Sonic, again showing itself as a paradigm business providing shelter to its various departments.  Excatly what a business should do.  Not sure what I’m going to do, today, with one of my prospects in Santa Rosa, and two others, actually three, outside the area, not much to do.  Will be at desk adding notes to book.  No thinking, just movement, writing.  Have to get in a run tonight, at gym obviously since air outside is horrendous.  Hungry now, what do I eat.  Nothing.  Fast.  Till lunch.  Go at noon.  Where.  Have to do budget…  Thought this morning on writing on money, budgeting, some strategies, but I should probably do M budget first, huh?

Again, not sure what to do today.  The office is off, you can tell.  But incredibly comfortable and safe-sensed from everything Sonic has in place.  Going to enjoy coffee, not think or overthink, or even partially meditate on this.  The day, and the outside air and sky from fires light a horripilation, slight but still noticeable.

All these notes on desk.  What do I do with them.  Send follow up emails.  Sent a shit ton of emails, letters today… one to old friend, and another to another old friend.  At some point.

First, going to check in with re-term attempts.  Then, send emails to leads. Start conversations… don’t think, just throw kindness and community into the air.

My current book project, CFTS, you know what that means if you’ve been reading, is about not thinking.  Being tired of your own patterns to a certain sway, but as well resolving for something much higher than what you’ve had.  Sonic taunts me to do just this, and doesn’t provide so much a platform but a playground and practices to employ, embody, consider trying, to write my own.

Emails sent.  Now to send another.  Want to organize as best I can this desk.  Or, don’t.  Actually, don’t.  That requires thinking and time away from conversation, creativity.  Keep contacting people.  Start the conversations.  8:45am, and already restless.  WHY?  Cuz I’m thinking too much.  Cuz I’m thinking, period.  There needs to be a partial dismissal of self if you’re to be “successful” in sales.

Tonight I’m going to write for as long as I can without stopping, when home.  OH… budget.  Do that now.

Done.  In better shape than I thought.  The thing about money is to use cash, I’m finding.  Don’t budget from your debit card, ‘cause then you’ll be to the wheels of “Oh, I can take a little more…” or “I’m fine, I’m fine.” With the cash right in front of you, AFTER YOU”VE BUDGETED THAT CASH, it’s either present or spent.  That’s what I’m finding I have to do.  Not boasting self as some personal finance expert, as many who know me will tell you I’m not, but I am learning more at my more advanced age than I did when younger.  Not that Mom and Dad didn’t try to teach me, they DID teach.  I just didn’t adequately listen and incorporate.  Anyway, topic next…..

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from book

Day 7, 8/1/17.  Up, going, a little late.  Will finish grading today, later, and put a harsh dent in book.  No coffee in house, I noticed, so I may just fly over to Hopper and get one.  Had $0.50 “refill” yesterday in tumbler rather than my tempted mocha.  This morning I’ll treat Self to mocha, maybe.  Need something today, not sure what.. just woke feeling drained, and I’m sure it’s yesterday’s inventory at winery, my first.  The process, though, I must say, was rather fluid.  But yes, I’m tired this morning.  A day off from wine life but not at all from teaching and writing.  Teaching myself not to succumb to stress, and not think about wha tI have to do, take some inventory in head.  Rather, just do it.

Wife still asleep with Emma in her arms, and Jack and I are down here.  Cleaning ladies get here shortly… The to-do’s just pile and pile, and I tell myself to just “go with the flow” or not worry, teaching myself to not stress is the hardest class I think I’ve taken, ever… ever ever.  The grading will get done… stuff for winery will get done.  It’ll all get done.

Sometimes you have to tell yourself that.  You can control your life, and what transpires in the sequencing scenes, but only to a certain degree.  And that’s what life is… living it, not so much controlling it.  ‘Take the ride’, Hunter said, oui?  So that’s what I’m doing, living.  Enjoying the ride.

Little Kerouac tells me he’s still hungry and that he’s going to make himself two waffles.  I tell him only one and he tries to debate, starting with the strategy of antagonism— mimicking everything I say in hopes it pushes me to surrender.  I yawn, as he halts in his assault, realizing I need more coffee.  More?  I need SOME.

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No More Wanna Wanna

img_1217Telling myself to break structure, any blip of predictability, and I mean really BREAK it.  I’ll always write, but there’s been a change in the battle plan.  The last change, if you know need.  Sipping a port right now from the Kunde days, one the then-Cellar Master made from who knows how many varietals.  I don’t care.  I’m sipping.  Staying succinct in my focuses and forms.  On floor of home office, didn’t make five pages but I’m on the third and I had my championing idea of day and that’s what pronounces itself to me, most palpably.

Wife across the street meeting neighbor’s new baby.  Sent home from hospital when baby is barely 24 hours young.  Quick?  Don’t know.  But what moves quick is time and I need to outrun and outgun it.  I collect in this atmospheric composition of sensory— low light, me in no slight, only direction and affirmation of my story.  Setting alarm for 4, and when early up I’ll do what I do.. something.. just move quick.

Needing another splash, but more needing to research a couple things.  Port’s a funny thing to me.  Tasty, but funny.  It’s the result of an accident, if I’m not incorrect in my findings.  And if not a “mistake” then certainly something unexpected.  I’m about to actuate a reality, one beautiful and beneficial, for my family.  Business.. creative business—  Wife comes home from seeing the baby and we both hop into a nostalgic dote.  Our babies, getting older and older, and we too.  Time isn’t forever.  So I move quicker and quicker even though this port wants to slow me.  My next glass my last.. need cue coffee.  The writer knows his gears and energy can only segue to delightful diversification.  The nigh quiets, and my tyrannosauric talk calms.  Me, into meditative modality for collections cause.  But, one more port.  One more pour… one more sitting pulse for the writer.  4am, ready for my invasion. It’s record, nearly undefeated.  Tomorrow, this writer hopes, ebbs re-arrange.

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Hit 3 pages for the day.  On campus.  Just wrote a thousand word piece

that I’m refusing to post to the blog.  I’m selling it.  Somehow.  Have to edit it, print it, double-space it, and there I am.  The journalist, teacher, writer, more-so-journalist.

What the fuck are they watching on the other side of the door, in that big theatre room?  Something about sex, or STD’s, what.  Gross.  Need a walk.  Told myself this would be a no-spending day, but that won’t happen, as I’m hungry and will need something from the caf’ which isn’t a big deal since I have to get oil for that goddamn Passat (what I call the “Panzer toboggan”)… anyway, I’m buying self lunch.  But what.  Burrito?  Burger?  Grilled turkey & cheese?  WHAT?!?

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$0.20 for parking.

Fucking Santa Rosa.

Then $5.10 for the Peet’s Mocha… Think I ordered a three-shotter, can’t remember now.

Oh yeah, and the $160 check I wrote for the cleaning ladies…

Seems like money just wants to fly away from me.  Doesn’t want to stay with me at all.  Kinda funny, really.  But no matter.  Motivates me to work harder, put some books together and sell.  Mom advised I put the pen down for a bit, not be so focused on salable MSS.  And I appreciate her words.  But I can’t.  I have to.  This reasons what and who I’ve become at 37… A writing-blogging-entrepreneur father.  Always working, always marketing, always story telling, always in the always and every-minute, every-second mode.  Just who I’ve grown to be.

Found a nice corner in the Peet’s to collect myself for a few minutes before my time in the stupid draconian asshole-ish meter is up.  Look around outside, homeless people everywhere I can put my eyes.  That motivates me even further, replaces any exhaustion from this morning getting kids ready with a fiery fire… and humility.  A creative quake that won’t stop till it realizes it’s okay to stop, which will be never.  So I keep writing, not even having take a single slurp or sip from my holiday-themed-and-colored cup.

Thinking this morning about cures for blocks, writing.  About how to make my writing more invigorating for me as well as readers.  Of course I postulate, as I share with students, ‘use what I have’… Write in French… Write about wine… About being a daddy…..  About where I am and precisely what I see, what I’m doing no matter how boring.  Writers and other creatives too many times I’ve found wish for something else and they don’t even know what the something else is, or would be.  Not advantageous, I measure.

Still not a sip from the mocha.  What am I waiting for?  Shit…  Just remembered I have to put oil in that goddamn Passat before heading to the winery.  Ugh… There goes more money. Of course.  It wants to leave me.  It doesn’t like me.  Yeah?  Well guess what… There’s a lot more coming in.  So if this dollar doesn’t want to stay, or that one, there’s a lot more on the way.  Other cash stacks in the entrepreneurial ocean.

Time’s up.

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10/23/16 –

img_7872This is largely what I’m addressing in being a writing father– time.  It’s more than just a snake, a tyrant, a bitch.  It’s an element hard to find.  Like some rare gem.  Either way this morning I’m pressed–  “Slam that coffee!!” The last cup in the house.  Need to keep more on hand.  Go to store after work and get some, Healdsburg Safeway– and see?  That’ll take time as well.  Time away from this book.  Everything targets my story!  Now I’m just whining.

Plug in iron, wait for heat.  More time from writing.  Oh, I haven’t even addressed the more humorous market in this days narrative…  The babies aren’t even here.  They’re at their granny’s house, last night spending night so Alice could prep for a big Halloween party planned for all the babies’ friends, and other moms.  What if they WERE here, then I would deserve some whine.  And later, ‘whine’ without that bloody ‘h’.

Alice off to her running group and I can only be obsessed with the quiet I have here in home like I haven’t with other quiet I’ve been invited to.  15 minutes till I have to be in shower.  I should celebrate, be effulgent in this time to self.  Music?  Yes.  If you’re a father reading this you know what time to yourself is.  Some watch football on a Sunday, some workout (something I should’ve been up earlier to do, but…) some sleep, some go get groceries… all a writer wants to do is get something on page before the day is off ahead of him like a hunted rabbit.

Open a new tab on net, that takes 20 seconds or so to type in “Pandora” and get the Hutcherson tune going.  Sip coffee again… that takes like ten seconds, or maybe eight away from my fingers typing something.  Fucking time!  “TIME!” I yell in my head, and only in my head so Bobby’s track isn’t interrupted.  Need to write all day today, eight hours.  At work.  Think about that, I tell myself, “think…” What if I had EIGHT hours to myself, to write.  How much of the book could I get done?  How many poems could I write?—  Shit, that reminds me, I need to type the one I wrote yesterday, the short one I wrote on my phone, in the bathroom.  Told co-worker, Lainy the sassy loud little Texan, that I had to pee really quick, when really my only ambition was to be in the quiet bathroom by the winemaking area to get in 10 lines, electric and varied.  That’s what a writer does, a writing father who barely has a second to self in his own walls and even less during the eight.  So what if those eight were all mine?  Today they will be.  A grand, explosive, mass-construction poem, one word at a time.  This ONE poem I write today will change the course of my life FOREVER.  I’ll read it, everywhere.  I’ll commit it to memory.  I’ll read it in New York, Paris, China, Japan, Egypt, South Africa, everywhere.  I have one goal today, and one mentality— the eight hours at work ARE eight to myself, and one poem is all I have to write.

Writing father, loving his time right now, his music, he doesn’t give a shit about all the red he sees above this very line, all the quirks and red line, all the instances of this fucking laptop saying “Hey idiot, you misspelled that.” I just listen to my brother John’s sax solo, him fly alongside that light high-hat.  Writing father sees himself on a trip with his book, talking about being a dad, to other dads and moms and soon-to-be-parents.  Not that he’s an expert!  Not that he’s even a good dad!  Just to share the experience of being a dreaming daddy, and because you are a parent with two or however many babies doesn’t mean you need to lie down.  You can still be alive with ambition and vision and have the plate you ordered before the babies were here.  Just thoughts, but thought I’m not releasing any time soon.

Goddamnit!  Only five minutes.  Are you kidding me?  I’m back to my full glass of whine.  Could I go till 8:40?  Take a quick shower, go to ‘bucks, get my heaping tumbler of Pikes and jet to Geyserville?  See, again.. time makes its way to the subject matter of my writing, in the little time I have to write.  I feel the ire quake in me like a fault that wants to show the world it’s still there, it can still move, it can still make you move like these Coltrane notes— me just bobbing my head and pressing the keys while the percussion becomes a bit more percussive but not so much it ruins the track’s mood— “My Ideal”, the song’s identity.  Funny, feel like my brother plays just for me, to go after my ideals he urges.  “Play your song till 8:40, Mike, don’t worry about it,” he says through the current scale of notes he sews before the track ends.  “Don’t go!” I say, but I know I need to be on my own in this story.  I will be, it’s inevitable.  The only one who can get daddy his ideal, for himself and the babies, are his own sentences and efforts, music.

8:30— no, no more talk about time.  I’m giving it too much identity.  “Blues of the Orient” comes on, Yusef Lateef.  One of my favorite jazz pieces ever, one I haven’t heard in a while.  I slam the rest of the coffee, with an indignant glug, forwarding my writing daddy self into this 23rd day of October.  Think about certain shifts, if I were to make them, what would happen.  If I rose earlier, I’m still convinced I would have everything I need or ever wanted “professionally”… time to write, more finished projects, more to sell, time to work out, more story.  MUCH more story.  So why the hell don’t I do it?  ‘Cause I’m some unruly beat writer?  Yeah, partially.  Have to keep writing and sipping this coffee to find out.  The day and its poem will tell me.  So here I go, here daddy goes, for my babies, for myself, for the story, so one day little Kerouac (son, Jack) and Ms. Austen (daughter, Emma) can read what I did, see how we arrived where we are, what I did for the family, what I did…  What I did.  Everything I did.  With the time I had.

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