Journal

6/13/17 entry

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Didn’t have much time to write yesterday, with going to the winery and a meeting with a prospect, coming home and getting tossed into daddy form like a meat piece to a pissed off, famine-pushed lion.  But here I am.  In home, writing.  Jumping around from project to project like some demented art-bat who only knows he wants to create and that’s about it.  But I should be more focused on capturing the moment I’m in, relaying it to you, the reader, but as well to my now-self and future self to learn from it, learn from everything.  07:53… have to be on Road soon.  Who knows when the cleaning ladies will be here, so that makes me write even faster…

In business, it’s more than a balance of everything… or, more a harmony… or, more embracing the mess and making Art from it.  That’s where I am now.  Looking around the bottom floor of this Autumn Walk Studio, puzzle pieces and baby clothes, toys and a bicycle helmet, my coffee cup which gets colder as I type, push each black button… I have to breathe, and just log everything.  At winery today, just note what’s around you tallying.

I have time to write, right now, but not much.  And that’s fine.  I have what I have.  Creatives— don’t focus on voids, rather celebrate in your surpluses, what heaps and overflows.  Right now I have a crippling urgency about my Personhood to take on more projects, schedule around my daddy life, wine life, teaching life (which starts up again on Monday of next week), reading life (which I need to put more focus into), general family life. I’ve never seen ‘I don’t have enough time’ or ‘There’s not enough hours in the day’ as permissible logic.  If you’re truly a creative, you’ll place pieces where they need be— you will sculpt a beauteous structure.  But you have to stay, as I ALWAYS affirm, Tireless.

More than a fruitful day at old Stryker property. 

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Today I felt it more a testing ground for certain narrative approaches with how I speak wine, making my speak translate to sales and just more for me to write about.  And I’m not trying to proclaim or anoint myself as some sales sage… I’m a writer, but the way I spoke of the wines today very much translated to sales.  About 7 cases for the entire day, and three wine club signings.  But that’s not what I want to focus on— in fact I shouldn’t have even gave you any numbers, none.  I spoke the way the wines, I feel, would want me to speak about them.

Last night, tasting here in home a Foley ’15 SB then an ’09 Lancaster Estate Cabernet.  Both told me I need to be more, if not wild then certainly, feisty and fearless in my wine writings.  Stop trying to sound like every other sport coat-wearing sommelier or some cheeseball wine educator with some contrived acronym after his/her name.  I’m a writer of wine, who presently fights a sinus infection to write this entry.  Didn’t have chance to write at lunch as I left the laptop home.  No excuse, I should have written in my little book, the new one.  What I did do, walk the vineyards, take pictures around the property.  That added, wholly, to the fruitful posture of my day.

Feeling tired, like I could go to bed right along with wife and babies.  They’re set to wake early to see illuminated hot-air balloons levitate above Windsor.  Think they’re set to leave around 05:00, if I’m. not mistaken, which leaves me here, alone.  Perfect taunt for writing, the wee and cruel hours of morrow I’m always hoping I wake early enough to see and taste but never do.  Will cue coffee in a minute, have some of that ’09 ‘LE’, and brainstorm further, get crazier and more deliciously distant with my wine writings.  The ’09 last night showing a certain gothic form to provoke even more a staged calculation of flavor and color, atmosphere and vintage-narrative.  Which I love, of course, as any more I drink wine hoping to taste vintage translation and not just some bold Cab or floral Pinot or buttery slut of a Chardonnay—  I want to be doused in time, the past, that year I’m sipping, and that’s what the ’09 accomplished, multitudinously.  Talk about “fruitful”, a word that all of a sudden annoys me—  Rewarding?  Enriching?  What?  Take the word out, that’s what I always urge students to do.. discuss the entity, the reality.. today was a day that revealed and taught much and with schematic eye, understanding that wine is where everything is for the writer.  Again… made me embrace and structurally realize, again.

note 6/8/17

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Home… a little wine, not much, and the floor.  Me typing.  Words… getting paid at midnight via direct-dep’ but we all know that’s gonna be bullshit.  Shouldn’t be writing this on blog, but what else can I do at my old age?  What do I have to lose?  Not sure at the moment, ready for bed I feel like but the other side of my pseudo-collective feels’s though I have so much more work to do.  Wait…. DO I have the day off tomorrow?  Wasn’t supposed to work today but messaged in this morning to let them all know I was available.  I’ll get to relax later in life.  Right now I want to work.  I want to encourage people to do what they want and make money from it.  First, though, I know, I have to practice what I preach.  So I think ‘value’… what’s the value in what I do as a writer/copywriter?  I take that act off their, the owners’ hands.  Okay… so get that out there… have fun with it, be crazy and wild with it.  Make it funny.. and fun.  I will, but I’m feeling rather low this night.  Have to raise the character, this aging writing somehow.

Just thought of it.  4AM.  My most vehement of rivals.  Always say I’m going to wake at the hour and I don’t and I wind up resenting myself for who knows how long and forgetting the potential of that hour.  Woke up this morning at 3-something, after having to help Jackie get cozy in his bed.  (He always calls for Daddy, which I love.)  Time…. Everything is time.  Thought of fitness, how I’m not running as much as I’d like and how I could work out here, downstairs in my own goddamn home, like my student from last semester always telling us how he wakes up at 03:45 and hits the gym for over an hour…. Okay, so… tomorrow morning that’s me.  Core exercises for at least an hour… arms, chest, abs.  This will encourage words.  Fuck it, I’m just going to do it.  No more promissory— well, that is promissory.  You know what I mean.

No more wine for the evening.  Just thoughts.  Not plans, ‘cause those are now illegal.  Just action… wildness and whimsicality.  Wine hasn’t had much a presence in my day, in terms of sipping.  Even with that man from Florida earlier, the Québécois chap, I didn’t sip much, much I wanted.  Lancaster is a winery I have a more-than-hard time spitting.  Why?  So many reasons.  That dark depth and the smoky form of its every sensory inch.  Lancaster wine is more than wine…. It’s defiance.  A tasty consistency and structure and intersection you’re not used to, trust me.  I have nothing to lose, I’m tonight realizing, thinking more about myself and what I have to do to get to where I want to be and see what I want to see.  I keep coughing, remnants from this unexpected June cold I had, which I could have sworn was allergy.  How did I get on this topic?  ‘Cause I just coughed.  Nothing funny about this… but then I think, as a copywriter, how would I sell the sound of my coughs?  WHAT?

note

/ mikemadigan / Leave a comment

Leaving from the Windsor Starbucks in 8 minutes.  I deserve this time to myself, regardless of what negative says.  Soon, there will be a freeing shift in this writer’s story.  No doubt.  I’m proud of myself this morning, staying with my vision, and discovering a newly re-enlivened animal in this writer.  Today… writing all day, as usual.  But, one happy sentence each hour.  Day’s project, this 7th, June…  Don’t sip any wine, but watch others sip, record their reactions.

Today, is more a new me than you’ve ever met, readers…. There are things happening.  Positives.  Creative positivism.  My story’s been given a shove.  And I will not turn around.  I will not back-step.  I’ve given my ruling.

inward jot

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06:06.. Up but not in the mood to write but I’m forcing myself to.  Made coffee last night, haven’t taken first sip.  Back at LE today, and should probably start getting ready.  Jackie called me into his room this morning and said, “Dady, can we wake up now?” He was, is, ready to go.  No questioning or self-doubt or anxiety…  Ready to dive headfirst into his day.  Okay… I am to.  Running at the gym tonight after kids go to bed.  Tonight I’m doing it and no fucking excuses.

I imagine what my first trip will be like, for business.  For me and my writings, talking about one of my books or … something.  At the age now where when I write like this I get angry, fantasizing instead of already having taken possession.  But… I see me getting up early to run, coming back to room to write a little, then off to work.  Writing in different places and hearing the different sounds of these new places… that’s what I’m after… the Newness of those days and how I walk in new streets—  Sip coffee here on couch next to little Kerouac, recite three small, small poems in my head.  Take a breath, stop pressuring Self… taking my writing and thoughts in a new direction today.  One unclouded and freer than free, no self-doubt and only assurance and understanding that what I want is ridiculously close.

Summer Semester, 12 days away.  Using my 305.1 section as a proxy of sorts, or maybe like a performance barometer.  Something like that.  First couple days, no writing… only reading small poems, or prose excerpts, and reacting.  Having the students find comfortability in their own thoughts and voices…. See?  This is microcosmic effort and action that extends to everything else… and not just wine and wine writing/journalism.

Self-doubt’s a pollutant.  No more.  But, it’s inspired a lion.  A renewed me.

(6/7/17)

Espresso in the shade

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at Lancaster. First time working here in over 5 years.  My aim today is to dominate everything I do.  Have a literary lunch that will change my life— wow this espresso’s strong, made by one of the winemakers.  Ready for day…hear woodpecker behind me blended with traffic sounds from Chalkhill Road.  This winery, probably more than the others, changed how I saw myself in the wine world and its industry,  

Cool in shade, little breeze.  Hear puppy on crush pad barking.  He barked at me as I went around back to get into building and see if the TR mgr was here.  She’s not.  I’m early as always.  Sipping espresso in the shade.  Wanted to scribble in new notebook but left pen in car.  No interest in getting.  I shouldn’t be writing right now, I realize.  But enjoying where I am.  Looking around, breathing the air.  Breathing the same air the birds are.. me, with them, one with them on this one property.  Used to call this “AV Winery” in past writings.  Now I want the name known.  Where I am, what I’m doing, what I have to thank for where I am.  Me now– that lion in the crest.

‘Nother sip.  My god that is strong.  Want a machine like that in my eventual-office.  This side area is perfect for my lit lunch.  Shade, trees, umbrellas and the sounds of cars looking for their next winery.  Maybe this one.  Here in AV.  Leaning back into wooden chair with left leg at 90’ angle over right knee.. meditation, collection before day.  Today.  MY day.  New day in this wined story.  Who knows where it will go after today…  Man, I can’t believe I’m actually here.  Back.  Full-circle, or something.  This is always the part in the story where something shifting happens.  Where the character is furthered somehow.  So how?  What happens next?  Guess I’ll have to wait and see, right?  I hate waiting.