Writing freely, done with coffee on a lazy Sunday not at all lazy.  Getting Starbucks for family then going to the jumpy house place up the street, then taking Jack to Epic Center, or Epicenter, and now home.  Was about to take a nap, but no.  Going through old pictures, a couple of them, and wanting to take more but not having any time to go out and shoot.  I’m a writer, not a photog, but I do want to get out there at some point and take some vineyard shots or pictures of production.  Something.  A media company, maybe.  Media and publishing.  Using what I have.. family, the kids.  Me.  I have everything I need.  And no more overthinking.  None.  Done.

Jack still over there watching Peter Pan.  2:46.  Hungry a little.  Found one picture that makes me think of my vineyard walks at Dutcher Crossing, or right before I’d go into work.  Seems like another life.  I move on.  Not Sonic and learning from it to get me to where I want to be… which is with Sonic and with my company.  Collaborating somehow.. telling their story, and imitating their ways, their discussions with communities, their focus on education internally and mentorship, goal-setting, life.  Business and life balanced like it is in no other workplace.  Anymore I think often I write about work.  The concept and obligation and place of work in our lives.  Why we do it, and why would we ever do something we hate for a living.

Waking early tomorrow.  My word.  I’m giving it here.  Writing about the 4am hour, what it does to me and how I make work out of it, a business…. A life of waking early and wha life would be like if I just continued waking at 6-something.  Which is a respectable hour, yes, but that’s when the house wakes— kids, wife, family.  I’ll be up before, far before.  Look at picture again, light and color.  More of each in my pages…

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Not going to get in 3000 words today, just like I won’t more than likely even get in a thousand, or like I didn’t wake at 4am.  I’m on campus, after a beer much needed, and now I’m composed, with character composition, or so I tell self.  Ready to be home.  Tomorrow morning I vowed to workout buddy and self that I’d be on the treadmill.  4-something A.M.  Who knows.  Today was odd.  Not bad, or negative or something bringing me to some lower ebb or rhythm, just odd.  Off.  Off-putting.  How do I get out of it, by pulling self out of it, thinking of my daughter this morning in her pink or light purple Batgirl dress.  How happy she was once putting it on and how much in loud screech objection that she made sure I heard and succumbed to.  I’m here, on campus, thinking of essays to write… about work, about wine, about music, about jazz, about me, about essays…. Sonoma County, the fires last year, making wine, my sister making wine, driving, being an adjunct… anything.  I’m in thought and won’t let self step out of its clef.

Why did I start the piece proclaiming there was something I either wouldn’t or couldn’t do.  Maybe I will hit 1000, or 3000.  Who says I can’t.  If I overthink or excessively measure as I did early today and in fact all the way to this sitting, even when sitting in the Whole Foods taproom seeing self tonight and what I wouldn’t teach and what I didn’t write today at lunch, telling self I’d go to a Starbucks and write when really all I did was have a sandwich at another Whole Foods and talk about he wine industry with an old friend.  Should have written but pushing self with the fact I didn’t is an anti-fact, serving no purpose for purposes of reflection or growth.  Certainly not any kind of success.  I’m putting certain projects on hold, deleting rather than adding.

York Peppermint Patties on one of the conference room tables.  On my second.  One of the few candies I’ll actually if I see, eat.  Too relaxed to teach.  Need a glass of wine, some freewriting, some time with kids, in home, family time that I won’t ever be able to get back and wouldn’t have if I we’re to stay for the whole 90 minutes I’m expected to lecture.  But I was just evaluated.  Received a yell, a howl, a loud choir of praise on page.  But, now what?  What happens now?  Will I be more able to land a FT position, were I to apply?  No. Do I get a raise?  No.  So… where’s the encouragement?

I move away from that topic and back to the day, back to writing, back to knowing that more self-study’s ordered.  An instructor walks by the room, down the hall, into mailroom.  He checks his little box or slot then walks off.  No headphones.  My jazz, Mr. Coltrane, loud.  Or audible, at any rate.

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As someone who obsesses over work,

and what work he has to do, what I have planned the next day and the remaining hours of this day, I am honestly with nothing.  But I make myself write.  One student tonight saying one of her goals is, was, is to wake at 2am to get ahead in her studies and I assume write a little as she does write poetry and write in short lines, short stanzas, pieces that span only a page.  And I say ‘only’ out of awe, that she does so much to a page in only a page’s pulse.

Was nearly too lazy to write anything tonight.  Told self, “Just a hundred words, per blog.” But I can’t hold self to that.  Should I do what this student plans on doing?  Should I set alarm for 2?  Isn’t that the time of the artist, the writer and poet?  Didn’t I read that somewhere?  On my lunch today grading papers and writing in the Sonic journal as this goddamn laptop didn’t want to let me use it.  Of course, now, I do push the buttons and have a note in my writing normalcy.

Finish the fucking book, I tell myself.  Like my son said tonight as I poised to make his bed with new sheets, “GET TO WORK.” I am.  I say the same to self.  

Sip the Barbera I popped last night. It, she, more calm.  Me the opposite of anything tranquil at the moment.  Working in the home office which isn’t as common as I’d love to tell you it is.  But, WORK.  Work.  What I write about.  Force self to write when I don’t want to.  I do write about wine, but that’s not my only onus and thought light.

Now, I’m like a train with this, these writing thoughts.  I, not failed.  Not failing in my aims.  I won’t allow that.  No one should.  Why would you.  You are here, once.  And I’m not addressing the fact one only lives once…. I’m speaking to myself and you, that where you are, right now, the opportunity and life invitation to bring a project to completion is singular.  You see it once.

You are a train, if you wish be.  Some unknown animal of fruition, bringing works to an offering stage.  There are only stops that persist acknowledged.  So acknowledge none of them.  I see so many of these speakers and motivational-who-be’s profess all this counsel but don’t consider the most apparent reality… the audience member has to decide.  They only elect to act if they bring themselves to movement.  Tonight I could have just as easily poured this red from El Dorado, sat on the floor of this home study, went on phone and scrolled through some photo pour.  No.  We decide to draw, paint new plausible for our Personhood.  Decide to move, be alive, mentally, alive, wildly alive in all movements of your steps and actuating saunter. 

What work does for and to the character is animated in divinely lucrative chant.  Dodge the task, never.  Distractions and suitable sanctions to project-dodge are terminal.  The panacea, always, is preemptive production.  Never, labor deduction. 

10/15/18

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At Sonic, thinking about the drive to SF.  How I make it different.  How do I do my job differently today, in some creative dash and direction, decision.  Not sure what day it is, into my placement and life here, but I’m more than connected and convinced of everything I’m doing.  Coffee from yesterday on desk, of course cold, from that I sip after the 1.5 or so cups I had in home.  Feel the early wake.  4:50-something.  Took screenshot of time but don’t want to waste time pulling from pocket, phone.  No… stay in character, stay in composition stride.  A little tired, just felt it for first time this morning.  Have to call SRJC to see what classes are left for me.  And if nothing, then that’s confirmation that I need be atomic, hydrogen bomb-like with my independent work.  The blog, teaching, lecturing on journal art and practice, habit and maintenance, Plath and Kerouac, words and philosophy…. Putting self in the atomic act preemptively.  Done.

Learn from everything, I remind myself of my own lectures and thoughts offered to classes over years.  A tech company, teaching me how to be not just more a writer but more a teacher, more a journal keeper, more into my surroundings and me and where I am and what I’m doing.  Not bringing laptop into field.  Just paper, pen, in Hemingway trend.  Find coffee spot, continue in jots.  Agin feeling tired, in this break room with my cold coffee and people walking in and out starting their mornings not saying much looking at the fridges for something to eat and not being so easily appeased.  She grabs something, not sure what. He still looks.  I still write.  07:49.  Will start for desk at 07:55, I guess.  I’m indecisive, as I’m overthinking. I am.  And that’s another thing I remark over and over, semester to semester— overthought is writer-death, as well as goal-death.  So why do I do it.

Cold coffee, not antagonizing.  At all.  Stopping not to spill out and get some hotter than hot, utterly smoldering and hell-poetry cup for meeting with Tasha.  Las night asking class, “What does the main character want?  Why?  What’s missing?” Only now, a bit more than 7 months till 40 do I see what I want.  What was missing and that the wine industry could never provide.  Here.  At a tech office, working for an internet company, firm, group…. I’m learning.  These seats more than me feed in my tireless knowledge need.

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I’m awake and working out.

Did first hold right before five. After that, push-ups and planks. Some sit-ups. Not really counting, just wanting to keep motion continuous. Set stop watch, not a countdown. Just keep the motion motioned, what I’m telling self. 05:12.

Conscious of the noise and mood of the morning. Everything I do on this hardwood or just wood floor make a sound, loud thin and audible. Like an airy crack, or crackle. Wife leaves for her workout offsite. I start coffee. Vowing tomorrow morning with the day off I’ll go to gym at 4-something. Not only enhance the shape I’m in, but start a new way, new story. Yes another promise, more so though a plan than remark avowing anything.

Can already feel the little I’ve done. In legs from hold, abdomen from pushups just a moment ago tallying 100, and arms from planks and pushups. Time for coffee.

Didn’t post thousand words from last night before class. Will today from whatever coffee spot I can find in the Sunset. Sight 1 for day is that, coffee and composition in the City. Second, hit a few doors with the reps. Then, a poem while walking whatever avenue we’re on. One of the views yesterday from 28th and something, I just looked out at the ocean like I saw something or someone in it. The air’s olfactory makeup told me to keep walking and keep watching. Feeling some goal or aim, some aspiration or creative desire sprint from San Francisco, for me. And if it weren’t for Sonic I wouldn’t even be there having these observations and reflections.

05:31. Waking this early, a badge of sorts. Hear son move around in his bed, and if he wakes early and breaks this sitting, I don’t mind. It’s part of the story. Part of the story but the whole of who I am– writing daddy getting in whatever time I can to write. At work at my desk between little addresses of some spreadsheet, or organizing, or prepping for some meeting. The subject is me. The story, each page, and I never need be sorry.

The workout, over. Me on couch in qualified dark, fan light overhead on my dim setting so I can have some isolator writer mood in here. I keep forgetting it’s harvest right now, and so many of my vino people are out there, right now, pulling clusters from rows and into bins, into a gondola pulled by tractor, a driver up early and away from his family, doing what he needs to them feed.

05:36. I feel like one of them, right now. One of the early. One of the characters they defies law, the expected, that doesn’t sleep in. They can’t. Their minds won’t let them. Mine won’t let me. At all. This morning I’m alive with Sonic and supersonic thoughts of speaking, words, fearlessly sharing ideas from one city to next on work, business, writing everything down and so many say that and never do and if they did, my god, it would not only help what they do but wildly and poetically shape their business and their place and placement in it.

Could go back to bed even if a writer wanted to. Hell, even if my body and functioning orders em to. My thinking’s of a beatific defiance this morning, and only accepting sentences. As a workplace, Sonic tells you to be more of you, it challenges me and how the wine industry never could– Telling me to not only keep doing what I’m doing, but intensify. AMPLIFY. Diversify. Play with form as you do in poetry, poet. And more. More.

05:41. I ask myself where the time went and nowhere, nowhere. It’s still very much presented and around me, present. Gifting me with this couch and all the musing I need for a day in the city. Will I wake as early tomorrow, or early as I have written… I have to. I know how I’ll feel if I don’t. I know my mood if I won’t. Set alarm, every movement today for tomorrow’s early steps and words, lines, however many miles I run on tread or however many reps I finish. Not waking early, and I’m citing hours like this, is in no way literary. Writers don’t sleep in. We can’t sleep, for the most part. We deplore rest, and idleness. Just laying in bed and scrolling, sitting on couch watching a show, or just hanging like a coat from some hook, some executed prisoner from a tight meanly knotted and enclosing circle.

05:47. I love this. I do. I don’t have to think about what to write. It’s right in front of me, blatantly. No sun or suggestion of it through the glass door to right. This is true morning to me. When the sun steps and straight lay stands communicating with the world, its day. It’s started. The day is off and you better find a way to catch it as right now you’re surely not ahead if you haven’t been up. I’m here, knowing I’m ahead of the day. Time again, my topic. Twelve hours from now, I could very well be in traffic. On 101 somewhere. San Rafael, the Novato narrows, Petaluma. Somewhere. I have twelve hours to do something to my story… I do it. Start the timer. 12 hours. Get to work and collect in writing for a bit, then attack tasks. Reps get in before ten, so we head out early. Quick, this Friday. My writing will equal, rival, buzz by pacing.

Son definitely awake. 05:52. I could get a stet in day, again. Teeth and shower, dress, pack, take stuff out of bag as to bring laptop for written lunch and be lighter while hiking the SF streets. Keep the motion motioned. To halt is to fall. And I can’t. Not this close to 40.

Diet for day… Coffee, only healthy snacks, no full meals till dinner, and then do note to lightly eat. Speaking of my beloved coffee life… I sip…

10/5/18

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In the book’s development here in the tech office my story I see myself with more Self, more presence and placement and more to observe.  The newness of being out, out of the wine industry and with a company that only demands creativity and contentment.

People here more than encouraging of what you do and making it your own.  Sonic to me means something heard but as well speed, as well ownership and understanding, kindness and playfulness, a precise cubist walk and sight of what’s around you.  Sipping coffee in break room I’m reminded why I’m here.  Making it my own, only owning my own onus as I so many times talk.  Today’s something, I know, I see, feel and solve.  The story not solve, but shoved in a more enriched stitch.

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Interesting place to write, this morning. 

0c7912a9-f190-4f4f-8b7b-b781b33bc8ab-6321-000003e349dc6a68_fileWhile car’s serviced at place I found on Piner.  Not there, but at Epic Center, or is it Epicenter…. Either way I’m here with a 4-shot mocha and laptop seated at tallboy table, with vent above me but not blowing on me thank goodness.  Need today to be a center of epic quality in my story.  Guy said car wouldn’t take long to be tended to.  So I expect this sitting to be interrupted which is fine.  Going with flow, more or less so today.  Writing daddy finding time to write after taking kids to school now that’s schedule’s changed, having Monday and Sunday off which I prefer anyway as to have time like this.  Seated in unexpected place, writing, gathering and assembling self before day leaves ground.

Below this paragraph, this new thought if it’s even a coherent, autonomous thought, I type notes for the meeting today, class, reviewing essays.  The workshop, but I want today to be antithetical workshop, not what they’re used to.  Past couple days or so I’ve been thinking about me as a teacher or professor, how I view writing and how I read, what I hope for students to take away from every meeting, and how that translates to my new life in tech, in the tech world and working with internet, in business.  Everything begins to intersect before me, musically, and like Kerouac said, “The only truth is music.” If this is musical, it must be truthful.  I know it is.  Before class, I’ll lock myself at some point in my home office, arranging books, looking through old notes, amplifying the professor-Me.

Last time I came here, during its normal operating hours, was with Jesse, one of my best buddies about whom I’ve written a few times.  Guy who was on my roof last October hosing it down do it didn’t catch fire from all the falling embers and little flaming pieces and bits of homes around that weren’t as favored.  We came here and bowled, had beers, walked around and watched people play games, talked, then had some more beer and walked back to my house.  Seems like forever-forever ago, and I just think about time as I always do.  Setting plan for today, trying to get ahed of time.  What can I do?  Nothing.  More and more I’m old, older, but I don’t feel it.  How do I reconcile that?  Maybe I don’t have to. Maybe I am where I am, where I’m supposed to be, like my friend Tasha agree a cosmic intersection. 

Hard to believe I’m writing here.  Epic Center—  No, it IS ‘Epicenter’.  Oh well.  Doesn’t matter the name.  I definitely didn’t see my morning going this way, writing here, a place where I usually only visit when wife and kids are away and with Jesse to bowl and beer, and maybe play some game, something.  After this, thinking a drive somewhere, write somewhere else random.  OR, should I go home and arrange office.  Re-take the office which has recently been overtaken by the little beats, where they leave toys and sweet little drawings for me and their mother.  OR…….  Do I go to that collective crush pad, watch the winemakers and fruit come in, document what I can, be more of a wine writer than I ever had, just play around and fiddle with visuals and writing ideas like I do when here with bowling ball and beer.  Yes.. just go there and play with wine, and now that I’m out of the industry I can very much do that.

Looking for fruit, bins full of berries, winemakers I know, ideas for my little label.  Find stress commotion, people talking about what to do with fruit, how to treat fermentation, temperatures.  That place, Punchdown it’s called, is my epic of epic centers for creativity.  Now with this day off, I can work.  I can collect stories about wine and the wine industry and what people want from wine that work with it everyday on a production level.  Just made a note in today’s lecture and lesson plan, “What are you looking for?” Writing is experience, as is reading, bringing your life to the pages of whatever novel or memoir, book you’ve picked up.  Everything intersects, all elements connect.  In writing in life in work with reading, everything.  Like a game.  A ball down an isle, knocking over pins.

9/24/18

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9/20/18

Could it be the last time I say down to type was three days ago?  Yes that makes sense, with all the trips I’ve been making to the city for work, no longer having that hour to type in the Sonic break room.  Me, now, in the conference room in the English Department and I feel funny writing. Probably ‘cause I just had dinner again even after I said I wouldn’t, at La Texanita.  Something about that place, I swear.  I feel like I’m distant, away, vacation or just on some Road travel.  Speaking of, ‘bout to give my last talk on Kerouac’s Road.  I have more or less a plan, but not really.  Not at all.  More in the mood to teach than I was on Thursday, definitively.  Already wine thoughts find my head and me in this chair where I’m supposed to be planning.  How will I feel next semester, when I have no sections to teach?  Not sure… I can see there being a bit of sullen bend, but it’s for the better, for me, family, advancing in my writings on tech and life, work, business.  The office new’s given me more than I thought I’d receive in this timed life.  And now, staring at my notes, trying to shed this oddity in the writing act like some old skin.  Skin and sense, through consistency for which I hold no interest.  What else can I “teach”, tonight. Go word by word.  Be in the room with the author, Kerouac.  Need to underline more… have more prepped thoughts.  But then I think I’m so good in the moment I don’t need to plan or write anything out.  That’s the problem!  I say to myself…. Any chance you have to write you should, just as the people in the office are of the habit and forward, entrenched decision to write EVERYTHING down.  Every conversation, every idea, every question, every in-the-moment musing or anything.

Bought an iced coffee in the snack shop, at the office, but left on desk.  Shit, I think.. should I go get some now, in the caf’?  Might keep me up a bit, tonight.  So what, I think. Then I write, till 3 or something then take a nap.  Yes… soon’s I’m done with this entry or revival post or whatever it’s called then I’ll go there, across the street to where I know there’s coffee.  I want to approach the room with energy, the same energy I had this morning in the meeting with T, which we yesterday planned just upon my return from SF.  I gently coerced her to title the meeting the “Beatnik Meeting”.  Exchanging ideas wildly over coffee.  We had that meeting this morning and I was all fire, all storm and storm surge, deluge and decisions, while as well learning from her words.  Again, what happens when no classes at JC?  Then I have all classes on blog.  Easy.  There.  DONE. 

18:30, now.  Coffee, coffee.  Only thing I can think of, see self sipping.  Other than the eventual wine, tonight.

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