5/23/17, journal

In room already, 06:38. Final exam time for this class is at 7AM. Not sure whose idea that was. Told them I will be here at 07:00, but they can show at 7:30 if that’d better them suit. Running after work today. Today it starts. An intense, very demanding fitness schedule, and writing schedule/time table/regimen from his writer. Coffee is hotter than I can handle now, but I’ll find a way to handle it as I very much need energy this morning. Hoping I get out a page while here in this classroom, even before the first student shows, then another at lunch at work, then one tonight. I know I have the inertia in me to do that and more if I wanted— Have to say, before I go on about how much I want to write and have to write and blah blah, I’m more than enthralled to run along the Alexander Valley vines after work today. The wind, and there’s something about the soil in AV that speaks more to me than what I stepped on in Dry Creek for my walks at Dutcher Crossing. I play and play with more envisage, more cognition and random ramblings and quasi-rants, see my book taking shape…. more wined story for me that doesn’t include wine itself but where it’s from. Soil, plant, those in the vineyards in the craziest of hours, toils and tussling with nature and what it wants to do and then finding a harmony with Her that we could never catalyze.

Will write in phone while on the floor, behind the bar becoming more familiar with the functioning and anatomy of the winery’s POS system and other procedures that are in no way complicated but encouraging to someone like me, someone addicted to Newness— be it experience or knowledge or what. Hope I’m no nudnik in this entry, just letting you know where I am, and that’s much of what my wine story invites and precipitates. When I first started getting involved in wine marketing, and social media and writing in the wine business, I always used to say “reiterate your reality”. That’s what my style is. I’m not necessarily teaching anything, at least in the conventional sense, but I’m sharing where I am and what I’m doing, having a better idea of where I’m going. Here now with my coffee on the last day of the semester, knowing Summer Term is only a couple weeks away, and I need to get grades done quick for Spring. No problem. This new pattern for me will demand 4AM wake. Not let it be any kind of option. To bed earlier, wake earlier, write more… to the Road quicker.

On my photog’ walk yesterday, I thought about taking pictures in vineyards in other countries, countries that you don’t expect to be written about or shot. Not like France, or Spain, or Italy, but Austria, Israel, India, Portugal (although many know of Portugal’s wine reality, most think of Italy or France more reflexively), Croatia. What would the air taste like, how would the ground feel as I stepped, stepped. This room starts to become more of a classroom for me than the students I taught this semester. Listening to my Chilled/Relaxed beats, I think of my reality— a writer, embracing that and detailing every sentence that flies or soars, or walks through or talks in my head. Took a couple notes in composition book and now I keep working on my day’s pages. My reality is to keep writing, to keep exploring, learning and sharing what I learn. If you call that teaching, then fine. I call it exchanging ideas. Nothing more.

‘Nother sip of coffee. Want to get to AV a little early to drive around, map out a course for my run later. And, take some pictures with the camera if I can. Every vine is a potential subject, and every moment something to capture. Thought in the TR yesterday, at day’s beginning when it was slow, really slow, that wherever I stop in my walk around the room, I can do something. See a hat, move it one millimeter left, or tilt it. Everything can solicit creativity. I didn’t let myself get bored or complacent, or even mildly numb or on some kind of cruise-control. My note, on a post-it, read, “Stop at random spots in the office, store, tasting room, restaurant, shop, if you’re bored, and do something with what you see— re-arrange, be creative, be alive. Just what I’m doing in my reality, and in sharing it— student walks in. Don’t groan, I tell myself. Work with it. Get creative. Be tireless. My idea, now— to throw Self into the day, keep writing.