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#blogeverythingnow HAPPINESS. Imagine that. Health/Wellness LOVE!!!!! Productivity

11-15-24

Yesterday, challenging.  Bled into my sleep and woke me around 03:45 and kept me up for a good 90+ minutes.  Fell back asleep eventually.  But, a useful meditation and planning time for this writer.

But no, I’m no longer a writer.  I am no title.  I’m ME.  With several applications, I’m realizing and utilizing.

09:09, too much on mind to really inventory or category, but I move forward only.  The BLOG DESIGN TECH idea revived, and now a solid project and book and Story, IDENTITY.

Fighting for the narrative and my story, to get to where I want to be with not just success but mind peace.  Learning, about everything.  SELF, most crucially.

One call scheduled for today, and that’s about it.  Looking at this old phone on shelf, the one from when I first moved in and had a landline.  Seems like another Story, but the same.  Older pages and Rooms, but the same.

Mind in a circling meditation and deliberation, looking at LifeMap graph I started a few months ago.  Meeting starts, where’s my pen.  Nothing to scribble, or write, at least not now.

Opportunities everywhere, what I keep writing in journal.  Not another way to see it, and by it I mean this, LIFE.

Expanding reach and approach.  Jack home sick today, Henry with nothing till this afternoon and right now on a shopping errand with the Nurse.  Her amazing kindness and presence and principle qualities are astounding, I don’t know how else to put it.

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#blogeverythingnow just writing

yesterday in Davis…

I am laughing.  I am at peace with this Mike Madigan today.  This draft, this figure and structure.  Some John Coltrane comes on.  I feel like I’ll be here again soon, talking to students on campus.  Writing with them….  Asking them where they start.

The imagery and seen conversations start to become REAL, with Composition and complexion.  New stories and slangs, languages, stories told.  I need to listen more, I say outside of this daydream then go back in.

Student telling me about her parents, how she never knew her dad, and her mother died when she was 11.  She lived with her grandparents, then aunt and uncle after grandparents passed.  Aunt and Uncle were both lawyers.  She’s a Junior, and about to finally decide law, but isn’t sure.  She writes about her future as a lawyer… basically writing how her life will go.  What type of law she’ll practice.  Business Law, working with small businesses, family-owned shops and practices, of no particular vertical.

I decide to do the same thing, but then get distracted by the two guys to my left.  Going over expenses,”DoorDash for $12.60…” Are they accountants, or roommates reconciling expenses.

Categories
#blogeverythingnow HAPPINESS. Imagine that. Health/Wellness just writing LOVE!!!!! parenting life Readings/Writings

Just remembered tomorrow is my winemaker sister’s birthday.

08:50 sipping espresso, Drink Coffee Write Books/Blogs Be Happy.  The business plan from the mask mom bought during covid.  Sticking to that today.  Jack waking and immediately on his computer to learn more about his game and make progress, get to a certain level.  I can only admire his system and dedication, outlining of day in that regard.

Coffee brewing now, pressing the button a little over 2 minutes ago and still with the espresso.  Henry still asleep, single dad notes.  More notes, like the therapist yesterday.. telling me not to forget about ME.  My aims and wants, what I want for Mike Madigan.

I’m ablaze right now in the nook, just espresso, this laptop, phone, messaging the Nurse telling her I love her and good morning, and how I miss her and I do like I haven’t another human ever.

Three goals for day – Writing and wine Content, Photog, start new blog on WP but do NOT buy domain (yet).

Simple enough.  Fasting till after 13:00.  Laundry to put away.  Nurse leaving more clothes here and I smile finding them last night and this morning, put pile of both of ours on bed….  HOME.  Feels more like a home with her and the kids here.

A script.  Fiction.  Or short story.  Something a story… I don’t know.  Centered around wine and winemaking, starting with small batches or lots, then moving forward.  Some new story, for me, or a character, or both.

Writing freely at the table, looking up and seeing the flowers I bought Mom and the Nurse, still here.  And they’re still alive surprisingly.  What was that, two weeks ago?  Think so.  Teaching my mind and thinking process to move in new truths.

What do I want… where I am going… how do I get there and away from certain present attributes?

Onto the coffee in the Paris cup the Nurse and I bought somewhere.  Think in that Healdsburg shop.  Henry walks downstairs, intent on watching Paw Patrol, nothing else.  His focus too speaks to me.  I want more obsession, to be consumed by something, utterly taken over.

Categories
#blogeverythingnow HAPPINESS. Imagine that. Health/Wellness just writing LOVE!!!!!

After sending email thinking about that book and when I taught it at the JC.  Her single-sentence paragraphs

and tone, language, the obvious poetic tilt to her syllables.

Makes me miss the classroom, to be honest.  That passion and fire I’d bring, and I did.  I will compliment myself on that.

Quick early lunch out of the way, brought from home.  11:49.  With all this quiet and in peace, all to myself in the office, I repeat Plath’s words.  Knowing my truest self, a writer, with a blog, blogs, and trying to change certain realities and consistencies.

A day of self-care while at work. No nonsense, that is what I’m doing.  Noting in journal and here, saving some grit for book, but otherwise my transparency and fearlessness is palpable.  Even for me… I love the intonation and insinuations in all notes.  

New Composition, new voice, identity.

I AM.  I AM.  I AM.

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Readings/Writings

A Break?  Kind Of.

Adjunct between classes.  So hungry I got a cheeseburger from the campus caf’.  This adjunct never does that.  And, I’m recovering from a cold but I was so hungry I couldn’t control any part of my thinking.  Little over 90 minutes till class.  Here wondering, would I recommend anyone teach at the college level, be an adjunct, do this between classes and face momentary starvation and quick climbs up stairs and parking spot wars, and varying campuses (which I no longer do, refuse to do).  Honestly, no.  BUT, if you insist on teaching, make sure you have another world to rely on, and that that other world is reliable.  Adjuncting is not.  All the articles you read about adjunctdom are dire, depressing, alluding to destitution.  I can’t live like that.  I won’t.  But this piece isn’t about adjunct life or what it’s like to be a ‘junct, it’s about making a moment, or circumstantial set YOURS.  Between classes, I needed a burger.  It sounded good, so I got one.  Battled the long line, waited in the overheated little campus café, and here I am.

So many adjuncts profess and profess how unhappy they are.  Why?  Why do they let themselves continue in that code?  What brings us to teaching is a love of knowledge, sharing ideas and the reality of working with students.  So many of these realities however are contaminated with the fantastic.  You’ll have a safe, secure job as a professor.  You sure?  I’ve been an adjunct for over ten years now, applied for full-time, and haven’t landed a thing.  “You need to be more involved.” I’ve been told.  Innumerable times by several tenured full-timers. Committees, panels, chairs, talks, discussions, volunteer hullaballoo.  I have two kids, I can’t afford to do anything that’s ‘volunteer’, much as I earnestly would LOVE to.  But they don’t care.  Wow, that’s compassionate.  That’s supportive… not at all.  How does that encourage adjuncts to want to carry their “careers” as educators further?  Maybe it doesn’t.  Maybe it does.  For me, it’s modified.  I’m not pursuing full-time.  I have many other projects and ventures, and little gigs.  I still love teaching.  I won’t let them discourage me.

The adjunct bites his burger again, so thankful he’s nearly over his cold, that he has this moment in the office alone to have some tease of a meal.  I, am that adjunct.  This adjunct, here.  Only the second day of classes, first week.  How do I feel?  Great, if you should know.  As I’m the one in charge.  I refuse to anymore stultify myself by going between three campuses and hoping it will culminate to that full-time standing.  It won’t.  I’m fine with it.  In fact, this adjunct has already wasted too much of the page discussing the adjunct life.  He’s tired after that burger, and tired of the topic.  Good thing he remembered to put coffee in that container.  Sometimes I think we need coffee more than anyone.  We, the adjuncted.  Just keep up with the students, the freeway falcon-ing, and all the bullshit.

(8/24/16)

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Health/Wellness

Today’s story

starts with a defeat, somewhat of a failure, me not waking and running.  BUT, waking at 4 and starting to write…  So not a total low ebb.  No low ebb at all.  Haven’t done a word count of what I wrote and it really doesn’t matter.  I wrote during the 4AM hour, my arch enemy in recent months.  Haven’t waged any creative attack or offensive in a while, so hoping today’s the first of many many many…

Went in to retrieve and change Jack at around 1-something, want to say.  Went downstairs to sleep in office, on couch, waking a couple hours later to help with little Ms. Austen who needed some replenishment, my little sweet beat.  And that’s when I was up writing, after that.  Was so sure that I’d be able to stay awake till 5:20 when my alarm was cued or get in a power nap and wake when the digital sound sounded and be on pavement.  BUT, I turned off the alarm before falling back asleep for some reason, probably thinking I’d be pulled from sleep by Jack coming downstairs looking for me or the day’s story progression would just have it written that I wake in time to get in some kind of run.  But no.  I slept till 7:30-something, my wife coming downstairs to get me, amazing presence she is, making sure I was up and readying for work.  She went back to the babies and I rushed a shower.  So thankful I made this coffee before going to bed last night.  Otherwise I would have had to wait till getting here to cottage and making some for the winery crew, which would mean even more waiting.

There’s always tomorrow, I’m telling myself.  I’m not focusing on what I didn’t do this morning but rather what I’m going to do today, and tomorrow morning.  I’m focusing on being an adjunct, as I wrote yesterday during the 10-minute session, but an adjunct that is adhering to no course outline or any plan or any proscribed curriculum or institutional vision.  I’m going to share what I learn as I learn it, have discussions, grow and breathe and appreciate with any “students”, who I’ll more see as cohorts, or colleagues.

Have two stories to write for winery owner, both interesting and personal, rich with detail and narrative.  As a writer and blogger in the wine world, and as one teaching at a college in wine’s sphere, I need bring the wine element closer to me.  Not just making it my own, as they say, but writing from it, even to it.  I want my babies one day to read this and think something like, “Huh, that’s pretty smart what Dad did.” This writing father is a father who writes for his babies first, before anything.  I’m mindful of what I am.  Deeply mindful.  A writing father.  This morning instructed to look at what’s just off the bow, not what’s in the wake.

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autre

Week 2 Starts

And I have the same positive invincible attitude I had last week that only met once, Wednesday.  This has to be the semester, I tell myself, the semester that I use two classes, just these two, a ‘Critical Theory’ and ‘Composition’ to build what someone, most pertinently ME, would consider a career.  Should get to the library but I’m quite cozy in this shared adjunct cell after having to leave the peace and isolated boon of the conference room.  Felt like I was in one of those balloons over Dry Creek, just enjoying the view and the placement up there, the moment which was all mine.  Would love a nap right now but I can’t afford a pause, or such halt.  What I should do, is leave my bag here and head to the library with my Composition Book and scribble some ideas for the PhD sample (shooting for 20 pages, not an inked character more).  Pleased with myself for already having a thesis in what I’ve written for the sample, Kerouac and music as his savior, his “religion”, how he gets his “truth fix”… you’ll see.

The other adjunct leaves, and I’m quite out of coffee.. shit.  Well, perfect time to get some at the coffee shop in the library.  Brilliant!  Done!  Leaving!  (9:38AM)

Back from the library and I wound not getting a coffee (no cash and didn’t want to use debit).  Emailed self article for PhD research.  Should stop calling it that and just “my own research,” a lecture I can use this semester or later, or whenever.  It’s my writing, I’m merely sharing it with those reviewing the applications.  A student from last term, ’T’, applied to Stanford, Berkeley, Harvard, and I think even too Yale.  And she’s the level of student that would be admitted into schools of that magnitude, I have no doubt.  And it’s funny that this term I seek to be more like students of her form and habits than the English “professor” I’ve been all these years.  This semester I’m more a student than a professor.

10AM.  Office hour starts now— oh shit!  Forgot to include in the email my office room number.  I blame the exhaustion, this fading coffee.  There… sent it.  Now to focus on the 1A class.  First meeting on Sylvia Plath.  Should print some poems for them, which I will.  Talk about ideas addressed in the text without getting too into the text itself… just scribbled a couple ideas.  Will do the rest at home.  This semester reinvents me as an educator but as well as one knowing what he wants from life, in his life and how he wants his children to see him.  Professor— or teacher— educator…  Just happy.  Me as a brand, that has to be part of it, seen as someone who LOVES and is obsessed with what he does.  Words.. literature.. pages and expression on the pages.

A student again.  With aims, and end-game, one I can see, finally.  And yes, I garrulously keep the invincible sense about me.

1/25/16

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autre

Adjuncted Adaptively-esque

IMG_6683Writing freely.  No particular address from this mood and where this mood came from, who knows.. in old neighborhood Starbucks and thinking about everything from the condo we can’t be rid of soon enough, to the Adjunct War, to the wine world and how I’ll never be where I wish, financially, or even Creatively.. have to think, and I looked at a copy of the New York Times after ordering my cup and thought about the blogging for hire I’m doing, how utterly unriveting it is.  But it pays, so I should shut up, right?  Not in agreement ever with such disposition– this meditation here at this small deplorable table by the entrance/exit has to determine something, and what I don’t know– so many options and many detract and redact my identity; the writer and reader and lecturer, jazz lover, the one who only for Autonomy aims.. and this mood won’t IMG_6684let me, won’t undo its harness.. the barista asked me, “JC or winery today?” “Both,” I told him.  He laughed a little, shook his head, or started to but then caught himself, “Well.. good luck,” he finished.  I don’t know what the subtext or implication was, is, to his words but I didn’t like it and I don’t believe it to be targeted, really.  And is any of it untrue?  No.. I’m aiming to singularize everything, in wine and writing.. but how?  And travel, see the entire world, even the parts people and the government tell me not to, to avoid.. so I write on and hope for the best and know I have to keep writing.  This life, all its options and pitfalls potential– a young lady walks out with three kids.. I realize my life could be much more taxing and tough, so I should temper my temper and agitation, my pervading impatience, find my Road however I can, in this little crowded space, watching people leave into their lives and whatever they have to do for the day.

IMG_6685See another car pull up and I’m distracted by the two girls to my right, sitting in the tall chairs at the stretched counter, against the glass with a view of the courtyard, talking and annoying me, talking over Hutcherson’s tune, or Evans’, sorry.  My mood further swirls into some introverted postmodern shade, serrated and angular, jagged and opaque in narrative.  But don’t worry, reader, I’m just thinking, writing freely, and I deserve that once in a while, don’t I?  This is a 36 y/o (can’t bring myself to write it out.. mood…..) father and husband wanting to be seen and riled to function with a certain verity and brio.  So I write on, enjoying the freedom, and loving this life and the challenge it provides– and no I’m not depressed!  If I were I would have given up by now, or worse, but no I keep writing and shunning and dismissing all inhibitions of formality surrounding punctuation and professionalism and the syntactic strictures that act like bars and mar the Artist’s card, or cards he’s to play.. but I forward anyway, with only change in my pocket at the moment, used debit card for the mocha– cash anymore making the writer nervous.

IMG_6682

And to expect what from this day?  Hopefully time to finish my articles, or at least the Tours one.. address the others tonight, stay up a bit late, then tomorrow murder the remaining two, submit, be rid of them.  And I better be paid promptly, or there will be an unraveling of the writer, for sure– I’ll turn into the agitated Martin Eden, a ruffled Hemingway.  I turn up the music in my ears to rid my Self of the teeny dialogue.. ugh, why did I put myself here?  Did another spot open?  Can’t stop typing now.  Like I wrote to this term’s matriculants, “Overthink is writing death.” So I just stop thinking and write and imagine me sipping wine in some hotel room, on my balcony, looking at the ocean or some lawn or pool area and typing, finishing my day’s entry or maybe the novel I’m writing while on the Road, from writing about a character who only wanted to see the Road– well now I’m here, so my gears go that way, to the attained, to what I see…  Oh I can’t wait.  I won’t wait, more like it if you must know.  I’m tired of waiting; for people to call me back, for an editor to approve an outline, for a paycheck, for.. anything.

You should see how focused I am at the moment, thinking only about this night’s class, my articles, the novel, and that’s about it.  What I want and how to get it, in these freely written writes, knowing my penning rights, all to me; my universe and innovative urges and translation of what I observe; the talkers right, the door ahead, the older lady who just say behind me, crumbling her little bag while removing the pastry, think a scone; my son just down the street at his school, tempted to go back, take him home so we can enjoy the day, a day off for us both, we deserve, protestedly!

And who knows, maybe it’ll happen soon, and fast, and I’ll be on the plane thinking, “Wasn’t I just in a IMG_6688Starbucks talking about this very moment?” Or probably, “What am I going to talk about?” (at the college I’m flying to).  Would love to write a lecture on the plane, look down at the clouds or if it’s a redeye then enjoy just the little thin beaming descent to my fold-out, me scribbling as quiet and lightly as I can so I don’t wake the person at my 12.  But I have to have the lecture done by the time I land in Massachusetts.  Harvard, expecting me, my paper on the translation of ‘On The Road’, arguing that all is addiction in passion, and if the Road is Life then Life is the greatest and most dangerous of all addictions…  Soon, soon!  My 14-page paper, much more charing and enlivening than these dimwit “articles” (I don’t even know if you could call them so) I’ve been commissioned to post on some blog– so no, they’re not articles, certainly not like there’re articles in the NYT!  It’s a blog!  For tourists or new-be-ers to wine’s wheel.  Ugh, disgusting..

So I should close, 9:39, having to leave for RRV in the soonest of soons, and I have to edit– a large man whom I see here regularly walks out in an exhausted wobble, me chagrined at all the hours ahead of me, I’ll be that tired at day’s end, or not, who knows– but the day and its music keeps me hitting the highhat, playing in scales and yaying rather than the usual Nietzschean naying.  The sky, clear but not, only clouds that want one last say in what’s seen, the visual to take with you for the remain hours, oh thanks, I think–  Man opens door, looks in, decides no.  So what did he see, what did he think?  Is the Time getting to him, not enough to stand in line and wait for the fix?  I understand…  But then he comes back, rushes to the order station.  Gets what he wants.  “Good for him,” I say.

(6/17/15)