1/25/20

Today, a day off one could say or see, but me wanting to further push into the AE story… starting with getting up earlier, the god hour of 4am, every day.  Abraham telling me yesterday that he wakes all seven day at 4-something and works out.   Last night, me staying up late, posting some story but mostly relaxing after a long day, or not so much a long one but one of production in many arenas and atmospheres.  Today’s aims, only production… a run at some point after Jack’s baseball tryouts which are in three hours.  Think I’ll launch after that… or, run on treadmill. Yes, the latter for speedwork intentions.  Feel stuck in these types and not sure why.  I’m thinking excessively.  No more writing aims, find that’s a curse.  When you put it there, it’s there to look you back in the face and taunt you, somewhat agitate you that you haven’t done it till now.  Only option is to plainly do, just do what you need do.

Will hit that study/course guide for the certification, for connectivity and telecom work.  Not that I want to be a Sales Engineer, but I want to get as close as I can.  Associating it with winemaking, oddly.  How I know enough to make win, e but not enough to be a professional winemaker.  Some won’t get this analogy or association.  A sensible note or corollary to me nonetheless.  Maybe I do want to be a Sales Engineer, but without the title.  An AE that’s more SE than AE.  Thinking…..

Need to get a run in at some point.  I’m anxious, not having woke when I wanted, not racking 8 or nine miles like I have a couple mornings in the past.  Production, the word dominating the semester for me at the JC, and here I am grappling with it.  A new blog project, ‘a productivity practice’, revolving in my thoughts driving back from San Rafael yesterday, methods of intensifying and amplifying, diversifying production and principle productivity.  One, don’t let anxiety envelop you.  If you can’t do something RIGHT NOW, because you have family to-do’s or some other appointment, push to side in your head knowing it’ll be later appeased.  Second, bed early wake early.  More and more I’m thinking this is the most obvious realization of production.  IF I’d shot from the sheets at 4, I’d have a sizeable run in by now as well as a thousand or so words.  And that’s my third point, no shoulds or woulds… only dids, or doing.

Studying production this morning in my own thinking and with my own narration…. Oh, another staple ideology is to travel light.  Always.  No heavy bag or collection of something under your arm.  Be FREE, and free of things.  Free of clutter and ancillary anything.  Production so often is impeded by what we collect, and in my study there should be less of the study itself and more of a directedness of the productive pulse.  Knowing all of this, in expanding and heightening production, your work accrual, is autodidact.

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Embracing Whim.

Spontaneity, everything in the in-the-moment complexion and consistency of my moments.  Meeting at ten, and until then collecting here at desk, combing through leads, and building conversations.  Today, this morning, right when I woke, I thought of having an amazing day… getting to my office and travels, and seeing what I can do as an AE.  Tell this Sonic story better than anyone in the company.  Certainly write it better, or I hope I can, do, will, am…. 

Essays, stories, building from what I have.  The morning, clear and perfect and beaming.  There’s a music to me that I’ve never heard or felt before.  More than just wanting to work, or be productive, but speak to as many people as I can.  Only 8:19 but I’ve produced more than many would in the first hour or even 1.5 hours of day.  Not bragging and not elevating, just enjoying the ride.  Why not, the ride isn’t forever.  And with the promise to my little boy that one day he and I will have our own office and create together, I have to keep this beat and have it more mobile and hungry, a uniquely ravenous angle and gallimaufry of words and thoughts… no editing, no corrections.  As much as I can and as quick as I’m able, not concerned with sense.

Whim, being and creating in the moment, true FREEwriting is the creative code of my P-O-Z Agency, how I speak the Sonic tongue.  Why not be more free, dash toward, SPRINT for, more liberty, liberation.  Work should always be not just a source of happiness but defining definition of….  Work, why do something you hate?  Why resist spontaneity and chance, writing from where you are and who you are.  MY kids do it all the time and the sense of content about them is something more than just worthy of study but a championing understanding and caress of life.

FREEwriting.  Ideas, more of them….. not trying to inventory them, yet.  Or even at all.  Just touching and working from the ones I can catch, write, do something with and for.

Connected with someone at a business that interests me.  The business is creative, digital, story-oriented….  San plan or method I follow my curiosity.  No blueprint, for now.  Just my hunger, just my assurance and knowledge this will more than merely “work out”.

Wrote letter to lead.  Patience, something I’m still learning.  Need to wake earlier.  This morning up at 6-something which is far too late.  Alarm set, AGAIN, for the god hour of 4am.  When home from class tonight, eat and sleep.  Earlier to bed, earlier to wake.  Just talking to myself at this point but that’s a given in narrative.  Sales… more inward jots.  Do I write about knowing now, work, sales, or nothing, or everything?  Love time to collect.  Know precisely how I’m approaching the day, this AE life…. Maybe not so much spontaneously but with expanded eagerness and love.  Yes, that.  The latter.  To be successful in sales, “SUCCESSFUL”, quotes needed, you ought love your way, your methods, your practice… and before loving it you have to know what it is. MINE, jazz.  Music.  Feel music and beat, riffs in all steps.

Off to walk, offer hellos and good-mornings to partners in other departments.  More than visibility, but connectivity.  Same as the internet, what I “sell”.  Today, assuring a historic and mammoth print in my narration.  Hope the same for anyone reading this note, anyone wanting to know how to be “more productive”.  Start with blind and unplanned movement, love of the movement, then walk toward a destination or block and know it’s only one of hundreds if not thousands if not MORE.

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1/21/20

One of those days that I like.  That starts a bit rough for whatever reason then evens, rights itself, or I right IT.  With intense work and focus, containment and creativity.  Visited an Architecture firm today with one of the Sales Engineers, the one devoted to me I’m just reluctant to call him MY SE.  Anyway, the office was on the backside of a building, and up a small flight.  Building used to be resi’, the Engineer thought.  While up there and looking around, the arrangement and décor of the office was all creative, all visually intoned and inclined, inspired and intentioned.  We met in an equally-sightly conference room off to the side where the owner and his IT or tech guy said they were interested in Sonic’s services.  Couldn’t wait to get back to the office to work up proposal and send, but I had a lunch I had to get to, with an IT consultant.

Again, go-go-GO today.  This is what will get me the office, the travel… everything.  Paid off credit card earlier, and now with quite the thing budget.  Not that thin, just mindful of where pennies and all go.  When do I fit in a run?  Could go now, as lunch has settled.  Don’t want to break this momentum, though.  Go tonight, I tell myself.  When everything is quiet.  If I don’t go tomorrow morning, then I’d have to go in afternoon, after speakers meeting. Maybe that makes more sense.  I’ll figure it out.

Back at desk, writing emails…. Looking for more businesses around the area I today hit.  Have my geographies fixed, which helps.  Simplicity is radiant, both conceptually and with visible possibility, seeing that if I get out there and TRAVEL LIGHT, just say hi, not give any amount of fucks, the office will arrive.

Want a bubbly water.  Thirsty.  More than likely from all the coffee I’ve had, which isn’t a dastardly amount but apparently enough to dry-mouth the mouth.  Different narrative, dodge approaches and words obvious… surprise prospects, and yourself, and the story itself.  So much the day today to me saying, even with how some want their pessimism and low measure of everything around them and in their story to tilt and tarnish my forward.  Not today, not ever.

Business, in business, for business… monitor disposition, not just mood and mode, but the ME that’s seen.  When in the Architecture office this morning, the rooms were shoving me toward them, toward such-rooms and walls of my own.  That I’m on the Road I need be, finally.

Closer to day’s close and I don’t want to leave.  I have my routine, I’m hungry, I want more conversations.  Tomorrow will be on phone more.  Didn’t do much calling, today.  Other than the one visit after the Arch’ office.  Just keep talking, keep putting out story, not just content for the sake of content.

Glass of wine, somewhere… where.  Wherever there could be leads.  Starks?  That happy hour they do?  Parking’s always an issue.  Don’t care.  I’ll give stop by, see what occurs.  The AE in me will NOT turn off.  Going to stop by to see if I can connect with whatever, or not even to connect but contribute to visibility.  This week is about just that.. marketing self and concurrently telling and re-telling MY story.  Get out of this office, every chance I get.  Literally just walking around has value.  IS the loudest of embodiments of visibility.

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7:07. Second day of the event, and I’m committed to learn more about the people coming, more than I did yesterday.

Didn’t really learn anything from yesterday’s sippers.  This morning I’m moving slow, from standing behind that table for as long as I was, and saying the same thing about the cuvee, for which I accept fault.  Found myself struggling with the words, MY words, what to say about the wine.  One couple and their daughter knowing my sister, longtime members of St. Francis Winery, excited to meet me and asking me how long I’d been associated with St. Francis.  Can’t remember where else the conversation went, but we were centered in wine, and how they have as longtime St. Francis members a plaque in the vineyard blocks, one of them… the Syrah patch.  After they left all I could think about was getting out of the cave, walking around, smelling the air above and around the Cabernet block just outside the cave door.

Want to re-read Coelho’s Alchemist.  Write something on it.  Why, I don’t know.  Want to be a student again.  Of literature, or writing, reading, all of it.  How to be a student again…. Notes.  Notes on everything.  Studying everything, seeing literary value in business, in the characters at Sonic and Sonic’s individual voice.  Then I lose myself in thoughts of Personal Legend, more than Alchemist work and thought, but me and however many days of life I have left.  What I want people to see and know about me.  Legend seems a but hyperbolic and exaggerative, and it might be to an extent.  But, where my thinking is.  I need to get away from wine’s industry, submerge and immerse self utterly in story.  Stories…. They’ll lead me to my office, I know, I’ve read that before in walks and talks among characters on the property.  That book and some of its passages to me speak this morning, on travel, on sovereign thought, on speaking to students at campuses all over the county.  More than a believe in self but a constant examination of character composition and the how-to-why it develops as it does.  Why did I not write last night, why did I relax rather than sitting here at this counter and typing as I now am to coffee?

What am I after, I start to think.  Convinced I know then I see another scene…. Me in my marketing shop’s office talking to someone I work with about a new direction for some campaign or assignment we were hired to do.  For a winery.  I call upon all memories and experiences in the tasting room, share a slew of them, and one connects.  Not a marketing firm, or shop, but a creative kitchen, corner, or loft.  If I can market myself then how could I EVER others, I remember noting to self sans paper or even phone while closing the cave just after 5pm last night after the last guests departed property.  My Personal Legend, or ‘Self Story’, entails consistency of motion and exploration, and knowing when certain associations need be liquidated.  I’m after what I see, and what I see is a return and permanent residency in student symmetry, presence and tangibility.

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Prospect Differently, and with more echoing exploration.

No more businesses of a certain size, I’m seeing.  For viability’s sake, and also creativity’s.

The AE life, today reiterating the value of certain practices.  Taking the Sonic laptop home with….  Sales is not sales, but evidence of useful connection.  Haven’t had much time to write.  Or, I have, just haven’t seized properly, or at all.  Now, finally, typing.  Only to have to leave in a bit.  Get a beer somewhere before event.  Don’t forget to bring cards.  Again, evidence of connection… or maybe not even that, just not giving as many fucks, keeping self moving, and writing and speaking.  Make it about YOU, you… the brand of you.

Sales is funny, and infuriating.  You get a sale, or sign someone, and the business isn’t of a certain desired size, and you think to yourself, “Did I just waste my time?” Write it out, write more, plan more, and change the plan day to day.  To be stoic and set is to be set to death.  Business death.  Out of business.  That won’t happen to me, but I know I need set sights not just higher but with more demanding stance.

Office quieting down, and I’m in a mode of sight, seeing things for me this semester and with my business forward.  Revolving around sales that is not sales.  I keep saying connection but maybe it’s more than that.  I’m doing this differently, celebrating what I’ve done so far and amplifying it in different angularity.

Thinking about my life selling, starting really with treadmills at Sears, when I was in high school and then a bit when in college.  I didn’t know that much about the machines, I just talked about them as much as I could then switched the stitch of the interaction to the person, and myself. What we had in common, or didn’t.  That’s as easy and eased as it should be, should remain.  Knowing my Now in this sales dimension as a more interconnected and self-abetted provision.

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4:42pm

In SF today for lunch with a Senior AE.  First lunch then visiting businesses around us.  Have more leads than I know what to do with.  Just the feeling I want.  And, the revelation now a true revelation to focus on Novato and south…. San Rafael, SF, and back in my neighborhood of the Peninsula.

Taking laptop home and looking for businesses on map file.  Entirely instructional, this entire day.  From when I woke, to kissing kids goodbye, then driving to work and later struggling for a parking spot.

Now, ZEN.  I know what the focus on this writing AE need be.  Not just geographically, but how I speak the narration of this company.  “Selling”.  Don’t sell.  As I was advised today, “Give less fucks.” Noted.  SO. Noted.

Running tonight at gym, on tread.  No more coffee, and no wine tonight.  Well, not before working out.  I laugh to self as I want to open one of those White Oak bottles, more than likely the Merlot.  OR, no wine and wake early like I did the other day.

Listening to the veteran AE speak at these businesses, how relaxed and comical he was… what I need do.  More comedy, more ease, less fucks.

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Now what.  3:28pm.  More notes, emails, I guess.

                No, not  ‘I guess’.  Not guessing, as that’s thinking.  And the reasoning today is NO thinking, only action.  About an hour now after the time above, and getting ready for meeting later.  Taking home laptop, and some business cards.  Going to take a late coffee break here and put out some more content.  Hate that word… CONTENT.  Can you be any less specific, and deprive your effort of significance any further?  Shit…   Nevermind.  I got it.  Thinking of class beginning on Monday, and how I need to switch some specifics on the 1B syllabus, but I’m not stressing about it.  Only a couple things to do.  Holding self to one ESSAY each meeting.  Think I know the first title, or offering, prompt, but not settling on anything yet.

                Office quieting, and my only remaining suitemate in this zone of the office is about to leave.  Saw that one of the managers left, and now I’m thinking of departing.  Thinking of wine… shocker.  What to have tonight, and what to sell in my eventual room.  Yes, I still want to do that. I will.  Everything done now is for the reality then.  Interesting to think of it that way, now that I consider what I just wrote a little closer.  Business being bridged, or following me.  Picking wines tonight that I know are aligned with my atmosphere and character beat and energy, my texture and beat, music.

                2020 will see me elevate in a way that no one around me, at any level of success has.  That is what I’m going to do… more than merely PROVE, but redefine and design my most purposeful and prudent truth.

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Finished essay.  Now to start calling.   Will be moving essentially everything out of office, at EOD.  Business cards, these two boxes full of shit, and even laptop.  May drop everything off at house before heading to Beer Baron to meet with B2B group.

First call, targeted.  Obsessing in singularity this morning, but I know that could be part of the problem.  Isn’t obsessive nature one of the key traits for “successful” business people?  Overthinking…..  How do you kill that?  Maybe you don’t.  Maybe you just roll with it and follow its existing momentum.

I one time in class said, “Resist nothing.” And here I am, resisting or fixating.  Funny.  I’m laughing.  I swear.

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Walking to the building again.

And feeling more encouraged than I did yesterday.  Certainly more awake.  No leads meeting this morning, and the cold absolutely helped in raising the writer.  Lots of admin tasks to do for the day, and calls, emails.  May go hit the coLAB, or not.  Like I just posted in a note, not going to think about it.  Not going to plan. This lately has been quite the toxic impediment to me. Just write, I posted just a couple seconds ago.  Thinking is needed for productivity, and not.  More not than actually needed.  Just trust self, and the words you’re putting to page.

This semester, I plan to  talk extensively about productivity, and the act of finishing something.  How when you think, you throw yourself into a cyclical stalemate.  Not writing as fast as I used to, and that’s from thinking, from meditating.  Was suggested by someone in my life, someone I love more than most, that I set down the pen, that I don’t type for a while, take a break.  That’s not the answer.  The solution is in the act, the movement itself, the Road, the act of not thinking or deliberating but production.  Just putting words to the page as quick as you’re able and self-endowed and care not a bit if it makes sense.

Walking to the front door of this building, lighter with no backpack just my latte and phone, I see this AE story and identity as a means of getting to IT.  I’ve felt and written that before, but not like today… not like the 10th day of 2020.  This new year still with its hold and love of me, for me, about and around me.  Again I was called a “speaker” the other day, some even said “motivational” or “inspirational”.  Humbled, but I can’t tell you how much I thoroughly detest those words.  And, ‘speaker’.  I’m a writer.  And essayist, diarist, poet.  Or that’s how I want to be seen.  Then I need to do that more.  And reach 3000 words.  If you want something, singularize it, to one word (Essayist, Poet, Winemaker, Cop, Pilot, etc.), and write 3000 words a day till you’re there.  And you WILL absolutely get there.

Step and another step, toward the door I saw the building differently, the trucks in the parking lot, the people just as I walked in.  This business and how it started just from an idea.  Yes there was thinking involved, but more movement and trusting self than any organized brainstorming or constraint of containment in composition.  When in the classroom with students, I often talk down on structure or excess organization.  I embolden those enrolled to trust self, to write and do for YOU rather than appease the curriculum coffin.  I ask that they tell their story, and see it as an act of kindness.  That they need to share their experiences, they’ll help and connect with someone.  Don’t think about the structure of the narration…. Just tell your story.  Start writing, put words on the page… forget the sense that it’ll make.  Forget to forget, even…. Just expect letters, sentences, movement.

Writing this on the work laptop to start the day as I usually do, and notice there’s 81,000+ words in this document.  What did I write?  What did I see?  I guess I could go back and read, but not now.  Want to further impassion in the day, see what happens.  With the calls, with the emails, with the follow-up communications….  Promised myself that this year I’d become one of the top AE’s in the company.  The only way to make that happen is through movement.  Through writing letters and emails, calling, getting out into the street and meeting people.  Some would say “expanding your network” but I see it more as a collective conversation.  Whatever it is, will contribute more to it today.  Want 2-3 appointments by day’s end.  That’s my aim.  And, keep writing.  Told this to myself even before I started by trot toward the front door.

Movement, movement… no more bloody thinking.  And thinking is bloody, it’s potentially lethal.  It kills the action and trek, the Road you want to see if you have yourself mummified in thinking excessively.  Now that I’m at the desk, starting the day, just sending my day’s plan to Director, I’m feeling that pull… that pull and push to page.  Tech company with a writer in its walls, hearing the office come alive… more activity, more life, some celebrating the fact it’s Friday but that hasn’t even registered with me.  Too focused on the essay of the day.  This… me here now.  Realizing that the thinking has to be extinguished, utterly undone.  And it is.  Personal Legend, I think to myself.  The Coelho Effect, I call it.  As an essayist, or newly-anointed one, I don’t want to continue certain habits or thought-throws.  So, I just stop.  Cold turkey. Like a smoker, or drinker, or someone that’s some style of eater.  Like someone starting some new workout habit and lifestyle.

Last night finishing the final glass of that Educated Guess Cab the past jobs spoke to me.  All of them. Each one of their duty intricacies and “supervisors”.  All of them… the grocery store, the record store, insurance office and all the wineries… teaching.  Now here.  I can’t do another job.  I won’t.  I’m home, here.  Walking to the building from car I don’t feel what I did at other places. It just doesn’t happen.  I’m eager to not only “be productive” but see where the day takes me.  Even cold-calling antagonizes me, if you can believe that.  I can barely understand it, but it’s the Now. Where I am in this office, not thinking and not letting self dwell on what I can or can’t do, where my abilities are versus aren’t.  I only permit movement, a forward.  When you deliberate and not even to excess you stress the self and impede the sought productivity.  Walk to your day’s building and principle edifice with encouragement, your own loving shoves, and knowledge of new knowledge and the everything of every answer.

1/10/20

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I don’t know if I have writer’s block, or I just don’t know how to fucking write anymore or what they fuck it is, but I hate everything I’m writing.

Just posted a piece, or “article” I guess you could call it to Medium and I hate it.  Can barely look at it.  When I read over it, I didn’t like or dislike it. I just felt it was… eh.  I don’t know if I felt anything.  What would I tell a student in my 1A or other class?

Teaching myself to write all over again.  Feeling panicked, knowing I lost track of where I was in the 100-days project, the second pass.  Passing on it, entirely.  Focus on the writing, I tell myself and anyone reading.  Start over.  Write only essays, books, and a couple entries here and there.

Nearing the end of my day, which is technically at 4 but may leave at 4:30.  Have to pick up both Emma and Jack across town then head home.  Tired, and I know that’s part of it. Waking earlier than I have over the past two weeks with my leads group being on hiatus and kids being out of school, so no need to wake that early.  Today I did and I am absolutely feeling it right now.  That’s slid and dug itself into mood.  And I second-guess self.  So I embrace and reject it at the same time.  Have some new leads to scroll through, but maybe I can do that tomorrow.  No, I’ll do a little now…. But the writing. That’s what worries me.  Why am I struggling with it?  Why am I BLOCKED?  Don’t I make fun of students who claim WB?  Yes, but now I can’t.  Not anymore.

No TV tonight.  No netlix show bullshit.  Freewrite.  About anything.  The wine I pour, about this blockage I feel, about how I keep telling myself I’m going to learn French this year but haven’t even looked at one word.  Learning a language is WORK, and this is a blog about work, right?  So what’s the problem?  Paresseux….  I’ve been just that, Paresseux.  Which means LAZY.  I never want to be known, seen, spoken of as such.  So, I’m diving into a French vocabulary tub.  Can’t right now, as I’m at my main work way at Sonic, and need to go through these leads.  Wanted another contract today but I don’t think I’m getting one.  Fine, I will tomorrow.  Don’t have too much on calendar, so I’ll just devote the day to getting ink from somewhere.

And again I get that sense, of intensely disliking everything I’m writing.  What do I do….. I’ve always considered myself a writer before anything.  I’m really having this issue now… wow.  Wine… stick with wine.  Wine solves, and mends, but it also slows.  Well, when you sip it, yes.  What about just writing about it… owning my own shop, or winery, or both. A shop with my label on some shelf.  I can feel it now, this is certainly the exhaustion.  I’m not convinced this is writer’s block, maybe it’s something far worse. What if I can’t write… oh FUCK.  I should read that productivity essay or article or whatever again. 

No I shouldn’t.  Just leave it alone.  Start writing EOD report, comb through those leads, and leave.  Call the day.  Day, DONE.  No more laziness, no more questioning.  Write wine… write about wine, sipping it in some vineyard, or in your shop. Keep moving, be productive if only for the sake of so.  Same with writing… if you hate what you’re typing, all the more reason to keep on keys.  Don’t you tell students that?

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