journal

4/3/20

Jack watching a wildlife documentary, the one we were watching earlier on Yellow Stone and its wildlife.  Emma upstairs for a nap.  Feel like I could use one.  But I should be working.  I am, kind of.  Co-worker texting me saying you can order beer from Moonlight Brewing up the street and pick it up tomorrow.  Should I?  Need something to do… besides gather notes from inside the quarantine dome.

Sparkling water, not coffee.  Coffee and wine, wanting to cut back on both as to elevate and amplify production, as well as just be more present.  Coffee you might think does just that, and it does to a degree, but it drops you. And the fall and landing are impediments to movement.

2:13… A NAP.  No… stop thinking about it.  I am.  I swear.  No emails coming in, and no phone calls or messages.  A stall in the day.  Keep moving, that’s the not-so-secret pill, apply, coat if you would.  Would you?  Why do people write that, or say it (even worse), “… if you would.”

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12:35.

Measuring productivity a little more closer.  Started timer…. Looking for leads.  Have territories defined and settled, Marin County and Berkeley.  Now looking for businesses owners.  Writing letters.  Emails, really.  No more than 4 lines at an absolute maximum.  Reposing certain Sonic beliefs and past posts.

In this time type, marketing yourself and speaking your story and intentions, everything YOU is more than essential.  Talk about essential employment, you’re hearing that on the news all the time now I’m sure, this is essential.  You ARE an essential worker, especially for YOU.

Going on 39 straight uninterrupted minutes in the chair.  Ready for class tonight.  Tomorrow at 4am, going to start conversations with everyone I can find across all my verticals.  In fact, I don’t believe in sole and singular verticals….  I believe in vertical collectives.  This quarantine beam is making me sharp, more intricate and decided in my production, in my business containment and practice.

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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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Dream Call

So much to log from day…. Running 3 miles with kids, wife telling me earlier that she wants to as a family thin or get rid of, pull, the weeds in the back yard.  Jack and I took the lead, surprised how into it I fell.  Wanting to pull everything, work with Jack, compete playfully with him, saying from time to time “JACKPOT”, and he wanting to get a jackpot.  Toward the end of our shift clouds move in, rain came, but only lightly and what felt like raise the humidity.  Later, before going to store for some quick gets, thunder rumbles that were the most significant I’d heard in a while. I ran back in the house and got both babies, just as Dad would’ve done when I and Katie were little, when there was something to see.  Both were exhilarated in a way I’d never seen.

When back, Thunder still playing its tracks for me. And a couple bolts seen.  I again ran back in the house to get them, holding Emmie and telling little Kerouac to put on his shoes.  Emma distracted by kids from the street riding around the circle didn’t see the flash Jack saw.  Today speaks to me, in a new quarantine dialect.  Sipping a Little Sumpin’, Lagunitas, and wanting to collect more.  This episode in our history, this “pandemic” and the reaction to it.  Escalating my value of time, my life… more thunder, write more it tells me.  Storm on the page, in life, tomorrow at work working from home in how I prospect, look for new businesses.  Build MY business… educating self in my Now and sharing ideas with others.

Letters… will start with one now.  Not disclosing name… telling character how it’s been far too long, too much time separating a letter back-and-forth.  Of course life happens, but still.  I fault myself.  I fault me wandering sight and wanting to take on everything I can.  In the quarantine, or whatever this is (not much of a quarantine as I went for a run with both babies while they rode their bike, see life differently.  When you can normally do you can’t.  No wine tasting, no dining out, no seeing friends, or family.  Mom telling me that her and Dad want to do a curbside visit.  They want to be safe being older I guess, which I want for them as well, and want the kids and me to be safe, I get it.  There’s a shift, though.  Don’t wan to go over and over the whatever this is in the letter.  How are you… What are you targeting?  Feel like I don’t know your character as I used to, and even then I should have known it better.

Letters need consist and constitute more of what I do as a writer.  One letter every day.  And yes, that can count toward the 1000-3000 word aim.  Letters…. With the prospective clients as well.  Show them that I’ve done research on their company and show, not just tell, or better transport them to my interest in wanting to work with them.  ‘Nother baritone throw of thunder….  That means I’ve found something.  Cemented conviction.

JACK. POT.

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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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Not in the mood to prospect.  Okay, then take a break.  It is only 12:15.  I could say I’m on lunch.  Pretend.  Or simply just do.  This kitchen and nook, where I now sit thinking of something to write and thinking of my literary studies, my authors, what they’d do.  I of course lean on Kerouac, but then Sedaris and his wit, jokes, and observational oscillation from one tick and step to next.  This is quite funny, really.  They ordered me and everyone around me on my block, in the city, the county, and everywhere else it seems to shelter in place. But I just walked out. Shelter in place, well what if I desire a new place.  I’m tired of the snacks in my house, and the non-view out my window.

A couple people walk in, have their lunches.  Both looking tired. One sits on a couch and has his what looks like either sandwich or burrito.  Both look tired.  I’m beginning to tire of my writing and this whole thing, wonder what I should do… check in with family, see how Jack is doing in the woods on the walk with his friend.

Think I’m getting truly bored.  All my writing spots are no longer writing spots but take-out spots.  I’m thankful I have this office.  Haven’t looked at the blogs, yet.  Will, promised, after this “lunch”.  An employee and her boyfriend come in again.  First coming in to carry our monitors and computer tower.  Not sure what they came back for.  I’ll learn in a minute when they walk out.  See so many on social working from home and just watching Netflix or doing something else alongside working.  I will use this lull, that’s not a lull, but this condition and circumstance set to do something wild with my writing life.  My blogs, blogging, blogging for others.  More ideas….

My office will be in Cotati.  No, Petaluma.  Just far enough but not too far.  Speaking will be a dimension to my efforts as well.  And I’m not a speaker.  But, I can speak.  Everyone should feel comfortable with their own voice.  Everyone. Not sure what pulled me to this address, but I wanted to have it noted.  When I speak, either in class or Toastmasters, I’m always compliments.  Which humbles me, yes, but as well teaches me something about me, and my abilities.  I need to be speaking more…. Organizing more thought.  Not being so scattered in my writings as some have suggested.  I don’t fully agree with the cite, but I acknowledge the architecture of the argument.

Am going to prospect.  Write short emails, just the same way I speak and present regardless of group.  I will stay moving, busy, starved.  I will find something.  13 days to kill my quota.  Have to keep communicating, no matter what pandemic is fashionable.

Drinking the coffee fast.  I can feel my veins pulsing, protruding, shoving me forward, forward.  No writing spots… it’s okay…  I have now, here, where I sit.  This building.  The people in it, though not many.

 

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I don’t know if this is stir-crazy, or just nuts.

Coffee.  I need it.  Tired after run.  What do I do.  I’m losing it… then I have an idea.  Maybe I’m gaining it.

What’s IT.  No idea.  Maybe that’s what this ‘place in shelter’, sheltering in place will beget.  Finding more place and poise, personhood on page.

So I’ll be totally fine if I just stay home?  I don’t know, something about this is just…. Not the kind of movie I want to watch.  Not now.  Not today.

Oh my god, just get me some wine, PLEASE.

None of this makes any sense.

Good, neither does this entry. Maybe that’s what I’m to learn from this, to gather and incorporate into my work.  Don’t worry so much about sense, or making any.  Make whatever you want to. IF it’s what you want for yourself, there’s more than enough sense in that.

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