Waking up with Jack, and not knowing what I’m thinking.

Where is my focus.  Is it wine, is it literature, writing about wine…. I feel scattered this morning, panicked a bit like I need to find a focus or time’s going to run out.  ‘work….FREED’ this blog professes.  How, when you feel like this.  I absolutely cannot write this morning.  This is not odd, but horrifying.  Painful.  Sad…. Infuriating.  Maybe it’s from not having dinner last night, me waiting for Melissa to come down as I thought we were eating together and she never did but rather went to bed.  I snacked a little but didn’t eat a “real” dinner.  My own folly.  I should have had that steak.  Oh well I say this morning in attempted shrug-off, and am frightened that I’m this old.  That I’m 41.  That I have two kids and live on this street with other families.  Something’s out of place…. Or much is.  How do I fix.  WHAT, do I fix?  This coffee isn’t helping, forcing jitters and more odd beats from me, heart not decided on its BPM or steadiness of rate and thump.

Kerouac started Road with Dean, another character that not only intrigued him but horrified him as well.  I have no such character in my Now, now, or really ever…. Well, I did.  Chris the “best man” at my wedding whom I haven’t talked to in over a decade, but now no one like that.  Not sure that would help.  So what would.  Bored with the present, so make one up.  And stop thinking so much.

I could switch to fiction, or something else.  A screenplay?  Am I really having this discussion with myself again, the whole ‘What do I write?’ tug of war?  STOP.  You’re too old for this.  To make writing your work, you need…. Forget what you need.  Just write.

Jack on couch watching some cartoon, now making a silly voice and singing.  Not sure if wants my attention.  More funny voices, then he stops.  Then Emma arrives…. “Hi baby.” I say.  She trots right past me not wanting to miss a single frame of whatever’s playing.  “Hi Jack.” She says to her brother, brother not responding.  Quiet again.

I need to get out of this lull, this lachrymose layer I’m under.  What to do today to make self write differently… what.  Think Emma and I have much of the day together.  Jack having a birthday party to go to, or something.  Time to write will be limited, so maybe I can… what.  Carry that voice recorder I bought at the JC bookstore years ago, that I’ve barely used?  Or write from memory as I’ve been trying to do lately.  Or neither… start writing novel, the pick up where you stop.  Write about what… a wine judge who doesn’t want to do it anymore(?).  A winemaker?  An adjunct professor at 40/41 who decides not to do it anymore and is panicked as to what he should do?  That sounds more aligned with capability, something that’s more ME, I think.  This semester, speaking of, has to be the last one.  Going to stress essay writing and write an essay, at least one, for each meeting.  And with that, who knows.

Tired of repetition.

Tired of waking mornings feeling like this.

Writing… not a blessing, not a curse, but an addiction.  Why can’t I just stop… why do I have to be writing right now instead of on the couch cuddling with my babies, or scrolling through some social media feed like every other idiot in Sonoma County and counties all?  I need to be doing this… this… Even when I worked at that grocery store in Belmont, my first job, just after my Hospital Time, I just wanted to be writing.  Nothing else.  I told myself that the stories I’d write would make it so I would never have to work… and now, dozens (literally) jobs later, I still with self skirmish as to what I write about, what form, how many words, paragraph breaks and I see it all BULLSHIT. 

Just write.  Isn’t that what I tell students to do?  Am I phony, as a teacher?  Yes… but it pays.  And not that badly.  But this semester I have two 3 unit classes and obviously they don’t pay as much as 4’s.  Nothing I can do, all they had.  The adjunct woe.. why would anyone do that to themselves?  No answer… I’m done after this term, I hope.  Just writing and traveling.. writing about what and traveling for what?  WRITING.  Showing others ways of writing and how to get past some block, as I think I have this morning, and writing for sakes of acquiring peace, and some type of equilibrium about yourself.  So you’re not stressing and thinking to the point of doing nothing or going in circles with yourself.

7:07.  Hmmm…. Today, writing about wine when I have a chance.  And not as a critic.  I hate their writing.  Much why I never buy Wine Spectator, I can’t stand the writing.  Quite literally, or not literally … It’s just painful to read.  And how wineries brag about so-and-so’s score, and how their bottle is on the cover with the fucking score next to it.  NO.  I’m writing wine then I’m writing about wine and my relationship with it.  How I see wine, feel, react.  What I wish have in my glass.

No telling.  The day is blank.  It’s not even fully or partially day, yet.  Sun still trying to come up, looking left out the glass of door, dark.  Adjuncting… what I blame for the rotation of the wine industry, me going from winery to winery.  But I can’t blame, or I could, but what would that do.  Writing, listening to more funny sounds from Jack, Emma sitting there quiet and fascinated with what’s in the cartoon’s composition.  

Writing this semester… teach it differently.  Teach essays differently, if at all.  How about not at all, keep the cash coming in from the JC, that’s it.  No I don’t want to be like that.  It’s just this morning mood, this downward push from some unknown and non-existent palm.

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7/28/19

Mike turns around—the Mike I’m writing—goes to a book, one of Kerouac’s.  Thought he’d bring something different, like the Sea pages or the Dream Book.  But no.  Road.  Seeing himself as Sal, needing an inner Dean not so much, but a self-embracing quietude about character.  Regardless of age.

            My kids on couch starting their Sunday, talking to each other and watching one of the dozen or however many Harry Potter films.  And me here typing, Emma saying “Daddy are you working….?” I tell her I am and know I need stop, go over there and become part of their lazy Sunday way.

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Morning thousand for book done.

Day 15 of the 100 day shift.  In office, or close, by Day 100.  What happens in the office?  Everything ME.  Creative… blogging and writing and photog, video production, wine and education and wine education.

 

Done editing video.  Didn’t edit that well.  Guess when I have my office I’ll need to somehow hire an editor, or bribe them/pay them with wine.  Either way, it’s done now I need to post.  Would rather write.  Hungry, tempted to just get something for breakfast but no.  I write about the fast, the restraint, the deprivation and what it does.  Right now I can feel self get a bit agitated, but I laugh it off, have another coffee sip.

 

Eating nothing till lunch.  At 2.  I’ll get a sandwich here, sparkling water, maybe some chips, healthy ones if I can locate.  Sun Chips are healthy, aren’t they?

 

More and more I thinking of writing in strong and liberated, liberating steps.  Freewriting yes but more than that.  And I just noticed this computer didn’t underline ‘freewriting’ in red.  Says something to me.  Or maybe I’m looking for that something to be said, conveniently analyzing what I typed.  The freer you write the freer and healthier you are as a writer.  It’s about freedom and composition and the freeing nature of composition.

 

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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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On break.

Got through small stack of papers.

This semester and I are now officially feuding. I will be sure there is not a single paper to evaluate.

All papers, graded when handed in.

My assault plan is to halt all before there is any assault, on either end.

Wake earlier. 4am, or face failure.

Sunday will be the grading day for me. Learning learning. More knowledge, more knowledge on knowledge itself.

Week 9…. oh week 9. Today’s lecture, on semester consideration. Noting your progress. I’m doing the exact.

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I’m awake and working out.

Did first hold right before five. After that, push-ups and planks. Some sit-ups. Not really counting, just wanting to keep motion continuous. Set stop watch, not a countdown. Just keep the motion motioned, what I’m telling self. 05:12.

Conscious of the noise and mood of the morning. Everything I do on this hardwood or just wood floor make a sound, loud thin and audible. Like an airy crack, or crackle. Wife leaves for her workout offsite. I start coffee. Vowing tomorrow morning with the day off I’ll go to gym at 4-something. Not only enhance the shape I’m in, but start a new way, new story. Yes another promise, more so though a plan than remark avowing anything.

Can already feel the little I’ve done. In legs from hold, abdomen from pushups just a moment ago tallying 100, and arms from planks and pushups. Time for coffee.

Didn’t post thousand words from last night before class. Will today from whatever coffee spot I can find in the Sunset. Sight 1 for day is that, coffee and composition in the City. Second, hit a few doors with the reps. Then, a poem while walking whatever avenue we’re on. One of the views yesterday from 28th and something, I just looked out at the ocean like I saw something or someone in it. The air’s olfactory makeup told me to keep walking and keep watching. Feeling some goal or aim, some aspiration or creative desire sprint from San Francisco, for me. And if it weren’t for Sonic I wouldn’t even be there having these observations and reflections.

05:31. Waking this early, a badge of sorts. Hear son move around in his bed, and if he wakes early and breaks this sitting, I don’t mind. It’s part of the story. Part of the story but the whole of who I am– writing daddy getting in whatever time I can to write. At work at my desk between little addresses of some spreadsheet, or organizing, or prepping for some meeting. The subject is me. The story, each page, and I never need be sorry.

The workout, over. Me on couch in qualified dark, fan light overhead on my dim setting so I can have some isolator writer mood in here. I keep forgetting it’s harvest right now, and so many of my vino people are out there, right now, pulling clusters from rows and into bins, into a gondola pulled by tractor, a driver up early and away from his family, doing what he needs to them feed.

05:36. I feel like one of them, right now. One of the early. One of the characters they defies law, the expected, that doesn’t sleep in. They can’t. Their minds won’t let them. Mine won’t let me. At all. This morning I’m alive with Sonic and supersonic thoughts of speaking, words, fearlessly sharing ideas from one city to next on work, business, writing everything down and so many say that and never do and if they did, my god, it would not only help what they do but wildly and poetically shape their business and their place and placement in it.

Could go back to bed even if a writer wanted to. Hell, even if my body and functioning orders em to. My thinking’s of a beatific defiance this morning, and only accepting sentences. As a workplace, Sonic tells you to be more of you, it challenges me and how the wine industry never could– Telling me to not only keep doing what I’m doing, but intensify. AMPLIFY. Diversify. Play with form as you do in poetry, poet. And more. More.

05:41. I ask myself where the time went and nowhere, nowhere. It’s still very much presented and around me, present. Gifting me with this couch and all the musing I need for a day in the city. Will I wake as early tomorrow, or early as I have written… I have to. I know how I’ll feel if I don’t. I know my mood if I won’t. Set alarm, every movement today for tomorrow’s early steps and words, lines, however many miles I run on tread or however many reps I finish. Not waking early, and I’m citing hours like this, is in no way literary. Writers don’t sleep in. We can’t sleep, for the most part. We deplore rest, and idleness. Just laying in bed and scrolling, sitting on couch watching a show, or just hanging like a coat from some hook, some executed prisoner from a tight meanly knotted and enclosing circle.

05:47. I love this. I do. I don’t have to think about what to write. It’s right in front of me, blatantly. No sun or suggestion of it through the glass door to right. This is true morning to me. When the sun steps and straight lay stands communicating with the world, its day. It’s started. The day is off and you better find a way to catch it as right now you’re surely not ahead if you haven’t been up. I’m here, knowing I’m ahead of the day. Time again, my topic. Twelve hours from now, I could very well be in traffic. On 101 somewhere. San Rafael, the Novato narrows, Petaluma. Somewhere. I have twelve hours to do something to my story… I do it. Start the timer. 12 hours. Get to work and collect in writing for a bit, then attack tasks. Reps get in before ten, so we head out early. Quick, this Friday. My writing will equal, rival, buzz by pacing.

Son definitely awake. 05:52. I could get a stet in day, again. Teeth and shower, dress, pack, take stuff out of bag as to bring laptop for written lunch and be lighter while hiking the SF streets. Keep the motion motioned. To halt is to fall. And I can’t. Not this close to 40.

Diet for day… Coffee, only healthy snacks, no full meals till dinner, and then do note to lightly eat. Speaking of my beloved coffee life… I sip…

10/5/18

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0502

That’s better. Still not 4 but this is the kind of hour I need to wake at in order to get that kind of start in and on day. Today, to be a long one. Starting in office new then driving to SF, then back to office, Santa Rosa, then to class later, 7 to about 830. The solution, not that there needs be a “solution”, as there’s certainly no problem, is to write everything down. What a surprise I say that. But how about actually do it. Not that I don’t, but how about more zeal this time. More singular and definite words, short sentences. More specifics in what I see in the city, on my drive. Where is my voice recorder? Hate using this phone while driving, if you should know, and you should. Not sure why you “should”. Truth, I’m reminded. Truth in the day, these long days. Not sure why it’s on my thinking’s terrain to points of sleep inability. Why am I up? Why am I not asleep right now? What’s on my mind I ask myself. What. Is it the office? Is it the day itself, the drive? Any angst with this new job? I came downstairs to write, hear kids talking and I tell them to go to bed, both in our bed. What am I thinking, this writing daddy, this writer who sees something in the present present. But what. Sip coffee. Not yet. Wait. This hour, the dark of the room and the outside, and everyone out in the vineyards now harvesting their lots. I SHOULD be up. And not just this morning, but every morning. Think I recognized it– It’s that, this. I’m writing a piece on the morning itself, being more tuned in the morning, for it. There is nothing to fear in this day or any other. I have more than a head-start or head’s start on Tuesday. However you write it. I already have the whole day, or have the opportunity to. And it’s not even 05:20.

Coffee. Slow communicative sip, pull from dark puddle. Me, couch, no sound. Awake to have more of day itself. Challenge it. Have it. Know it, already. Beat it at whatever game or field, board it thinks its own. It’s mine, I promise self. All mine. Had a thought of calling tonight’s class, but no I swear to self. Go. Go in tired. Remind them, show them, those enrolled, what a long day is. Teach, if anything, about work. About self. About deciding what the day will say. The day itself has NO say. That’s all us. Me, up now, thank the Craft, not so much collecting or gathering thoughts but being with self. Quiet time, like I tell the babies when they have an unreasonable volume about them at an inappropriate hour or any hour.

39. 40 next year. And still in a search of sorts. Think I found something, actually I know I did, with tech. This new office. A tech company and office and being around characters with more technological acuity and awareness than I’ll ever have. Not that I can’t be them but– No. I can’t. And I don’t want to. I shouldn’t have to. No one there is making me, which I love and more or less can’t believe. They want me to be me, this writer and blogger. They hired me for me. Realizing that this morning could be one thing keeping me up, disabling me from going back to sleep aside from the coffee. This morning I’m 39, tomorrow I will be too, but one morning I’ll be 40, then older and older. Age is only age if its acknowledged and credited. What if I stopped crediting it. What if I decided age is unaccredited. Like some two-bit, hair-brained for-profit college. I can do that. This morning teaches me to only see what I want. To work harder. Just now, I grieved a bit, that I didn’t start writing right when I came down but rather used the restroom briefly. 04:50-something. Can’t do that. Here I am, I’m awake, what are you going to decide to do. Am I “figuring out life”? No. But I’m definitely not letting it tell me what’s possible, what I’m allowed to do. What I’m capable of doing.

Waking early puts you in a different world. In a different role. You’re not yourself, not the same character if you’re used to doing this. There’s a challenge and a stress to it but with concurrent ease, meditation. From where I’m sitting in this house, what used to be my office, I won’t be able to see the sun rise but a gradual lighting and progressive brightness, brightening of the day itself. Which saddens me, but only if I dwell. I don’t let self. I listen to the nothingness heard in my home. Son sniffling a bit, the fridge humming behind me, my thumbs tapping on this phone, its screen. Being in the city, San Francisco, wakes me. Those thoughts. Thinking…. office, drive, walk around city with sales team, meet with them, then drive back…. when lunch? Maybe I won’t get one. Grab something, maybe. On go. No fast food. Haven’t had in over a year and the last time it made me quite sick.

Mood turns. Not sure why. Time rushing. 05:40. Only so much time left. Typo… fuck. My frustration compiles like my pages. What do I want from day. Where am I going with this entry. In tech. With writing. With teaching. With 39…….. Stop. I fracture the inward scold before it holds me, holds anything. Yawn. I’m tired. No I’m not. I’m eager. For the day. For work. For more writing. Speak into phone if you can on drive down. Be careful of course, but don’t fall into a complacency mitt.

More meditation, more questioning, more drawing of what here is now, a month ago in the wine industry doing the same thing over and over and o…… And now, this. Waking before six. A thousand words and for what. What will I do with this. What will I do with me today, these opportunities. The day will tell me, I’m sure. And I’ll tell it something in return– I’m deciding and writing how everything’s to progress and situate. The pages are mine, all of them.

9/18/18

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Noting everything I learn in the tech scene,

world, language, behavior pattern and way.  I’m one with a little reluctance, but I’m using what I know how to do well, and from there amplify.  Guess that’s my new tone and talk, ‘amplify’, and amplification.  Think it’s safe to say I won’t learn how to code any time soon, nor design sights, install internet.  I speak, I write, I guess I sometimes entertain, I speak (already said that, sorry), and story-tell.  That’s what I do, what I know how to do.  13 minutes left in break and my eyes are still on that coffee drink.  But I’d have to use my debit card.  Don’t want to do that.  Just make yourself another cup of coffee and let it cool off, I say to self.  People play video games off to right, and again I take the energy here much more with a welcome write than how I felt at the winery in final days at Roth.  And I hate to say that and keep mentioning that in these entries because I love wine, I love even the industry, or at least what I knew the industry to be before I was devoured by it.  I swear, if I would’ve stayed…. I don’t want to think about it.  Wouldn’t have been healthy, or beneficial to me, and certainly not the writing.

I’m eager to speak to this new hire, and see what the girl I’m working very closely with to a blessing’s believability, T, says.  Questions, educating, me being educated while I’m more or less educating from the less than 12 full days of life here.  I’m going to teach from what I know.. sales, speaking, not just relating to customers but listening, seeing what they need and providing a certain narrative and depiction of what Sonic is.  Not sure why I call it “office new”, still.  Habit, or just being a funny, quirky, language tussling and fiddling pen bloke.  I don’t know.

Less than five minutes and I just made my coffee so I’m prep’d for the remaining hours in my day, here in tech’s step.  I shouldn’t say that, I think.  This office is much more than just a tech spot, place of business.  I see Sonic as a consumer advocacy group as I said to T a few days ago and earlier today, I think.  I’m learning how to do not just better business but more coherent business.  More creative, more life, more education… I don’t know where to start sometimes when it comes to this new office.  Sonic.. and me, the Lit and writing prof’, put into a new book and new storytelling  assemble and vocal.  Doing wha tI can in the breaths last, make them last, looking around the break room and feeding from everything from the video game sounds to the conversations right I listen to but don’t at all.  New job, new words and walls, chairs and tables, coffee and doors.  Everything a propellent, ascending action and atmosphere from one character to ‘nother.  The observations and written reactions and reflections, MY business.

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8/27/18

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English 100— Week 2, Meeting 3.  

Not sure how I’m going to make it through the semester, possibly my last.  And I know so many people that, like the wine industry when I left, are saying, “But you’re so good at it… people love you when you…” Yeah, well, time to move on.  Being an adjunct over the past 12 years has only obstructed and interfered with other efforts and endeavors.  Tonight’s class went well, though.  Essentially lecturing from the heart and nearly no notes.  I didn’t wing it, I trusted my Self.  My ability to lecture and share/generate ideas.  I’m concerned, though, about when the semester really gets going, becomes a nonstop storm of papers.  But maybe it doesn’t have to be, I think.  Tomorrow will be easier, with me getting out of the office at 5, not having class till 7.  Can get some grading done, and that’s the key, stay on top of that paper-stacking foulness.  Have to stay in calm’s pose.  This is just Day 1 of such a day.  30 minutes to get from Sebastopol Road and whatever-street to SRJC.  I can do it.  I will do it.  Rewarding the writer with some Cabernet the sis gifted me the other day when I stopped by.  Need it.  And yes, NEED.  Poured self a soothing pour, needed and deserved stemless goblet full of the Bordeaux bull.

The English 100 class has me humbled, frankly, after tonight.  After the quickly compiled and accumulating prod of stress making it nearly difficult to focus on the drive from Roseland’s district to campus.  But I did it.  Today.  Rest of the days?  Well, I have to.  That simple.  I’ll wake early, hopefully, when wife does for her bootcamp whatever, make coffee tonight and start chugging right when I get up.  Grade a couple pieces, if I can.  And if not, then write—  This semester.  All projects not only on hold but pushed into a literary coma.  Will only think of waking when the last grade is submitted.  And that’s the key, to all of this.  The grading.  The thing that holds me up semester after semester and what always affects my mood in the most torrential and terrible way of ways.  Just put a fucking grade on it, I tell myself.  But do I?  No.  Procrastinate, instead.  Fool.

This semester, my last or no, will be my best, the most enjoyable for me and anyone registered, and the most self-educating.  The office new, today my first full day, will serve as my freeway for self-discovery and building not just a career but creative life and fold, dimension, self-sect.  This will work, and it will be challenging, demanding, painful… but like I told the students tonight, as I do every semester, “the main character has to hurt.  And guess who the main character is in your story…. YOU.” Beginning week two, I centralize in this project, logging the entire semester.  I, not failed.  Not in any aspect or tilt, pan, scene, theatre.  Today affirmed my elation in December’s end.

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