I have the EOD face.
from another ‘nother journal …
4/17/19
Writing in too many spots.
No more on this laptop. Noting everything, this morning. Have a schedule for self. Desired time for “cruising altitude” as Dad would say…..
Lost in a thought, not sure how to write. Running at lunch, what to write from there. Need a break. Need to toss backpack, or just use for running gear. Yes, the latter.
Organized desk a bit, plugged in laptop wife gave me. Time for break, some journal jots, or walk to car to get running gear. Or both. How to optimize day… how. Grade papers when on campus, then home for quick dinner, bed. And goddamnit, wake…. No, won’t promise. Will only do.
All the loose paper pieces and swarms around me, distracting, dividing my concentration and enslaving each parcel.
10:07. Break. Just for a bit. Sparkling water. And what else… running stuff. Do I want to run at lunch, or take self to lunch. Here I go overthinking, again..
Running. I’ve decided, finally. Need a snack, hydrate, get gear. I can just see someone reading this years after I’m gone and noting something in the margin like, “Goddamn, just do something already!!!” I agree, just so you know. Huh, there’s an idea for a book, note to future reader. And another from yesterday, the ‘argument for me’ idea. Like a very much stretched out cover letter and CV.
Different route today, for run. Out 3.5, back 3.5.
10:30 – Done with a 90 minute challenge to self for morning. Schedule done. Or a draft at least. My first, composed. Team arrives in about 20. Should go to car, get running facets. Where am I running? Just get out there and run, Mike….. note for Reps, time sheet-related. Old journal taken from backpack, should go through those pages, what I wrote when first hired, all this information about the internet I NEVER knew.
Seeing now why I stress the habit and practice and maintained habit and practice of journal writing so much. To know you, your NOW, the Nows that approach. What you want, why you want it. Today is different, as all todays are, but I note that there’s something more paralleling about today with my aims. The office, travel, running all over the world and writing about it. The journal is a beacon of YOU, a place that’s more than a place, but a stage and bibliotheque or understanding and exploration. The desk messy, and I don’t mind. It’s honest, it’s NOW, it’s ME. Why am I capitalizing so much. No need to analyze or even lightly understand.
The journal teaches not so much ‘me about me’ but to see more clearly and honestly. Fearlessly. To not fear, to not question, to just madly LIVE.
Working on attitude, perspective, how I contextualize matters and then react to them. If someone says something, and I find it getting under my skin or into my thoughts, echoing in me in any way, then pause. Find sense on the page. Make sense of it, of everything, on page. In this “journal”. And, honestly, if I can accomplish something of that magnitude and altitude on a page, is it really just a one-dimension and as-it-appears tablet, or “journal”?
Pinballing
Slow, my pace, and character, inner-narration. Can’t understand why and I’m not giving it too much more consideration or any contemplative effort. Class tonight, and in no interest to go. But I will, I’ll force myself, see what happens. See what ideas and thoughts form.
I’m not lachrymose, or of low ebb, I’m just not fully in character. Why. What is this. Guy plays pinball just to the left and front of me, and the noises disrupt my dimension even more. Fuck, that thing is loud. I ignore it as best I can and look further into what’s happening in my circuitry, today. Got a small latte from the spot up the road which I shouldn’t have done.
Still slow, but with more framing and purpose in these types. Didn’t think I’d get to writing today, honestly, with this mood. Or whatever it is. Not sure it’s a mood, either.
My next plan of attacking it is to attack self and self for having any kind of mood. What the fuck do I have to be even minutely glum about? Money? Not hearing back from a wine country lead? SO. WHAT. I move on, dismissing and disregarding all of it. Only present here, where I am and what I’m doing at Sonic. Project now—JPR’s. Never done them before and I know that’s part of my stress stack, but again I just vow to write reactions when I get back and see where they go. Much of knowing your Now is to just walk into it and see what’s read to you. I’m writing the story, but it’s also writing me.
I get a text message but ignore it. I want to understand this, this Now, me in the Now, and what to do for remainder of day here in office. Tonight in class, this entry very well may be part of the plan, this pinballing avoiding paragraph stream. Am I fighting those shrieking ding and dong sounds, and the voice coming from the flat vertical portion of the machine. Forcing self to write, forcing self to ignore it.
He leaves, but some corny battle-victory song keeps playing. No one in this multipurpose room but a writer. The machine silences, and all I hear are noises from outside—someone throwing something in one of the bins, some vehicle driving off the lot. My mood shifts, into curious curvature. Haven’t written in here in a while. If I was at low ebb, it rose, even before the pinballer left.
Just going to see what happens this evening, with class, with the first discussion on the newest book. Memoir, narrative, everything we’ve talked about so far this semester. I forget about the wine country prospect, the JPR’s, this large room. I fixate on me, my day, the quiet machine now.
Almost forget about my latte.
Tempted to try the machine.
No. Stay here. Look outside. Listen. I’m writing today, more honestly.
My own sort of game, I guess.
4/1/19
Grocery shopping.
By myself.
Not jazzed.
6:04. Back from Field
and ready for home. Rain in Berkeley, my sweater still a bit damp. Office thinned, with people working. Quiet, but not. The Inside Sales team of course animated as always. This place with it being a work spot of energy and technology, creative, never truly stops, or sleeps. With me writing about it, I notice the difference between morning mood and atmosphere to now, 6pm and later. There’s a contrast, but not. Maybe it’s just a different collective character in the office. I study the texture and language of this office, even when I should be clocking out, going home, getting running components ready for coming day.
Now, walk across floor, all the way to the other side of building to room where Field Sales is based. Put tablet in safe, make sure closed, then more steps back to here.
2/23/19
Santa Rosa, Ca.
Sonic.net.
Wrote another thousand for book idea, or effort, or whatever it is. In dark here in office, writing and collecting listening to Coltrane of course and easing into day.
This morning, much more eased and agreeable than yester’s. Onward, with coffee, music, poetry, THOUGHT, reasoning what I want and how to get there, to my There.
About 20 minutes left to self. Then into role, mode, actuation and actuality of one working on a Saturday. Will be in city tomorrow with family for little Kerouac’s birthday. Excited to not have to drive, walk around the streets with no other intention but to do just that. Think we’re hitting the Exploratorium and I don’t know what else. Either way, the writer needs just such a day.
1/25/19
Lunch at desk. Writing everything down as I always do but with more craze, more wild and rich, loving recklessness to my steps. Pizza here in office. Pizza Fridays. Everyone looks forward to this. The company, so generous it’s nearly overwhelming. Love it. Learn from it, I do. My company will be in this exact track and train of thought, tradition.
May start another blog—no I won’t. Promised self I wouldn’t do that. The idea would be something involving client and customer communications. Not so much “customer service”, but how the work is relayed and worded. So much in business is done not so much wrong but with unnecessary obstacles.
Brought 2 pieces of vegetarian pizza back to desk. Saw others doing the same, eating at desk and watching a show, or playing a video game of some type. I need this time to write. I don’t need to think, I don’t any longer and I promise my self loudly this, time to think. Just move.. all around blogging, and I will trap everything here.
I must wake early, tomorrow morning. And run. Ten miles, minimum. Walking hills in Sebastopol earlier with Field Sales team, taking the hills like I were racing. I walked them, yes, but with the same attitude as one running, like “I am doing this, I am taking this hill, now, NOW.”
Field Sales, an interesting voice and beat, beast. One of constant motion and depend upon, demanding a tireless momentum in re-writing your presentation, your words and how you deliver the words. Audience awareness, not so much brevity of speech but containment.
Where you are, what you’re doing. More value in that than you estimate. If you take a second, and inventory what’s around you, all the topics and ideas form their own idea den and paragraph lab. You feel inspired and moved, exhausted and creatively ablaze in a way you’ve never known. The holy contour of life wraps itself around you, begins instruction.
Need another piece, and maybe another. Hungry earlier while walking the hills, Mike was. Now, still hungry. Mike, eager to go to this event, which is celebratory of past year’s successes and advances. Like a rally, or gathering at a spot on Rohnert Park. Not that far away but just far enough where I can enjoy a Coltrane track or five, maybe more.
Two friends from another department but that sit in the same isle as me here in office leave. Taj and Leah. Both kind, very inviting and helpful when I need some inquiry quelled, and they both like wine. Asked both of them if they’d want to have a glass with me at the Rohnert Park spot they both said yes, told them I was thinking about getting more pizza then they tell me, or reminded me, that there’s food there.
“What the fuck was I thinking?” I say to them.
They both laugh. Taj tells me my stomach’s telling me to eat. I agree. But will wait till RP.
Write it all.
Down.
Now.
Now teaches us
that there need be nothing other than love of and from and FOR the Now.
Don’t forget….
There’s magic in the meta.
Where you are you are the author.