4/3/20, Friday.

8:20.

Flight email sent to Mark.  Babies in office with me, working.  Each stating they have their own offices in here with me.  Had the Kenwood Cab last night.  Nothing too memorable.  Would I have it in my shop, yes… but not as a featured bottle or anything.  Or maybe I would have it as some value feature, even though I hate both those words, especially when they’re close together.

Blogging should be more meta… Emma says she wants a pen resting in and on her ear as I do now.  Then she says she doesn’t.  She ate the last bagel, making some people in the house irritated.  The lockdown is a lock-IN.  In my own ideas and practices.  Like I told Mark this morning, I’m going to go about everything in prospecting new business differently.  Not sure what that means, exactly… but visibility, communication, questions, asking them about THEM.

Going for a drive in a bit.  Need new pants on.  Babies continue to workl, Emma reading aloud.  Me thinking of new approaches to everything, EVERYTHING.  Parenting, running, waking up earlier which again I didn’t do today.  Tonight, be here… in this chair.  Not on the couch working as I tried to last night.  Yes, tried…. But I do have notes on the wine…. “Placid and a whisper Cabernet form and realization…” Made me think of this AE story.  Write about only that… the morning, the calls, the afternoon, the canvassing when I can actually canvass…. Everything’s being an AE, I see.  The idea I jotted a few weeks ago, ‘ME An AE Sea’, speaking to this writer.  Just write this…. Yes, I’m straying from my wine writing singularity, but not.  Not at all.  New journal, new character and Personhood this morning.  All for business, much for me, and whatever for whatever else.

Going to store, get bagels.  What else… sparkling water.  Yes.

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9:44

Jackie wants to play outside but is told it’s schooltime. I agree.  Why, as it keeps him contained and away from usual crazy.

Promised Emma I’d play upstairs with her after mom does her hair.  Email is quiet, not hearing back from people.  So now I feel a bit in survival mode, touching up my CV and one letter, later writing another letter… all sales and marketing.  What am I selling.  Me.

What I’d teach anyone, in narrating self the aim is to sell, and if not sell then connect.  Get people to listen.  Think I found something in this, and I have to credit the quarantine.. how so.  I just do.

In bed by 8:30, wake by 4am.  Have to institute and imbibe a formula, and there it is.

Finishing latte, then what.  How about another letter…. More than networking, conversations, have one wherever I can.  That’s the aim of the day… new conversation.  With others, with family, with self.

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3:45pm

Jack just asked me if I’m bored.  I tell him I’m not.  I tell him I make it fun.  “Do I make it fun?” He asks me.  I laugh, then we start talking back and forth in Irish brogues.  “Jahkeh Chez, whaht arr ya doin in there, ya crazeh chiLd?” Not sure I’m doing an Irish accent too much credit with how I write the inflection, but he’s still doing it and making me laugh, and I don’t want to work anymore today, I’ve decided.

Both contracts sent out, nothing returned.  Can’t write during day like this.  Has to be done early and late.  Take notes in between, my new routine.  So is this a note then?  Maybe.

Jack absolutely losing his mind….  He’s mocking me now, with no fear of consequence or me getting mad, which I like.  Don’t want my kids to be afraid of me of course, and in terms of the respect factor I’m giving him certain passes in this time of incarceration.

Am I bored? No… can’t let myself be.  But more than usual since this lockup.  What do you write?  I keep asking myself.  EVERYTHING.  Maybe that’s the title for this book – written like this, ‘what do you write everything’.  No punctuation.  NONE.

3:57.  Want a glass of that white I bought at Oliver’s.  Bought a red for dinner, some Mourvedre from a winery in Anderson Valley.  I know the winery I just don’t know how to spell it.  Will post on other blog, later.

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11:55.

Odd quiet in the house.  Everyone gone.  Only me here.  Distracted by kids earlier, and willingly.  Playing with them upstairs, reading books, and playing some more.  Waiting on two contracts, now.  One of them requested this morning and sent shortly thereafter.

Sipping coffee.  Had eggs for breakfast, trying to skip lunch.  Only write, record ideas and wait for the return on some things.  Made a couple calls earlier, but nothing materializing.  Reminded by one that they’re not in the office, obeying the shelter order, or suggestion.

Digital Marketing, Web Design, Blog-based Marketing and communication, all giving me ideas but nothing I want to act upon just yet.  Gather the ideas in journal.  When this order is over, I feel like that will be it.  That is when I’ll launch, be aflight.

Quiet outside as well.  Hear wind chimes.  A couple kids playing off to right, up street.  Thinking of going to get some wine for tonight, some red.  Tired of drinking Chardonnay or weird white blends like the one from a couple nights ago.  Was good, don’t mistake me, but still weird and not something too much worth writing.

Sitting here in long-awaited soundlessness, I imagine my vineyard, and what’s needed to get it.  The wine I’ll make eventually from the rows.  Don’t think too much, I remind myself.  In fact, not at all. This in-place prose, seeing myself in third-person as I wrote the other day.  Me and wine… this is all for wine.  All of it.  All my ideas with marketing and business narrative, design, tech, internet-anything… this whole AE story, is all for wine.  To write it, her, and for other intentions.  Some of which, most of which, I have not discovered.

She tells me to find more story, to write more freely. Don’t work, just pen wined prose.  Or is it poetry, poetic.  Who wants a category?  Not me.  Not her.  So write more freely, I see.  Wine is not bottled, certainly not bottled poetics. It’s free verse, it’s music that continues flight, to be in-flight and flying, telling us things about our stories and where we’re from, where we’re going.

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Stay Moving Stay Busy Stay STARVED

3/22/20, Sunday.

8:42.

Kids up, and Emma and I back from getting Starbucks breakfast.  Store portion still closed.  Yesterday telling self that I need finish a book by the end of this.  And this may extend for a while I’m told, so if I don’t actually finish this new journal…  I’m failed as a writer.  Someone will say, Don’t be so hard on yourself!  Or, No you’re not, that’s not what that means.  Something like that.  But that’s what I’m putting on the line.

Kids on floor here in living room playing with that lite brite thing, both of them, each with their own.  Emma says, “I’m making a hot tub.”

WHAT?  I say.

Yeah, I’m making a hot tub, Dada!

I laugh a little as I didn’t even know Emma had any conception or awareness of hot tubs.  She shows me, and it looking nothing like a hot tub, I congratulate her on the illustration.

Sipping latte, clearing throat, Jackie mocking my hurumphing and acting crazy… wonder if this Day Whatever under this stay-the-fuck-in-your-house offer, or order, or suggestion.  Or option.

Jack tells me he’s bored, Emma says Sorry Jack, and I laugh again.  Maybe I’m losing it.  Reading a note one of the 1B students posted to the #professormikey blog, and I need to not only write more but differently, expect different results maybe but just to try different places and approaches to narration, capturing this pandemic panic and scene set.

Need to run today, and not in the Fountaingrove Hills again.  Only did five miles and felt failed after that outing.  Today, all flats.  All around here, and all result in 7 or 8 miles.  Have to, as now I’m getting bored, just like Jackie said he was a minute ago… use this to be a runner, a blogger with the monthly goal of $6000 a month, a number I calmly calculated walking back to the house yesterday on the walk/ride in Coffey Park with the wee beats, on Santiago to San Miguel.

Both beats on couch reading or looking at pictures in Emma’s posture and reading whatever she thinks she sees.  Jack then says, and I’m not sure why, “Art is Art.” I ask him to explain, and he couldn’t.  He just let it fly from his chords.  The covid thing reminds me of art in all scenes and from things you would think you should write about, or write at all, something you’d think wouldn’t be read.  Everything is Art, and Art is ART.

9am and the latte nearly dead.  That’s it for caffeine.  Trying to not have so much be  apart of my composition myriad or practiced anatomy.  Kids already getting restless and the day barely taxied to runway.  I’m with them, the beats, these little humans and they have and find fun and uniqueness, ART, in everything.

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You better have a book done by the end of this shit, I tell myself. 

No, seriously.  I’m giving YOU and order.  Right now, house quiet.  No kids, time to write.  But I’m tempted with a nap.  Why, pulled from sleep this morning with overly excited wee humans.  Went right to coffee then the stories I wrote about earlier….  Now I’m thinking, what if I just write about them, the two, little Kerouac (Jack, who I’m sure, more than sure and quite serious when I say is the best friend I’ve EVER had), and Ms. Austen (my sweet little Emma, the baby)….  I have to capture everything.  I want them to read this book, the quarantine collection of pages I rush-wrote.  Or maybe I won’t have to rush.. I mean who knows how long this shit’s going to last.  Who knows if I’ll have any work other than my writing when it’s done.  Can’t think like that, I know.  Keep writing… I have to admire both of them, neither showing any indication of dismay or despair.  I mean yes, a couple times they’ve said “I’m bored”, or “What do I do now?” For the most part, thought, honestly, I’m impressed with the two little Madigans.  Honestly, how do they do it? How are they not losing it like their father?

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Scoundrel Juror

3/20/20, Friday.  7:47am.

Day three of whatever-in-place.  Woke this morning with a bit of an attitude, but I want to capture more of this.  More of what this is like, to be kept n place as the result of an order.  A couple people posted to a prompt on one or both of the blogs, as I posted the same prompt on both, to narrate what’s happening.

Had some wine last night, a Grenache from Inspiration just up the Road.  Bought it when up there during their mock-barrel tasting the other day.  I, as many, just want to be able to do that.  THAT, just go out and do something.  Yesterday getting takeout with Jack and being able to have a beer and little Kerouac a lemonade made the day, make it more normal and literary… we were moving, we were doing something other than being locked in the house.

Just after waking and standing on soles, I thought how this thing has alone taken out all three income sources.  It hasn’t, since I’m sure the JC will issue a check, and I know Sonic is going to still pay, but not sure about FFW.  Even if it does as the other two do, this thing has prevented me from doing much if not all of my work, what I do for these bodies.  I can’t be in the tasting room or on-property, I can’t be in the classroom, and I can’t walk from business to business saying hello and letting them know I’m in the area.  This thing has taken out a monumental parcel of my production.

What this tells me…. Write more.  Rely on the writing, this blog, all the blogs… just put everything out onto the pages and into whatever sphere.  Forget about waiting, I tell myself, waiting for some book-type page collection to be collected.  Everything out, NOW.  There is no more waiting, there is only taking… taking what I want, what I need do.

Response from Director, saying I have a solid plan for the day.  Great.   Just hope it produces something.  A lead, a conversation, a response, or even some new knowledge, some new business facet or field to address.

I’m a bit becoming undone, but that’s when you write.  That’s when the true and enriching freewriting momentum materializes.  Have coffee, but still cold.  Laundry going upstairs…. Putting self on a fast for the day.  Nothing, all day.  No latte, either.  Only coffee straight.

Kids playing upstairs, giving self project atop project.  Now after 8am, and the day is off the runway.  In flight.  Alive.  Sipping whatever blend out of son’s coffee cup, the Spider-Man one.  Never could figure out why his name is hyphenated.  The cup I bought one night after or before getting takeout from KIN as I did last night.  Been using the cup for the past few days, definitely the whole time being told to create in place.  Something about the Spiderman face on the front, and the eyes, how my son at a younger age was obsessed with this character.  What he did with the webs being shot from hands and more or less flying from building to building.  Kind of how I see myself as a writer and blogger, going from topic to topic as some have noticed and felt the need to remind me but I’m still Mike Madigan.

Locked up, ordered to create a new reality in place, from this new reality.  How I interpret.  Hear kids playing upstairs, going a bit batty. Now I want to as well.  Why work when I could play.  Truly, it’s my incarceration, and MY day.  Write about that Inspiration bottle, that event, what brought me there.  Plenty of work on this third day in the capsule.

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Double Espresso

Trying to keep busy and not tire.

At coLAB, listening to some beats and acting as my own PR Firm.  Firm of ONE.  Finding more potential business in Marin than I thought I would.  Deciding to stay north of the GG, especially after the SF mayor announced the two-week quarantine.  Ugh… this is nuts.  Stay busy I tell myself.  Already feel like I need a glass of wine.

Nothing’s open.  Not my other writing spot on West 4th.  Closed for three weeks because of the developments and the fear and the thing.  This thing.  And it’s a thing.  Not saying the danger’s not real, but it’s still a pain.  I’m being selfish I know.

Still haven’t finished my double-esspress’.  Cold now.  Not sure I want to.  Took a sip, not that bad.  Just found out one of my other spots is open.  The one I go to often before class.  Could use a beer, or glass of that white blend.  Something… now I’m nervous, or addled in anxiety, making my sentences a bit chiaroscuro.  Like the same thing, but not.  If we do go under quarantine, it’ll be interesting to see how the writing’s affected.  Writing under quar’… interesting.  Better go get that beer before they close. And maybe they already are.  The website said open from 12-8, but who knows.  Beer, or wine rather, sounds so much more useful than this goddamn espresso.

I’m all over the place and the espresso isn’t helping.  Haven’t sipped in well over twenty minutes I’d presume but still feel the jolt and intense shine of its not-so-subtle-signs.  I need to leave, go get a glass of wine, detach from duty for a sec.  Writing homework assignments for self in journal.  All being what it’s been, today has been much more in a step of production than I thought it’d be.

So, now, yes…. Wine.  Will need more for the impending quarantine that we all here in this county expect.

3/16/20

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this morning in journal

Going to start calling in a minute.. I swear.  Advertising and marketing offices in SF.  Go for bigger accounts, I tell myself. Learned my lesson from the small business visits, and even one account I landed but was a complete bother …. Or maybe it was my attitude.  Certainly my fault for not qualifying better, I get it.  I’m in the Enterprise Dept and that carries something, something I guess I need to know better.

9:07am.  Yes, getting a little anxious.  Just get on the phone and call as many people as you can.  Have one business queued… a marketing firm in SF.  A little hungry though, already.  Should I eat, go back home and work?  Yeah, we all know how that’ll turn out.  I’m thinking hit the co-working space.  This is what goes through the head of someone in sales and who writes, and when a national state of emergency is declared.  But is that an excuse?  Is this an entry or an essay?–  I’m a fucking mess.

Miss the students, believe it or not.  One of my students reading last week about her first car.. Can remember what she named it, but she named it, and told this story about every detail, and how she heated it but eventually missed the car—the smiley face hanging from the rearview smelling like old people she said.  And the color.  Want to hear them read more… want to hear myself read more.  My students are quite immediately and directly ordering me to finish shit.  Stop thinking, and just write.  Just get on the phone and call these people, these businesses.  That’s all I can do, right?

Okay…

9:53.  Call in just over a half-hour.  Cold in the nook, here.  Getting hungry again.  The coffee I made at home suppressed hunger but not for long.  Now I’m genuinely uncomfortably cold.  More anxious..

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Distracted, pulled away from notes. 

But willingly.  Speaking with old friend Caleb, from Field Sales.  Now the FS Supervisor.  We talked about having outside vendors, or companies, speaking your company.  How they have a hard time doing so as they’re so fixated and focused on metrics.  Caleb spoke on his value of personal connection, something he and I have discussed dozens if not hundreds of times when in the Field together.  Taking notes for self, for next week, completely de-emphasize the company, much I love it and am eager to speak it.  Tell my story more.. why I’m here.  We should all do this and with written intention.  Yes, actually write it.  Keep more than a journal, but your life.  To page.

Yawning, coffee effect fading.  What to do with rest of day.  There was, is, a wine event up the street from home I wanted to check out.  Told it was free.  Why not.

Concentration corroding, leaving me. Keep writing I tell myself.  Want to put together some plan for waking early.  I mean, EARLY.  Want that to be my “brand”, or a domination dimension to it.  Obviously don’t watch a movie like I did last night, one that gave me a slight nightmare.  The Ring… hadn’t seen it fully since my friend Trinity went to see it in my San Ramon days.  I remember saying I wanted to leave the theatre and she said NO.  Told me to stay and enjoy watch the film, see the techniques in the colors and scene shifts.

Little rain on the way over, none now.  I’m blank, not able to think or write even though I very much am writing. Is this “productivity” if I’m writing about not being as productive as I’d hoped?  I’ll stop by the wine thing, see how fun or just like the others it is.  I imagine the latter, honestly.  OR, head to Healdsburg to get a haircut, taste up there?  Take self to lunch?  No, have to stop that.  Save for the business.  See?….  Now I’m distracting myself.  FOCUS.  Frame self in production.

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