A and E

Day FIFTY-SIX – 9/27/19

Started morning with music, and mostly tracks that connect and delightfully intermingle with my soul and principle being playing.  Then to latte acquire, 4 shots.  Parked bag and notebooks here in office then to other building to say hi to certain friends, my MDU brothers and sis.  Abe teaching me about a matter concerning resi vs. commercial points.  Learned more, which was unexpected and firefly delightful.  I’m feeling not just more autonomous in my AE spree, but more alive and perceptive and preemptive.

Watching a real estate show last night and how they attract business and generate leads, start conversations and collaborate more than compete, has me walking in all this work differently.  Thinking of this like real estate, and speaking it as I do literature and writing, and wine.  Speaking of which…. The winery did get my check right, from what I can see.  Was hoping they didn’t so leaving would be even more melodic.  Doesn’t matter.  Whether it’s correct or in’, I’m leaving soon.  Deciding entirely in this, this AE story and perspective.

Just made the two calls I had to this morning—oh, actually there’s one more I need to make.  One left message with someone in shop and the other’s voicemail is full.  How does someone let that happen?  Oh well, it happens.  Enacting real estate practice model, from prospecting to daily operations, to taking to advertising and social media, then fusing my professor and wine life into it.  I need to buy more wine for clients.  Not super expensive bottles, but ….. St. Francis SoCo bottles.  Not too pricey and little to no diminish in quality.  I’ll go by tomorrow at some point–  Interrupted concentration with text from colleague on consumer side of business, away this weekend getting married.  I texted him some wishes well and he sent a thanks in return.  One of the nicest humans I’ve ever intercepted unknowingly in my story.  The first day at Sonic, for my “interview” which was really more of a presentation of Mike Madigan and why Mike Madigan should be here contributing, he smiled and showed voluminous interest in getting to know me.  That too I catapult and compose in this AE book.  A bit of a tangent, but not. Musical. All of this… jazz, hip-hop, rock, literature… everything bound and tied to one tell.

Sore from yesterday’s workout, taking notes and it even hurts to scribble.  Still have to make one call.  Won’t forget.  What next… leaving at 10:30 for Danville.  Messaged Director Mark F. for insight as to approach and he, like I, keep it not even simple but human.  Ask the vendor about him, his visions, his projects, his story and self.  I say this maybe to excess and a repeated wet, but today is different.  Started with music, and last night with that real estate doc.  Have idea for letter… to old friend, in real estate.  Sending.  Well, writing first then sending.

Sent.

9:26, and my speed hasn’t fizzled in the least.  Have to send a couple more letters, or notes. Then to the drive.  On The Road, my essential and most fundamental and fixed of figures.  I’m finding that business isn’t speed dependent but sight dependent. What you see for yourself and how you see the steps in front of you.  Talking to Abe in the other building and the presentation he’s about to make and the precision that’s necessitated in what he’s about to do, there’s more lesson.

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Will be leaving a bit early, since I’m getting here earlier than early tomorrow.  Haven’t had a day like tomorrow since Liv and I went to that Women in Construction event a few weeks ago.  Love getting to the office before there’s any life in the walls.  Remember to iron clothes tonight, shower, shave… do everything tonight.  Everything. Mark messages me and says he doesn’t know what to expect.  I’ll respond, rather simply and directly, “That’s the beauty of it.  When you don’t know what to expect your creative compositions and beat is richly antagonized.”

Email sent.  Going to go to Del Valle up the street and have a beer, take some notes, think about how much longer I want to be anywhere near the wine industry.  Sorry to keep bringing it up, but Saturday and Sunday I could have spent with the kids, family, working on ideas for THIS, the P-O-Z Agency.  There will be a decision made, soon I feel.

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9/23/19

After working the entire weekend in the wine industry and being absolutely sick of it, I’m intent on centralizing and fixing self here, in this chair, in the AE life.  Prospecting and fining and honing my craft and approach in such.  Every conversation can be converted, I’m saying to self.  But not just that, every conversation is a conversation… is an interaction, will be remembered, an impression.  Nothing is without weight, nothing is without light.  As many conversations as possible, as I used to emphasize in Field Sales.

So, today, just getting started. Hoping to launch for run at 11:30-something.  When back, prospecting from computer.  Take more notes, in one location, one of the notebooks to my left.  No. New. Notebooks.

Really want to treat self to a membership at the coLAB downtown, in the Press Democrat building.  Walking through there the other day, twice, once meeting a vendor and the other for that leads meeting, Friday… see myself blogging there.  Finishing something there. But then I think why bother?  I have the Sonic office.  And I’m PAID to be here.  So.. that answers that.

First thing about prospecting, that inhibits, is thinking about it. IT’s as simple as saying hi, I’m realizing.  About to shoot off my first email, and I’ll keep a copy of it as I did the other ones but restart from this version.  Approaching 90 days in the Enterprise Sales Division, and I don’t feel like I’ve hit what and where I want to.  So, today change.

Change initiates with conversation.  Latte done, conversation with self to get water in flask and drink a full fill so I’ll be hydrated for run.  Text senior AE…. Had idea about blogs and tech, my own startup in this office, direct from Sonic’s values.  Remembering what the found said, making this up as he goes.  What else can you do, regardless of tech knowledge and familiarity.  Start with hi, then learn, listen.  Opposite of what’s mostly present in the wine business, and certainly at their events.

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9/20/19

Day ending.  After 4.  4:10 in precision.  Lots of connecting to the tech world, and other admin qualities.  Fit in a 7-mile run in the heat, which now I’m starting to feel.  Pushing through exhaustion like a legion at a castle door.

Meeting in less than an hour, at Jacksons, with a member of my leads group.  Not sure how that connects to my focus on tech, my productive force in that domain, but either way having wine with a nice business bloke younger than me here from Sonoma County.

Essentially re-writing myself a writer in the tech world.  Wine is a part of it, so that will still be there (for any readers worried I’ll shed the wine wheels).  Education as well… still surprised that a tech company made me more a writer.  And teaching me new business modes and technicalities, sight, plains to pursue.

Not sure where I am in the project.  I’m pretty sure halfway, or more by a day or two.  

Day 49, I had to look.  Now I need a glass of something.  Thinking white.  That Chardonnay I had last Friday with the guy from Bellarmine.  Still laugh about that, from my HS rival.  Life passes and I see tech as a way to get ahead of it, through creativity and amplification, more creative, and embracing whim as I stressed in class the other night.

This blog, needing take on a new note, a new design and architecture.  What, I don’t know.  Want the blogs to get me to the road, speaking.  About what.  Writing, of course.  Education.  Happiness. How happiness is completely DIY. Yes… now I see what I was delivering in class as I think my “students were”.  Wine tonight, more brainstorming on startup….  Starup?

Yes.  Startup.

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sonic jots

Sonic fires new fire into my thought plain.  Seeing tech as not just tech but a foremost arena and surface to propel in ideas, with new ideas… that encourages those reach impulses.  That never stops.  More than the technology side, but the human side.  The community and communicative curvature.  I see this, all of this. Me in my role and not just a “role”.  Hate that word, frankly.  This is beyond some simple role to play, and I’m not playing.  Or maybe I am, but with purpose, sight, a result of the collective and pervasive invitation of the office and its tongue.  Sonic instructs me to not focus so much on the tech, to stop stressing about it as I sometimes do.  What are you, it asks.  I’m a writer, and maybe teacher.  So, then, Sonic says, do that.  And only that. Learning new things is never of detriment but trying to distance yourself from the purest note of you is unhealthy.  Unwise.  Don’t do it, the company around me commands.

I’ve always said this company is about not so much solution but remedy, and a connectedness you don’t find in other business practices, other places of work.  Antithetical in so many regards while concurrently proving more productive and efficient that other spaces. What can I say about where I sit, what I hear, what I do day over day.  Love, yes.  Curiosity, of course.  But there’s something else.  Something for which I don’t yet have words and maybe I never will. I’m not a techie, I’m a live-ie.  I’m living, with more full form and forward.

Sonic encourages its encouraging barrage.  Even now, at end-of-day, I’m not ready to leave.  And I arrived at 6:20-something if my tired memory is properly serving, to attend a tech event in Oakland .  I’m still in the chair, I more than care, I’m more than connected.  This is the office and what it does to writers like me, people not from the tech world and at one time in their life thought they’d never be in this wheel of work but here I am.  And here I’m planted, connected.  The communication and encouragement, creative, is too delicious.

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On lunch.  12:31.  Paid $6.03 for a sandwich and sparkling water here in office.  No way am I getting back in the car.  And technically it was 2 waters since I think I owe the store for one.  Anyway, drove to Oakland for tech talk, which was fascinating frankly and quite rich in ideas and how to speak a brand.  There, as I knew before, always be a stress on community and opportunity, especially for businesses and business people, entrepreneurs and others will several projects.  And, of course as I’ve posted I don’t know how many times, NEVER stop creating.

I’ll be off around or close to 4 as I arrived a little after 6:30 this morning.  Rest of day spent on contacts, make more appointments however I can.  Just realized I left phones at my desk.  Was going to start now.  Switch up approach, I say to self recognizing how tired I am.  Have to work way out of it… focus on Sonic, what I want to do here, what the CTO said yesterday about rising above tech and be more the speaker, more the unifier, more the community voice.

Beyond all this, the morning and the drives, the event and this seemingly too-salty sandwich, I’m out of anything on which to write.  Write about the pinball machine behind you, going and going someone from I think our Network Operations Center hitting those side buttons trying to get the ball to do what he wants.

No, I’m not a fan of this sandwich.  Why did I buy it?  Putting a moratorium on spending, till Friday.  Cash or otherwise.  Second day straight I’m this tired, which is odd as I was in bed last night before 10.  Didn’t sleep that well, though.  Waking at 2-sometiing, then 4-something, then that trickle of time till when my alarm’s to sound, 5:45.  This office keeps me awake, though.  The building.  The people I work with.  This pinball machine.  Activity, motion, the tireless tell of my immediate immediacy.  Then suddenly I can’t write, even though I am technically writing.  Something. 

Took bite of second half.  Why am I still eating this thing?  Why am I still writing?  Not going to post now.  Will when at desk.  I mentioned autopilot in earlier entries as the aim of this project.  I’m not sure that’s it, anymore.  The aim is to be the top producer in my division.  To definitively establish my agency, what I do and have it be its own sphere.  Need to make this more a story, more character and development of.  Going to get on the phone and not leave the receiver till I leave the office.  Hit the pavement harder, have conversations… be quicker, less thought-strangled.

Need more coffee.  Now.  Tired but I know how to wake self.  Work.  More projects, more strays and creative.  Right now, not connecting to story.  Damn near ready to close this fucking laptop.

The rest of that sandwich in the trash, done with sparkling water and now coffee.  12:53, not quite ready for the desk.  Guy is still playing pinball.  Or, no.  Different guy.  Another person enters the room to have lunch.  I watch steam fly diagonally from cup.  Ghost-like.

Look right, out window.  Someone just mentioned somehow sneaking in a quick nap.  Could I do that?  How?  No.  Have to move and be ever-addicted to the beat I put forth for self.

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And…

8:29pm

Waking early for event in Oakland.  A tech summit of some form.  Now in home office, typing while babies upstairs are hopefully going to bed.  Hopefully.  Hear wife say to daughter, over and over, “Night night, Emma…” Meaning the littlest is resistant.  I too should be soon in bed, not sleeping well last night.

Everything is not merely connected but a compliment to the thing or being next to.  So…. New sight.  And if not new then certainly some thing of significance, and more than a thing.  Not sure why I wrote it a mere thing.  Tomorrow speaking Sonic at a tech summit or gathering, or event, or…. Doesn’t matter what it is.  More than an “it”.

Getting this P-O-Z Agency off the ground, in many ways really starting today with new understandings I have and conceptualizations of where I am and what I’m doing.  Me at Sonic, especially in this new AE world is learning business all over again.  Forgetting much of what I fostered and felt in wine’s flimsy industry.  The aspect of agency is what I said today to the CTO, contributing to existing momentum.  What I’m writing, I feel, now, is definition. Of business, of Sonic, of what companies should always do and not boast it.  The right thing to do and if you’re doing that thing, more than a “thing”, should never be boasted.  Why am I going to this event tomorrow, to meet people.  To learn.  To be frank, it doesn’t have much to do with Sonic but more with people, new conversations, new ideas.  That heartfelt and honest connectedness.

What do I write.  Now.  At Sonic.  Business.  No longer about wine, although wine is part of the business vision in some regards.  On this floor in home office, collecting self after a day, and before the week.  Meetings today, event tomorrow morning, class in evening.  This collection is necessary, seeing all of it before it lands. My desk in the morning, the building, the drive to Apollo Way.  Leaning, drive by drive and conversations at a time.

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4:38pm.

Getting ready for tech event, tomorrow.  Definitely done with coffee for the day.  Still feel self shake from the cold brew I earlier bought.  Bed early tonight, early wake.  Setting clothes out when home.  Long days, the next 3.  Write it all.  I’m finding the most effective way to not stress is to avoid nothing, think about nothing, and just keep the motion more constant than anything you can think of.

Have to walk up the block, get company car and park back here in lot.  Had to move earlier as I took someone’s spot accidentally.  He told me, the spot’s resident, for me not to worry and that it happens all the time.  I laughed but thought about it, about planning better.  I don’t know, that’s where my head went..

Going to move it now.

Back from moving car, thinking about conversation with CTO earlier.  He urged a downplay of the tech and more of the narrative of Sonic and what we are, who we seek to be in community.  MY ideas go everywhere again.  Someone could ask me, “Why Sonic?” and before  denouncing what other companies do, which I wouldn’t, I talk about what’s in the office, what’s here…. The brainstorming hasn’t stopped since that meeting, then after a later meeting with Sales Engineer, I guess you could call him, I have more I’m out to do.  My business plan here in this department has considerably been re-written.  The Agency aspect to what I do…. Amplified.  Researching and noting on all Sonic lit, all its messaging.  Doors open.  I’m seeing like with Kerouac my life here is a telling picture and promise to Mike Madigan that he can do whatever he wants, this wine writer in a tech office, at an internet company.

‘Nother note to self:  300 Sonic words per day.  Something I did when I first started, but left as a project.  The 300 words aren’t so much a sales pitch, but extended and ceaseless definition and defining of the company.

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9/16/19

Day FORTY-FIVE

Didn’t arrive as late as I thought.  Took Emma to school, and traffic everywhere.  People sliding and gliding on all streets and sidestreets, even the freeway.  Sipping coffee with no lid.  Already one aim for day met.  Starbucks, not one visit.  Not so much for the money aspect, though that is very much a prime part of it, but the time that it drains and feeds upon.  Yesterday I must have been at the Hopper location for close to 25 minutes between standing in line and ordering, having to repeat my order then wait for everything to be brought out.  Second aim for day…. Write at lunch.  NO eating off campus.  No going off campus.  And it was Saturday, not Sunday with the afore Starbucks visit.

Meetings all day.  Or, not all day, but three throughout day.  Driving back to Petaluma shortly, to meet with the prospect from Friday.  Keep conversation alive and sped, steadfast.  Last aim for day for day, centralize in my practice here at Sonic.  Which is of course the conversation, but more than that… community, but even more than that.  Not sure I have a word for it quite yet.  I know what I intend and intone, but don’t have words placed.  No matter.  I don’t need words, or a singular word.  I’m overthinking this, as I do most things.  In tech, encourage and provoked to put my own definition and dote to it.

Okay… ready for this set of pages.  The day.  Today. Keep writing, stop thinking… want to start conversations, carry them to places I don’t know… want to feel imbalance, off-kilter (much I hate that word).  Learn…. Take notes…  Study.  Take your time.  There is no value in rushing, stressing, overthinking.  Ever.  Notes on post-it’s… an idea.  Now I’m more than eager for the pages approaching my shore.

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