in all forms visible and invisible.
Start your Road to something you’ve only had as a vision or dream, THIS MORNING.
St. Patrick’s Day
Not sure what it means to me, the significance. If there is any. But I’m enjoying the day. Brewery up the street from the Autumn Walk Studio that I’ve been wanting to visit for months. And here I am. Finally. Back to work tomorrow and I return more composed and confident than recent weeks. Why…. I focus on the idea of sound, speed, efficiency, story. Kindness. The pillar and principle that should determine business momentum. Playing now, as I about to pick up the pint+ of Red Ale, Born On A Bayou, CCR. I’m taken somewhere. Somewhere. Some mood elevated and renewed. My day off but not. Not at all. This, this tap room if you’d call it that, present now in my pages. This is all significant. That I know.
2/14/19
Work early. 8am now, clocking in at 8:50 or so. Forgot headphones adaptor in car. Tempted to run out and get but why I then think, just take in the breakroom voices you hear from the nook. Work with what you have, with what you have, Mikey…. If I’m to know the Now and be freed from it, this is what I’m utilizing and implementing into the morning’s prose.
Out in the Field, today. In office all day yesterday and in knowing where I am and what I’m doing, I ignore time. The ten post-it notes to self I brought to class last night and shared, hours after lecturing on Kerouac and Madness here at Sonic, I’m in a different place. And in this different place wondering how I place the beaming benefit of the contrast, and finish my two essays. Didn’t make the deadlines I put before self. I know. Month over in two weeks, the time I have to finish my book. Different movements will manifest different Me’s. So, one different act—didn’t get the headphone piece. Usually I would have, as you might know, especially with music become more and more a demand and decided direction in my story.
Rain, light. Room now completely quiet. I’m not at work but in an office of my own, for more pulses in this page set than I can tally. The breakroom, now, has intermittent landers. People coming in for coffee, or some breakfast they pull from the fridge and pay for with that self-checkout box standing to the left of the refrigerating storage. What do I want from the day—or more immediately and tangibly what do I demand from now. The, Now. We all need to have this discussion. So I’m having it. Again. In Santa Rosa, Ca. Just 15 or so minutes from my house. Narrating to self, SELF, for sakes of more Self, more understanding and questioning where I am, what I’m doing, why I’m doing it. No qualms or quibbles, none at all, but I maintain the conversation.
Yesterday I spoke on Madness and how madness is love and creative, how it’s its own form of freedom, accentuation, its own manuscript. Vowing to live more madly, right now in this nook. What I want is what I have, and what’s before me will supply and sequence more proliferation of ideas, get me to my travels. Why travel. Why not. Why not see the world and have sittings like this in cities like Prague, or Lisbon, Cairo, New York…. Montreal, and of course my love-city, Paris. I need it. I need more. To understand self, narrator of and to self, share my findings with other so they can see what I see, in themselves and what’s around them.
Someone walks in, laughing, obviously content where he is, “Good morning, guys.” Followed by a few more warm ha-ha’s. Today a day of the Valentines, where you’re to love everything, everyone. My babies this morning, excited to be allowed to eat a little candy their mother bought them, and have some party in class. I step back, did this morning earlier and do know, to see what’s evolving in this day of love, or cards, candy, smiles, balloons and parties. The Now, estimating it, appraising it, deconstructing it and the Now you want to have. The reality that you have that reality is a reality to love and celebrate. I start laughing to myself.
I look out the window to parking lot see a delivery truck. Think they deliver linens or supplies, or something health-oriented for businesses. Abraham, my good buddy, my workout buddy whom I astronomically admire for his early wakes and workout routine walks in. I ask him if he went this morning and he offers “Hell yeah, e’ryday!”I again smile and see a new possibility in waking early. If not to workout then to write, finally finish my essays, and if not that then make a dent, one substantial and meaningful in the book. Writing I did in field day before yesterday on tablet emailed to self, one page, possibly the first page in book, tonight edited. Or, tomorrow. We need difference, we need contrast if we’re to pass the envisioned and land at the actual.
Just saw someone peek their head in. They were gone before I could see any face or eyes or right ear. Could only see a collar and shoulder. My breakfast sandwich, gone. Will fast for day’s remainder. Write for book in lunch’s hour, wherever in the city I’ll be. Possibly the Castro, or Noe Valley. Not sure yet. And, observe. Yesterday talking to Tasha for our mid-month check-in we talked about the power of observation and how not always one needs to be directly involved, interacting, present and talking, but watching. Cataloguing observations and reacting from there, an idea I echoed and argued last night in class with the 100 group.
People see me writing, say hello, walk out class door after scanning their badge, her badge, nice young girl from Inside Sales. I observe them, they me possibly, then time persists in its insistence. Amplifying from where I am, observing the little contained mess I made on this table with the sandwich bag, napkins from Starbucks, my phone and keys. I arrange, re-arrange, make my writing space more spacious. Done. Now with the time I have left, set aims and visions for day—Writing at lunch, at desk more post-it notes to self like yester’, and notes for field today. Set an observation template, if you would. For the Sales Leads that I observe daily but as well for the day itself. Everything from words I hear, people seen in streets, street lights and stores, cars and crosswalks, what bags people carry, what sounds steps make, everything.
I’m at work early writing because that’s what I do. That’s what I have to do. That’s my story. That’s what keeps me healthy, you could say. Alive and mentally alive and living and exploring my character and the story the character’s given. Passing the visions, and about to land in rooms actual. The travel, the hotels, lobbies, airplanes, tickets, engine sounds, taxis…. The story sows a new narrative. And in that, I better know the current Now, and soon step pervasively and definitively free, freed.
thought
The day isn’t after you.
You are after it.
Like a wolf, salivating and enveloped in starvation.
06:09
Starting day earlier than you have in a while. Coffee cold, just as you knew it would be.
Time for shower.
Budget money for day.
Start the day.
Let it get you closer to IT.
There.
Bring There, here.
1/14/19
Laptop suddenly working. Don’t get it. Doesn’t matter. It’s getting replaced. First day of new semester. Class starts in 4 min, 1 hour. I’ll be in classroom earlier than that, obviously, if there’s not one of those mindless instructors that is in no way aware of the possibility that another teacher may need the room. Introducing narrative, tonight. The singular idea that will dominate the semester. Narrative…. telling stories. Telling your own story. Knowing your story. Just wrote that last sentence into journal. The Germany journal. What will the students this semester be like. I keep wondering but with so much need to know. It will take a while term to know.
No lunching out, today. Must say I’m pleased with my discipline and poise, for once. Need at least 2k for new laptop. Just updated the OS, here in office. See if this does anything. Doesn’t matter like I said. Quiet in the adjunct cell… good to be back on campus, in Professor Mikey mode. Sharing ideas, knowing students and the student experience better. Put quarters in pocket to go get coffee. Could use a coffee now. Beats always drink coffee, no matter time of day or how it may impact sleep. Who cares. Off to get a cup. Don’t worry, small.
6:15. Back in office. With decaf. Decaf. I ordered decaf. Mainly from being charged and directed in energy enough from today itself, training new hire and now in my element of elements sharing ideas in the classroom.
Everything out on this desk, in this shared office like every other semester on the first day. 17 minutes for computer, in whatever it’s doing. Who knows if it’ll work— WHY DO YOU KEEP THINKING THAT? You’re shedding it anyway, that devil thing you call a writing tool and think a necessity.
Another note in journal, for class— Your decisions in how you read and write, and immediately write from your experiences, or write your story, make loud your thoughts in the present.
Clocked back in. Two minutes early.
On speaking, you should be to-the-point, but not depriving audience of anything. Tell them what they want to hear. Have the words be kind and heaping with life. So… don’t just say ‘I’m here and this is what I’m doing and this is what I have…’ Rather, speak more to the point of YOU, the person in the audience. Use ‘you’ in your language, loud amounts of it… This is for YOU… this is YOURS.. I’m here to tell you this, or invite you to this, and this is why it’s incredible… Sales entails sales techniques, but not sales voice, not repeated repeats of something not interesting. Entertain your audience… Don’t sell, ever. Sales is not selling, it’s speaking, it’s sincerity, earnest echoes sung in impassioned fastidiousness.
Just noting ideas passing through head, for sales team and next semester’s course.
Office a bit quieter. Think some took a late lunch.
In office, today. Getting things done and thinking of new ways to approach what I do. I’m overthinking. This is consequence of the inspiration I attain from just walking around this office as well as going from idea to idea. Today I focus on speaking Sonic. The language of this place. If this is a conduit or bridge for what I want in my story, then I need throw self into the singularity of this Sonic story. The office has you going over idea and another idea… speak what we do in as few words as possible, I say to myself. At my desk not bored in even a microscopic morsel but ever active, animated in the possible ways to adjust and shape this business and how I speak about it.
Encouraged, exhausted from my own passion in this office. This place that’s more than a place—like a parallel and utter juxtaposition to everything that we’re used to. I call it an antithetical workplace, but maybe that’s wrong. Maybe this is what the work place should be. It is. It is, that I know wholly and wildly, now. This is a place for creativity and whim, and lucrative lunacy and revolution, but… more. Something beyond denotation and connotation. Talk about deconstruction and examining dichotomies and dualities, this is its own plain. A text, a subject, a set of vocals that not only persuade but impassion beyond normal human norm.
This isn’t an office. It’s not a colony. It’s a language. Its own speak.
So then halfway through my Friday, in office, not with my sales team, I have time to collect for sakes of being with them tomorrow in San Francisco, to bring what’s here to the Sunset District’s upper-40 avenues tomorrow. I’m enriched, today, again. Supplemented, turned around made more a voice of this place and what it speaks.
Looking through to-do list. Everything done. I know so. I do. Been through list, each item, 3 times. So I give myself new items. Prep for tomorrow. Timeline for tomorrow. Keep busy. This new coffee cup has me especially energized and alive, written fire and fire to be written.
3:10. Feel self getting tired, even with the coffee. Yawn…. Phone interview/screening to prep for. At 4, and I’m more or less ready, so time for exploratory thinking, let mind wander to whatever and wherever what—
3:18. Coffee not working. All work done. Now what. Not panic I feel but something in the same flavor isle.
May need a break. Air that is fresh. Break from desk. Talking around me and my head’s in the car, on Road, in classroom, possibilities compounding in delirium-inducing shapes and plateaus. I don’t know what to do, now. I’m going mad, but a forming form of mad. Nothing hindering, nothing detrimental, not at all. This is a profuse health contract. I’m rebuilt in my readiness as a writer. This time in my story, where everything around me is me, for me, telling me to write something to myself that would benefit readers, somehow.
3:32. Student life. I’m a student here, as I am everywhere. There never a non-learning place. Every scene instructs. Not sure I’m providing or depriving audience, writing this. Work all around me, people working on what they work on, telling something to someone, educating and educating themselves whilst doing so, and me learning about what I do, here at this desk at which I everyday sit. Back from lunch two minutes early but now I reach a point in the day where time is a self-voiding send. So… look at clock, then at phone with its black screen, pen between forearms on desk. ‘Nother sip of coffee, or get more coffee? Don’t know. Don’t think, I tell myself. Just move. Thinking, becoming a bit of a foe, one formidable and crippling.
This office, Sonic, with all its sounds and quick movements and people writing notes to themselves and others and logging what someone says to reference in the future, notes on transactions and occurrences in their departments… Mom was right, everything I need is right here. As I’ve said in class but never myself appreciated adequately—Magic in the Meta. I won’t lie… this place fascinates me. On multiplying and befuddling levels. Transfixed in my fixations on and in everything from the voices I hear, to my own desk. From the conversations between people in the meeting room behind me when I can hear them, to the laughs that are distant, on the other side of the floor, in some distant department.
I pity my past self, honestly. Working in a tasting room, or going from campus to campus to campus—a freeway falcon—as an adjunct, or even further back working at the store, or before that in the insurance office. I’m not even “home” here I’m just me… how I wish be seen, a writer.
4:12. Called, no answer for phone screening. Now I close day, prep for tomorrow which I actually already did so now it’s just a countdown to my running life. Wondering about ten miles. If that’s even smart to do on a treadmill. Maybe just do an hour, then an hour tomorrow, then longer one Sunday, then back to a shorter run on Monday. Again, more thought than needed. Just write, just run, do both, live madly… bottom from the bottomless, or bottomless from the bottom. Can’t remember what Jack said. I’m beatifically introspective at this desk, hearing everything, everyone celebrate their weekend, what they’re going to do, what wine they’re going to drink.
Me, to run.
Now teaches us
that there need be nothing other than love of and from and FOR the Now.
thought.
On Now.
Laptop away.
Focus on the Now, YOUR day.