.

mikemadiganLeave a comment

Knowing Now, FREED

Starbucks down the Road from Sonic’s HQ.  I feel more Zen in all molecules and movements than I have in some time.  From being honest with Self.  You have to be, finally… about certain things.  If you deny, or interpret it conveniently, then only more trouble compiles.  I’m not going into specifics, and I don’t have to…. The specifics aren’t the intention of such a note… it’s the pattern, the habit, and practice.  Diving into Zen practice, Zen ideology, and habit, mind, more than just some trendy mention of mindfulness, more than even me being here physically acknowledging certain realities, and behaviors.  Knowing your Now entails so much beyond the Now itself… but what brought you here, to where you are, where you’ve been… why you’re doing what you’re doing, why you’ve done certain things and traveled in particular directions.

This morning, waking around 5:30 and heading here, to this same Starbucks where I’m not sitting and working and thinking about the past couple days….  Here I am, like this, in this sense and mind.  A mind and way I love, where the Zen envelops me and teaches me about the directness of life, directions in one’s story…. There are choices, then there are circumstance possible given from some other being or force, or collective individualized intent.

Not sure what I’m writing, or even why I’m writing, but I know there’s a trajectory I want to avoid.  For all sakes, for all pages.  So, honesty.  This Monday has tested me in certain arenas, then encouraged me in others.  Realizing that there need be a shift with the ship.  One step, I guess…. Sales Meeting in 1 hour, 11 min.  Then class later.  Then home.

One jolt in my world, anxiety… separation anxiety from my kids.  Writing it makes me tear, but I know fortitude is the only electable echo and forward.  Eating carrots with ranch, part of some lunch box that came with a sandwich, and a sparkling water.  Collect, I tell myself.  Wait for more connectedness from the day.. more instruction.  Think about your kids… how you want them to see you, study your actions.  Be deserving of study.

My age, and having these realizations.  What does that mean.  Where am I going.  What more can I do.  Well, I finally know.  So no attaching self to past.  No more in-place holes or ruts, stalls or cells.  I’m here, I’m doing it… re-writing the character.  Writing the entire story.  Me, where I am and what I’m doing… knowing my Now and its entire composition.  Sonic provides more composition, more than a platform but specific composition of a bridge to get me from one reality to another.   What I put into circulation, how I treat my bones, veins, brain.  Staying on the page, the first motion to line dividing sky and sea.  Music.. all of it.  I’ll make it all music, musical, a healing composition.  No matter what happens next.  Unafraid, eager, writing more, clear images and steps… a renewed beat and beauty in my promised truth-speak.

2/3/20

mikemadiganLeave a comment