Now
Day 9. About conviction, about defiance, about all of us finding what we’re searching for. Coltrane playing me and eased track. Didn’t record my spoken word piece yesterday. Was distracted by that bottle of Inspiration Syrah, the quiet of the house, and thoughts of writing about the wine industry. When in my office, I see such a book taking shape, in not much time either. Citing everything from the ridiculous pay, to the overwhelming focus on anything but get wine, to patterns and posturing from those patterns.
A truck passes me on 128. Hate typing on my phone, but this is what I have currently. Hoping for a day not at all busy. Not at all preoccupied with the winery making its number for the month, but more my sanity, my sentences, this project and others.
This week in the office, I’m going to loudly and communicatively accelerate all movements and sights. Why can’t I be the highest selling AE in my first year? There is no law or rule or policy prohibiting such. Actually, Sonic is the atmosphere that enables and emboldens such a progression to take place. Whatever we do for work, we need not only make it our own, but have it teach us and be a measure of effort. We should always seek to against ourselves compete.
Bed early tonight. Wake at 5, 4 if you can. At the end of 100 days, there will be a visual of such altitude, such attainment. If I’m not the highest earner, I’ll have shocked everyone with what I’ve done. Make calls, SET APPOINTMENTS…. just say hi. Forget about return, certainly immediate return. That’s a foot shot, I’ve learned, and an error the wine industry continues to seemingly want to make. And I e never figured out why, why they expect such instant transaction and metrics ascension. I’ve given up trying to learn, now focusing on my Sonic story and sense of new sense and story, character.
This writing spot, little spacious and sizeable inlet, used to write here in 2012 as I mentioned, and later in 2017 when working at the Foley camp. Now, story is different. Not at all fearful to question and defy regularity and policy, not that I was before. But Sonic has shown me that one idea can prove purposeful and provide a purpose which pervades till your final day. Such is now, such is me, such is my poetic and newly purposed immediacy.
What do I want from the day. Peace. Ideas for this week. Ideas on growth, branding and rebranding but more than that…. CHARACTER. Story. Life. Revolution. Start acting like a revolutionary, I said to myself and some other people at Sonic a few months ago. Today…. watch. And won’t do so with malice or a burn-bridge intent, but to have my identity known. For all in contact with me, not just for me. If I’m not making sense I apologize….. you’ll see what I mean, shortly.
The only solution
is an entirety of REVOLUTION.
Tired of the pitches, tired of the speakers…
Truth is the only truth.
A Walk to the Front Door
Words, having conviction. Conviction is not only what “sells”, but what proves memorable. First sip of coffee, off. Off into the journal, on the Road. Was thinking something yesterday, about travel and moving, movement. But the specifics are lost on me this morning. Plan for today is simple—Calls. Speak on Sonic, speak on ideas, ideas for businesses, and writing– THAT’S IT. Yesterday someone messaging me, asking me if I want to go on a writing adventure with them. They concerned about being a good writer, they don’t know writing well, they’ve been told for years that their writing isn’t mighty. I tried my best to quell their concerns and anxieties. I urged them to just write. Then I told myself that I need do the same. Today at lunch, writing and reading. Writing about my reading. After receiving the message last night while tasting some 2016 Landmark Pinot which surprised me with its attractive act and tap, I saw Jack upstairs in his room beginning his new Harry Potter book. Can’t remember the title, which one it is in the series, but the thick one. Or the most meaty, weighty page stack I’ve seen him bring home to day. I thought the reading and writing adventure are, or should be, always in helix.
Not sure I was even walking to the front door of the building, after parking. Felt like I was floating. I nearly hovered past the door. Why. What’s causing this meditation about my character and in my inner voices. There’s like, I don’t know, a student and professor chant about the morning. I’m learning, with a learning curve that doesn’t indicate any compromise or handicap. Now that I’m through the door and in the building, I’m moving. This Mike Madigan knows what he wants but doesn’t know too much about it. Hence, I suppose, the nature to this project. On this 6th step of it. What now, and to where.
The wine last night put my visions and meditations in a number of noted tumbles, forcing more thought and words, conviction in wine. Chardonnay and Pinot, and whatever else. The conversation around me currently interrupts the inner recital. Wish people would just be quiet, but they’re doing their job, and well at that, what I should be doing. Okay, I say to self. Note everything, like one of the people talking now that minces my concentration. He showed me a photo log of sites that he’s inspected and where installs have been transpired. I was daunted by his photos, not just by how many there were, but the variation and expanse of focus. Am I aiming to be the top sales person in this division, I thought last night with the Pinot? No. Not necessarily. But I will make an impression, or have my story read. Not so much a story on sales, but doing something different. Writer in a tech office. Often I sense some quake in my character grieving, “I don’t want to write about that….” Or “Don’t write about Sonic.” But ever, that’s all I think about. This new character, the new story.
A thousand words, Friday’s beginning. Have to send flight plan, as I call it, to Mark. Then, off into day. Prospecting, yes, but building… story. The story and how I write this new story is how “success” will be gripped. Appetite for associate words and sentences, more pages in these business cards, this messy work area that I wish somehow I could find time to organize. May come in on Sunday, before winery. Shit… forgot to bring new journal. Wonder if they have any here, like the ones I see Tasha with, or other people in Marketing. Checked, and no. No matter. There are legal pads, and I swear to not start as I have in the not so removed past where I begin penning on one and don’t reach the last page. Remembering that movie, Crashing, where the writer only used legal sheets, writing on the couch of those two English students. Miss being a student, miss going to class and writing, having something to turn in. Then why not do it again? Okay…. I’m a student. Studying, well, THIS. The Now. Tasha told me those little journals were from a TedX event years ago, and they’re all being used or have been used. I have legal sheets, Elephantine plains that want my words, or I’m telling myself they do.
Reading Road again, as I noted the other day. And already it strikes me differently. Not just with Dean in how he’s presented, but the narration and how it always returns to Dean. That is the singularity. He is Sal’s Road, even when he’s not on page, or at all in a chapter. Reading now as my son does his Potter manuscripts. Just thought, while reading a bit of Road that I should use the blog as my notebook. I don’t need another legal pad. Already have one on desk, to right next to elbow under a little notepad. Need more coffee. Already.
Projects beginning to surface. Wondering how much more writing I’d have to page if I ceased using paper. Apart from the legal pad. Or, what if I decommissioned that, too? More space on desk…. Post-it’s under forearms. One of them reading, “Before you write—Where are you and what are you doing? In one word, and ideally one syllable.” Think. See. I’m seeing where I want to go in this AE walk. Keep everything simple. Say less, listen more. One project, one word, Sales. How it should never be sales, how what so many want to do is convert before contributing to a conversation, a new association and relationship. Right after I walked through the door this morning, I told myself, “Today, no selling.” When I call down these lists, I notice myself getting at times unsettled, or anxious. And I’m not even on the call yet much less through the door talking about what we can do for them. No selling. Just call and say HI. That’s it.
8/9/19
Music.
Looking back at the writer.
Not a matter of correcting,
but designing. And if you’ve stayed or parted from the design, you put yourself back in it. Don’t scold yourself. At all, much less excessively. Go back to your sight and self-promise, actuating your fire and story. Collect, breathe, calm. There’s another scene soon to start.
When the day ends
planning for the next should
always creatively catalyze.
wine page
7/3/19
Went out on my own, “Feet on the Street” as they say in this part of the company. Just introducing myself, as I knew there was a chance of running into current clients. And I did. No deterrence. This whole day thinking about selling and why some get anxiety when it comes to selling, and the possibility of conversion, that you might or might not sell. Again, I learn on wine ideology and methodology. Everything is from wine, for me. Talk to people as you would if you were having a glass of SB with them on a desk in some warm weather, or sipping a stainless Chard on a dock somewhere in the San Juan Islands, or on a boat around the islands. Do your job less, I said to myself walking up to that first corporate building in on of the Fountain Grove business building spots.
Department head sent out an email saying, basically telling us, that early departure at 3 is fine. Told us to get the heck out of here and enjoy our weekend. Which I more than appreciate as in the wine industry that rarely happens. Every last dollar, every last dollar the mentality rather than making sure your sales force is satisfied with everything from day-to-day to how they see themselves in their role. I’ll leave in a bit, I guess. Go write somewhere maybe for a bit before meeting family in Windsor for the baseball game and whatever else is planned. Looking around my new desk, and my place has already been punctuated. Wine… wine… don’t fixate on the overwhelming population and propulsion of new terms and products and surrounding language. Just see the person in front of you, I tell myself and offer to anyone reading this in any kind of sales post. Just talk to as many people as you can, record everything, follow up, and don’t stop moving. Not sure what else to say other than that, and I don’t want to talk about sales for this whole piece but narrating who you are and what you’re doing is nearly the entirety of what we think of as “sales”.
Wine taught me all this. And the industry having forced me into disgust with it instructed me to gut-trust and find something else. I did, and here I am, but still with wine-wound principles and sight, the Road to my Equilibrium purveying all the poetry and prose but more so poetry and music this writer ever need. What will I have to do when with my own wines, but go door to door, just handing them out not really selling or even narrating anything, just saying hi and saying my name a couple times and handing a bottle of wine to whomever’s in front of me.
Office getting quiet. I can tell people have left. Think I’ll send my EOD in a minute then depart, myself. Get a glass of something, somewhere. Why does Sauvignon Blanc always sound good, and always sound like the most optimal and appropriate, optimally appropriate varietal and style, feel and song and vinified ride? Don’t know, but I can see the glass in front of me, and by some odd extension see myself rising in this department far faster than anyone before me, and even faster than I now see myself ascending. Why? I’m not selling. I refuse to sell. I’ll only connect, talk, educate, create. So many overthink sales and talk themselves out of it and into some undeserved low self-estimation. The creativity and conversations will illuminate opportunity, and renewing zenith.
In this
is narrative maze.
wine page
6/29/19
Second to last day in June. Will be in Sebastopol, today. Alert on my phone saying I had to be here AT 8, but incorrect. Not sure how that happened, maybe I put something on calendar as all-day event. Anyway, two wines tasted last night. What is an all-day effort is to write about each, 500 words each. Sipping coffee from office as I rushed here from getting gas just in case I was wrong and did have to be here at 8. Strong, but not at all appealing in flavor or, well, anything. But it has caffeine, I’ll take it. $8 more in envelop. OR should I set aside for next Saturday in Napa tasting wines at whatever, however many dozens of wineries and tasting rooms and collectives there are. Not thinking about it. $8 to envelope, done.
Wine one, a Rose from Topping-Legnon, think that’s how you spell the winery and is the actual name, far too dark for your typical or even non-typical Rose. Not much said through introduction on nose, with aromatic language and touch, then on palate a bit more expression and layeredness to her, but again nothing that confirmed or affirmed any distinguished identity. Not that I didn’t like it, her, but again there was not much said. That doesn’t mean the wine was bad, or missing something, or once more that I didn’t like it. No. There was just a compromised connection for some reason. With only two glasses, really a glass and a half, if even that now that I think, we didn’t have that attraction.
Second, a Robert Young Cabernet, Spring Mountain. At first, I thought something was wrong with her. I don’t know what, like temperature damage or just a bum bottle. Not in any way the case. After some air falling down the bottle’s neck, 20 or 30 minutes give or take, she was alert, awake, ready to communicate. No more dreaming of another thrilling Cab from Robert Young. She was present, there, speaking to me and now I was ready for the page. Of course I’ll write more later, but I can still taste that immediate pulse, the pronounced impression of the mountain, of the winery, the ’15 vintage which as many know had its own mood and shapeliness from the drought. Don’t want to write about her like these published wine blatherers. There was far too much there, far too much being sang to me there in the kitchen, from that glass.
Seeking more definition from wine, and last night’s second bottle provided more than what I expected. To be honest, I just wanted to taste wine and not think that much about it. I didn’t want to be a writer, not then, but again, the second bottle had a vision more consistent with my own than my own. Convincing composition and what I said to myself in the last glass about 45 minutes before bed was, “I need a vineyard.” Pretty much the only thing I wrote last night in the Kerouac journal, watching the final inning of a Giants game. Find myself thinking now, this morning in the office to this coffee and stop myself. Just write about the wines, and what they say. The Cabernet more and moreover speaking her song, not letting me stray from the vineyard rows again.