1/21/20

One of those days that I like.  That starts a bit rough for whatever reason then evens, rights itself, or I right IT.  With intense work and focus, containment and creativity.  Visited an Architecture firm today with one of the Sales Engineers, the one devoted to me I’m just reluctant to call him MY SE.  Anyway, the office was on the backside of a building, and up a small flight.  Building used to be resi’, the Engineer thought.  While up there and looking around, the arrangement and décor of the office was all creative, all visually intoned and inclined, inspired and intentioned.  We met in an equally-sightly conference room off to the side where the owner and his IT or tech guy said they were interested in Sonic’s services.  Couldn’t wait to get back to the office to work up proposal and send, but I had a lunch I had to get to, with an IT consultant.

Again, go-go-GO today.  This is what will get me the office, the travel… everything.  Paid off credit card earlier, and now with quite the thing budget.  Not that thin, just mindful of where pennies and all go.  When do I fit in a run?  Could go now, as lunch has settled.  Don’t want to break this momentum, though.  Go tonight, I tell myself.  When everything is quiet.  If I don’t go tomorrow morning, then I’d have to go in afternoon, after speakers meeting. Maybe that makes more sense.  I’ll figure it out.

Back at desk, writing emails…. Looking for more businesses around the area I today hit.  Have my geographies fixed, which helps.  Simplicity is radiant, both conceptually and with visible possibility, seeing that if I get out there and TRAVEL LIGHT, just say hi, not give any amount of fucks, the office will arrive.

Want a bubbly water.  Thirsty.  More than likely from all the coffee I’ve had, which isn’t a dastardly amount but apparently enough to dry-mouth the mouth.  Different narrative, dodge approaches and words obvious… surprise prospects, and yourself, and the story itself.  So much the day today to me saying, even with how some want their pessimism and low measure of everything around them and in their story to tilt and tarnish my forward.  Not today, not ever.

Business, in business, for business… monitor disposition, not just mood and mode, but the ME that’s seen.  When in the Architecture office this morning, the rooms were shoving me toward them, toward such-rooms and walls of my own.  That I’m on the Road I need be, finally.

Closer to day’s close and I don’t want to leave.  I have my routine, I’m hungry, I want more conversations.  Tomorrow will be on phone more.  Didn’t do much calling, today.  Other than the one visit after the Arch’ office.  Just keep talking, keep putting out story, not just content for the sake of content.

Glass of wine, somewhere… where.  Wherever there could be leads.  Starks?  That happy hour they do?  Parking’s always an issue.  Don’t care.  I’ll give stop by, see what occurs.  The AE in me will NOT turn off.  Going to stop by to see if I can connect with whatever, or not even to connect but contribute to visibility.  This week is about just that.. marketing self and concurrently telling and re-telling MY story.  Get out of this office, every chance I get.  Literally just walking around has value.  IS the loudest of embodiments of visibility.

mikemadiganLeave a comment

4:42pm

In SF today for lunch with a Senior AE.  First lunch then visiting businesses around us.  Have more leads than I know what to do with.  Just the feeling I want.  And, the revelation now a true revelation to focus on Novato and south…. San Rafael, SF, and back in my neighborhood of the Peninsula.

Taking laptop home and looking for businesses on map file.  Entirely instructional, this entire day.  From when I woke, to kissing kids goodbye, then driving to work and later struggling for a parking spot.

Now, ZEN.  I know what the focus on this writing AE need be.  Not just geographically, but how I speak the narration of this company.  “Selling”.  Don’t sell.  As I was advised today, “Give less fucks.” Noted.  SO. Noted.

Running tonight at gym, on tread.  No more coffee, and no wine tonight.  Well, not before working out.  I laugh to self as I want to open one of those White Oak bottles, more than likely the Merlot.  OR, no wine and wake early like I did the other day.

Listening to the veteran AE speak at these businesses, how relaxed and comical he was… what I need do.  More comedy, more ease, less fucks.

mikemadiganLeave a comment

article

In A New

You see that your attitude and disposition at times is the block.  The only block.  And certain habits and ways need to be definitively dissolved.  So how do you do that?  New habits, practices, and maintaining those new habits and practices.  What are they?  How do you know what to do, precisely in switching the direction of your ship? There is no one answer.  But, the imperative urge should be to self-educate.

What are you doing right now, where you are.  Is that getting you closer to your There?  Is the practice you’re implementing now educating you on YOU, and what you’re prone to do.  More than about change, I’m urging we understand more fully and immediately who and what and where we are, and why for all.  Knowing your story, your character, and what the character does from day to day.

Everything begins with perspective, attitude, your way, your lens…. The way you estimate each scene and the composition of that scene.  You and what you want, how you start your day, and the next, the next…. The music you create.  Don’t see walls, or ceilings, only see and more so feel propulsion, invitation for YOUR creative.

This can materialize in a singular moment, one day, and with no forecast.  If so, you need upon it seize, and with hungry turns and steps.  We decide what we decide, and with more than just plainly by others endorsed enthusiasm… but MADNESS.  Too much thinking will not bring about the shift you’re looking for, hoping for, or downright seeking.

One morning… it happens at the beginning of the day, where you decide you’re DONE with the way you’ve seen matters, certain people, certain intersections and perception.  Today, this morning, there’s a different tone and hue… a new and renewed decision and dimension, a fiery decidedness bringing you There.

1/14/20

mikemadiganLeave a comment

Finished essay.  Now to start calling.   Will be moving essentially everything out of office, at EOD.  Business cards, these two boxes full of shit, and even laptop.  May drop everything off at house before heading to Beer Baron to meet with B2B group.

First call, targeted.  Obsessing in singularity this morning, but I know that could be part of the problem.  Isn’t obsessive nature one of the key traits for “successful” business people?  Overthinking…..  How do you kill that?  Maybe you don’t.  Maybe you just roll with it and follow its existing momentum.

I one time in class said, “Resist nothing.” And here I am, resisting or fixating.  Funny.  I’m laughing.  I swear.

mikemadiganLeave a comment

Play

New Year starting with Jack getting sick, some sort of stomach bug or virus or something.  Melissa upstairs with him in bed watching a Harry Potter movie at little Kerouac’s request, and me down here with little Emmie as she plays with Harry Potter Legos and shows no sign of slowing or letting with her in the moment and breath to breath plot twists and turns and circle-arounds.

Grading WILL be done by end of day.  Will write students in a bit and let them know about my plan to have their grades posted by end of business on this first day of a new year, and I think decade.  I guess technically yes.  Latte nearly done, and I just listen in to Emma speak each character’s lines, how she moves each character one way or the other, then goes into more words, more lines.  Her in-the-moment inventiveness gives me ideas for my AE story, for MY business blogging, and several other dimensions and ideas.  First thing written today was ‘Design A Day’.  Playing with the phrase and word order in a multitude of molds.  First, design the day you’re in, meaning design each hour and each aim in those hours.  Then, each day there is a design to be written.  On this first day of 2020 I’m with unique sight and life in my now-design.  My Now, now.

Have to drive up to parents’ house to pick up something, then from there may get a cup of coffee, or maybe even a sparkling water somewhere. Starbucks at 12&Mission, and grade.  Start DESIGNING next semester.  Speaking of, I do plan on this being my last term at SRJC.  Well, possibly.  It saddens me thinking I’m not teaching there anymore.  But it has to happen eventually I guess….

Ran upstairs to get Melissa’s mocha, come back down here and heat it up a bit then back upstairs to deliver, check on Jack, Jack reaching for me, “I love you, Dada…”

“I love you too, dude.” I answer back. “Anything you need, let us know, okay?”

“Okay.” He answers, softly and with more life than he had earlier.  Wondering if he ate anything funny but no only the same ravishing apps Melissa got us.  So I’m at a loss.  And at a loss of strength seeing him get sick, and not being able to do anything.  Luckily, Melissa is right there with him, refusing to leave his side.  Now back down here listening in on the play Emma directs, I only smile and laugh a little at how amused and amazed she is by like 5 or 6 little Lego men place atop a box standing upright, the box to the Lego set itself.  “You go fiiiiii-iiii-iiiirrrrrrr-rrrrr-ssssssstttt.” In a mock-echo tremolo voice.  I laugh again, ask her how she’s doing, she turns around just gives me a thumbs-up.  Laugh again.

Self-study, in this new year.  Same way I study Sonic and what it embodies, how it came to be.  I’ve always expressed amazement, since my first week in the office, how a tech company made me more a devout, routine writer.  Going further into this amazement, this act, how Mike Madigan is changing shape and tone in character and how he thinks.  He turns 41 this year—And with the fashion of object consideration, deconstruction, any type of analysis, Sonic showed me and repeatedly reminded me of the value in seeing me not as me but as a character in a story.  Growth opportunities and invitations, doors and windows for Mike Madigan to not just walk through but explore from.

First day, first design, jump immediately into the song, the music, the beat and only beat you wish to keep.  An influx of redux…  Write more in 2nd person.  Play and make things up in the moment just as Emma actuates and annunciates her play, her characters and what she wants them to do.  She sells nothing, only does.  Makes the play proceed.

Tomorrow in the office, send more emails than I ever have.  Everything written, everything more concise.  Less is better, yes, but more so the focus in effectiveness and rich communication in brevity’s clef.  Each day in this new year to have a singular word, octave and sight, life.  Today, PLAY.  Just play… enjoy each scene, each hour, just as I do each of Emma’s words and bits of spontaneous and in the moment dialogue.

10:57.  Emma asks for a band-aid for one of her toes, even though she doesn’t need one I go on a hunt.  Don’t find one.  Back in the chair.  What next in my play, in this first day.  Post to all blogs then take notes on D.A.D., Design A Day.  Today, movement, stay moving.

Emma finally retires from her play, and demands to see Melissa and Jack.  Hurries for the stairs with a galaxy-wide smile, and humming.  Mom once told me I have more than enough to write about just with the kids, and an old friend told me in 2011 when we first met that when Jack is born I should write about being a dad.  And here I am with a near-8 year-old and a spunky little 4.  Smile to self, and even with the rough or sickly start to the new year, this is a new year.  One to study, build, compose, PLAY.

The kitchen quiet and I miss Emma’s little voice speaking for the Potter Lego colony but I have my own voices to listen and contribute to.  Mike Madigan, new character and form… write about self objectively as I did when the Field Sales Supervisor noting certain activity, punctilio, and dialogue lines in the Field, discoveries and revelations, the Leads with their monthly aims and me encouraging them and asking for a little more explanation in certain points and parts.  My aim today is to write the DAD plan, more or less even if small jots and fragments.  Today, playing but quite intent in this new year—Getting my own office, not just ‘close to it’.  Travel…. A bigger house for the family.  Getting rid of that goddamn Prius.  Don’t stress, I remind self.  Just play.  Enjoy the day.  Enjoy the music.  And, Mike will.  With new Sight and Life in his Now.

1/1/20

mikemadiganLeave a comment

Feeling the past two runs.

Tempted to do another today.  Only 4 miles or so.  More than likely I won’t, needing to recover.  What work do I tend to this morning and the day… writing.  I need to finish the goddamn book.  HST mentality and discipline today.  Intensify everything in my written way going into this new semester.  Jackie waking early and devoting all energies to one project, a Harry Potter Lego set.  And he worked in silence for well over an hour.  Emmie and I coming downstairs, she requesting to watch a movie, and me expecting to find Jackie with one already on.  But no.  In fact Jackie requested quiet as he “needs to concentrate” he affirm.  Emma of course protested and I told Jackie we’d put on with little volume.  Now they both watch something, quiet, and giving me time to write.

So many people that have kids talk about it being so much work… that it’s so hard, that it’s draining and infuriating, that it makes you tired and sick and….. not sure I agree.  I mean yes I’ve caught something, something they’ve brought home from school and there are times where you have to do the work.  But, isn’t that expected?  Why do so many parents complain about being parents?  No judgement, or maybe there is, but I don’t understand the mentality of bitterness rather than learning from this small humans.  Jack’s discipline and his conviction, and devotion to projects be it Legos or reading, or coloring, whatever he chooses he always wakes early and flies to his work and curiosities.

My book on work… nearing an end.  All my projects, interests, forming and joining today.  So what do I do in the couple hours I’ll have to errands… thinking, while in Healdsburg getting haircut gather information or anything for this new blog idea, the vinovinevin project.  Realizing that in order to have a more sized dwelling that fits everything accrued and acquired by these wee beats, we need a bigger house.  And lately my interest in homes and architecture has widely intensified.  Not sure what it means and it doesn’t have to mean anything, again like the parent analogy you know you’re a parent and you have to be one so why are you grieving so much.  Not that I’m grieving about my real estate inner-flirtation, I’m just not going to do much but enjoy my curiosity and see where it takes the writer.  MY book on work, much about this… the ideas, the work that starts as something not work but just an idea, something you don’t know how to categorize or qualify.

Writing about work… thought about on my run yesterday getting closer to Sonic’s HQ, and the run before that as well, all the jobs I’ve had.  Why I settled for something far beneath my capabilities and even present abilities.  Every place taught me something though, from the first job of a grocery store where I was fired for no reason (honestly), and then the insurance office in San Leandro where I learned that if he can have his own agency then I can do anything, literally anything, I want with my life, professionally.  Looking at both little poets on couch, wanting to one day work with them in some throw, see the focus has to be there, with them.  Always.  They will teach me how to get to my office, my agency….  How to run better.  Everything.

mikemadiganLeave a comment

Done with article, but still thinking about last night. And my babies…

here with me with no worries or concerns other than to have fun, enjoy their xmas movies and our tree, Emma excited about her birthday tomorrow… me, their dad.  How do I do this, have I been doing it right, and so on in my head.

Think I need another cup.  Know I shouldn’t as I’m trying ot cut back on caffeine, like wine, but another cup just one more sounds delightful and resplendent.

The Grinch song plays, Emma intrigued with the words and the old visuals in the cartoon.  “…you have garlic on your skin..”? Is that what he said, the guy singing?  Want to write this more, being Daddy to Emmie and little Keoruac.  Want them to work with me one day, in some creative office… and the wine story, in the tasting room if they want—or, not tasting room but heading DTC efforts somehow, speaking the story of the winery, their story, their Auntie Katie’s and he making of the wine (I’ll make her go against her contract at her winery somehow.)

Thinking no coffee. Sparking water instead.

Wife going to get hair done, or something, me here with the wee beats.  No hassle, no loudness, unusual harmony and composition.  The Grinch song reappears, and the lyrics are more inventive and creative than I remember.

Emma tells me to LOOOOOOOK, the Grinch taking all the ornaments and trees, presents.  What a dick.

Why are those kids, or kid things, sleeping with candycanes?

From last night, the conversation I had not memorable.  Not anything.  I’m confused when I remember the words, and the people I was talking to.  Not Jesse, or even Joe, but the others.  Why was I talking to them.  What was I doing there?  What was my aim or objective in being there?

mikemadiganLeave a comment