Lunch. Small latte in car. Windows down. Even with clouds it’s a bit warm. Excited about drive home as I want time to Self, quiet and music. The day is a bit odd now I feel, changing its tone and talk, character and code with me for some reason. I sent the day too much influence and say in my day. On Solano, in Albany. Was tempted to get something at a nearby Mexican grille but told self no and stuck to pb&j and latte guns. Now, time to Self. Cold air replaces warm and humid uncomfortable. The air, nicely pushing me, easing my edge and nervy echo.

Car next to me pulls out, back, drives away letting more speedy air at me from left. A Porsche Cayenne, then a ford, then a Civic. People going somewhere but where I want to know for story sales and just the curious strut mentally. This town I find interesting. Would never live here, but it’s different. It’s new. And the older I get I find that’s precisely the aim to everything. Newness.

Work. In the Field. Each day gifts Newness, but you have to manage your temperament. Then I think there’s nothing to write about in the cabin of this company car with a small latte and windows down, people walking by and cars zooming up Solano behind me. And maybe there’s not. But there is. I’m here and Sonia all of this. I could be staring at the screen of this bloody phone, but no. No. I didn’t let myself. Celebrating that I didn’t.

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Blazing through tasks like there’s nothing in front of me.

11:18.  Just finished delivering pieces of candy throughout the office. Felt good to spread love and poz vibez.  Today has been a loving one, one educating and freeing.  Going to class tonight eager and ready to make it everything I want.  Something for me.  Something to know more about my Now and to be FREED.

 

11:55.  Feel like I get it.  All of it.  Never felt this before, ever.  More than simple empowerment, or some freedom sentiment or sense.  But… like… I understand.  I see Self, in the Now, I am Freed and freeing more of my character and story.

12:07.  Brought lunch, the pieces of quesadilla but somehow tempted to eat out. No, I tell myself.  Go to the café and write, then heat quesa’ when back.  Eat at desk while working.  Budget still not done, but did pay off credit card a bit more.  No word from any of the wineries I contacted.  I’m done.  I’m officially retiring from wine.  Don’t even think I want the wine shop, anymore.  Maybe have my own label like Calluna, maybe, but even that I don’t know.

So full of thought, in this breath.  Again, like I get it all.  I understand where I am and why I’m doing what I’m doing.  Madness… Freedom… Individualism.  I should get out of the office.  Will.  No caffeine, no soft drinks.  Water.  Hopefully they have bubbly water.  Pretty sure they do, Pellegrino or some similar type.

12:54.  Resolving to stay here, go to breakroom, nook if I can, and write.  For tonight’s class, loving shoves for self to run tomorrow morning, early.

No more thinking.  About money or spending a couple bucks to get a sparkling water with the ques’.  Who cares.  Next week will be tight, but only from making progress.  Last night, last dinner out in some time, do note.  Next thought… to work, how to spend day’s remainder.  How….  See?  There I am, thinking again.

 

1:42.  At desk.  19 minutes left on lunch.  Snacking on trailmix.  Bought cherry sparkling.  Almost finished.  May get another.  Everything today for tomorrow’s early run.  Running on treadmill, hoping for 7-9 miles.  I’d be happy with that.  Pretending like I’m getting back into running all over again.  Revisiting and reassessing my reality as a runner.

Phone screening at 2:30.  May want to get in a walk.  Should I do that now?  Overthinking, goddamn you.  Water, notes, snacks, voices, voicemails, phones, discussions on what to do next.  The office is exceptionally alive today.  I mimic, I study, I love it all.  Each ingredient and inclination, ebb and view.  This place is beyond study-worthy, past useful.  This is IT.  The IT of it all.  My IT.  IT provides insight and understanding that nothing else could, or would ever hope that I had from being there.  The other places simply didn’t invest in me or those around me.

14 minutes left.  Water.  Gum.  On the menu.  Not that I’m trying to diet or necessarily eat less, but just control what’s contacted.

Two people walk into the zen den.  I feel defensive, like it’s my space and room and terrain being invaded.  Silly, but just what I feel alive as I am today.

 

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In car. Lunch.

Ate what I bought at Sonic’s in-house market. Sandwich, Cliff Bar, sparkling water, with the peanuts I had in desk drawer as a little side something. About 30 minutes left. In car, hear wind and people talking on 26th Street or behind me somewhere on Shotwell. Not sure what part of the city this is but it’s interesting. Rained as soon as I exited vehicle right when I arrived and now skies, blue with thin and depleted clouds.

Will leave Field around 4:30. May get out in a bit and walk. More steps. 14 hour fast turned into a 16 hour one— Actually 16 hours, 9 minutes, 23 seconds. Stopped timer on phone after first bunch of peanuts were bit. Only inconsistencies are this morning’s latte which I excuse and an almond I accidentally ate shortly after while grabbing the small pack of almonds from desk. Ate one to see if it was stale or odd. While chewing, I realized what I was doing, kept going in jaw interval, and continued with fast. These fasts are teaching me not only about discipline and self, vision and singularity, but thought itself. Having a thought be actual and not just conceptual, hypothetical, imagined.

Man behind me a bit and to the side, speaking loudly in Spanish to someone over phone. Part of me wants to get out and see him while the writer-Me orders holding position. And I do. Driver’s seat of this company car. Dried skins from peanuts, sandwich container on floor. Will clean when I get back.

Different musics on the drive down. Thinking of everything from the previous day, and how much of it I can write, or could write from memory. Learning I can do so much more aptly and genuinely better than I thought. Learning I don’t always need be writing. That walking on these SF streets and living is writing. Have always known that and been aware of such approach to writing life, but now I feel and self-active I’m thought in ways I never have.

How much time left now. Don’t care. See the man on his phone, after he walked to the corner of 26th and Shot’. Can see his face. Back to me, and wearing hood.

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No nap, today, fought against pull and push to do so. Thanksgiving over, wife out shopping at one of those shopping special eve whatever’s. Me, home. Wine. Just finished glass of Claret. The night passed with such cruel progression. Indifference. Babies asleep upstairs. What movie do I watch, my dilemma. My life’s trouble. Think of how fortunate I am with my family and to have such family, to be sitting where I am, here on this we seek to shed, new one one the way… Day of giving thanks, I need to show more giving of thanks, being thankful.

Tonight, I do intend exploring more wine. No aim to wake at 4am or 4:10 like this day. No. I may actually just sleep in. I will. What do I mean, “may”? May have to punch out. Take the night as it approaches me, describe and translate it, or in such order reversed… then wake tomorrow with more thought. More story. More ME. Tired now, forgetting I’ve been up since 4-something. Think 4:10. Has it been that long? Yes. It has. Me, that writer. Now. Time to Self and I sip wine and be here, writing. A writer.

Does the writer want apple pie or Chardonnay? Both sound like they sound, their own precise appeal and connection. I’m not torn between both but urge to be curved by both, somehow. 9:08. Feel like bed but I won’t. I can’t. But more, I refuse. Why can’t I be a human, just have dessert or drink wine. Is it that complicated? Are my thoughts the hinderance, the block and or impediment? I think it may be just that. Not in any kind of a writing swoop, and I can’t figure anything of it out. How does pine figure. What type a figure be me, I, this writer.

I feel like I’m not doing a thing, while doing too much. A mess. Should have taken a nap.

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Work early.  Breakroom, or whatever room this is. 

Big, cold, with snacks and games, and time for me.  Time for me.  What I need after yet another hectic morning being the writing daddy readying the kids all on own, for whatever reason.  Short story ideas, brewing and simmering, fermenting in brain telling me to write them.  Don’t want to yet disclose what they’re about, but they’re there.  Very much there and present.

Yesterday’s inventory:  25 yay-saying shapes, two poems, writing in Sonic journal and Burgundy.  Thus far, this day… Thousand words to blog written from phone, and now this, this sitting.  Ten more minutes to self.  Probably could have come in at 9, but I want to collect time.  Learn more about this company.  How it works, how the people work, see self working harder than anyone around me or trying.  Writing the entire day, in the city and before I drive down there by self, and when back.  Remember to bring adaptor chord, so I don’t have to listen to flimsy Bay Area radio stations.  Need a certain mood, today.

Sip cinnamon dolce, cold, and continue in sitting.  Everyone happy it’s Friday, I can tell.  But I work tomorrow.  I work everyday.  My way.  Writing.  Was paid today but haven’t checked account balance.  Not in the mood to see money, the numbers, the account balances and reminding me of bills on their way.  Just want this, quiet and writing, self-instruction and meditation.  More jotting inward, knowing what the day has for me.  How do I make it different.  What can I do to either spice it up or make it more a writing piece.  Packed lunch for self, but have to take co-worker to lunch, someone from sales crew for hitting a goal, satisfying a challenge I offered out a week or so ago.  In fact, yes.  One week ago, today.

The coffee has me moving, not to any impressive writing speed, though.  A few minutes left.  Okay, It think to myself.  Put everything on these blogs.  Advertise self better.  Put everything out.  And this is more than some attempt or effort for “personal branding”.  This is life.  LIFE.  The story I’m in and what I’m not writing.  Blogging… huh…. Remember when it was recommended to me by wife’s sister.  At first I dismissed it.  And here I am, nine years later, at work but before work, writing for a blog.  One on life and work, being a writing and working father, trying to do what I can, dueling with moods and occasional low self-sight.  This morning, though, no such chemistry.  All in sky, in flight, looking down, above weights and thorn colonies.  Remedied.

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9/5/18—

Opened one of my favorite bottles from Roth, guess I had one more, had no idea.  The ’15 single-vineyard Cabernet, Alexander Valley.  So then of course I think of the wine industry and all the years I spent in it, all the people I met and the wines fro Roth.  Where I am now in my relationship with wine, now in tech, sipping wine just to sip it and occasionally write about it.  The bottle tonight speaking to me in a way it never has.  Tell me to find my freedom, shed any anxiety or suppression, oppression, any muffle or mute.  I’ll have another glass in a minute, but first I’m set on starting this sitting… getting my thoughts in some revolution, some momentum.  Technology, the internet, where I am.  With this bottle and the last glass celebrating my first couple days of this second week.  A wine guy in tech, teaching his last semest—  Different approach.  I need quiet, after today.  First day teaching after a long weekend.  I need stillness, peace, no sound.  Need me, these keys, an early rise if I can but more than likely won’t.  Today though, waking at 06:00 on the dot, after hearing son upstairs walking around, to and from our room, saying how he’s going to get dressed so the writer accepted the challenge and shot from under the sheets, got in the shower and made the day start itself.  I thought of what I’m to do right when I walk through the doors after scanning my badge.  What I’ll say, what I want accomplished, what I want from coworkers, what I want to say to them. This office new has me riled and antagonized in a way the wine industry was definitely unable to do.  So I don’t know if it’s irony or paradox that I’m celebrating with the Roth bottle, but I am.  I’m sipping to sip.  Not overanalyzing, seeing more in how I interact and intersect with wine, what she wants to say to me in this occasion and what I’m to do with the next glass poured when wife goes upstairs, finally.

Sorry.  Just need time to self.  No one around me.  The day took a toll.  Not one terminal, or damaging by any means, but I certainly seek solitude this nuit.  No one around me.  May put on some Coltrane.  Or not.  Maybe just write to the sound of the dryer upstairs.  Breathing, thinking about tomorrow in the office, already ideas quake and bubble like eager thought lava. I calm it.  Mediate and meditate in everything in my reality, 39, now.  What will I think in a few years.  What should I care.  I’m here now.  And I need to put more into this project, this blog, this story, the wine/literary/techie.  I’m a techie?  OR, a literary wine guy in the tech world.  Why do I need a title?  Why do I need anything but a page?  I don’t….  Wie upstairs, finally, time for another glass of the Meola.  She waits, that red, for my reaction and my reasoning in response to her tide and vibe.

Coltrane on.  Couldn’t resist.  As I wrote earlier the bottle shows more aggression than the last time I saw her.  Less restraint, a principle-driven grace to her setting and postmodern dialogue.  I let her sit a while, next to me in the stemless bowl.  I look at the color, more than depth-void, like an opaque rhythm and beat which I only associate with the unknowns in human consistencies. When you don’t know something, you should feel encouragement and intrigues. Push to explore and wander.  That’s what she does, tonight.  She has in past, but the Now contrasts.  With intensity and new rhythm.  Her voice is familiar but with a new bewitching beat.  I’m the one in the corner listening to her sing, wanting to write down some reaction, some emotion from what I see and taste, experience, but she’s away orbited. And I collapse in my speak-lapse.  I can’t write a thing, but only experience and not react or live or to page anything give. What I am is a sheet with only lines unoccupied, ashes, but then in next sip I’m new tint, new chromatic habit, sporadic, a her-fanatic.

Before getting too fustian in my sentences, of her, this wine, I think of the Roth tasting room.  Sitting there at that table, the long polished wood surface either intentionally or by-chance in California’s shape.  Never got an answer on that.  But how I’d show early, on weekends, to write, in the quiet of that room, the tasting room, doing more for me and my writing than the others did, for sure.  I wait for my next sip, think of literature, tech, wine, me, Sonoma County.  Not sure why, but here I am. There I am.  I’m everywhere in this ride of thinking, this paragraph to paragraph jab and meditative lab, here on the floor of my living room with wife and babies upstairs.  I’m closer to 40, when I’m to write a thorough, loud and ostensible self-assessment of where I am in this story, my story.  Where do I want to be?  Well, There.  My, THERE.  I know what that is, but anymore I’m fearful of paginating it. I wont.  I see it. You’ll see it, my There.  Readers all, will.  The wine, she massages the worry and any self-doubt from my cloud, my Now.

One shoe on the wood part of this floor, feet from where I situate. My daughter’s, the left.  I think about the last step she took in that shoe, what she thought while taking it, where I was when she stepped that step.  Don’t think she wore that pari today, so it must have been yesterday.  The Cabernet reminds, time, it doesn’t care.  I have to keep writing, wherever I am and whatever I’m doing, like when in the field the other day and sneaking a couple minutes to write some short poetic impressions.  One foot, literarily, in front of the other.  Situate, meditate, on the words and my Now fixate.  Wth wine’s loving shove.

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Meditation on lunch’s last minutes. 

Ready for wine conversation, the wines showing me something new, something I didn’t before know.  Life and all the question marks, the antithetical of predictability.  Vivacity in the Newness of it all.  Conversations forming from nothing before seen.  Walking down the stairs and planning nothing in head, only relishing in the eagerness of new interactions galactically valuable intersections of characters.

New stories, new words, something to later write.  That’s what this is for me, not some push toward meeting some silly sales goal.  The goal, for a writer, is a book, and another, and learning from your own paginations.

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