I have a friendly relationship with my case manager here at Taft Camp. She’s in her early thirties and she treats all prisoners with courtesy that I appreciate. She sometimes asks questions about whether I’ll be able to adjust to society after all the years I’ve served.  For example, she was puzzled when I told her that I reserve all of my telephone minutes to talk with my wife and not others in my family. Since her office is beside the room where I write, she sees me alone at a table writing every day. She was surprised when I told her that I don’t watch television, that I eat alone and that I’m sleeping before six each evening in order to resume my writing before two each morning. She suggests that all of the time I spend alone may render me incapable of normal social interactions when I’m released, not realizing that my alone time is part of my prison adjustment.

Every decision I make in prison has a purpose. I understand the many traps of living in confinement and since I know the perils, I take precautionary steps to avoid them. I owe that level of responsibility to the many people in society who support me. It is because of the decisions I make every day and the discipline I exercise, that I’ve been able to lead a fulfilling life despite the 22-plus years I’ve served in prison. I feel ready to adjust to society but I know challenges await me.

I’m surprised that my case manager doesn’t understand that, in order to triumph over the many obstacles that accompany long-term imprisonment, I make sacrifices. I sacrifice interactions with the prison environment in order to ensure that I will break the cycle of failure that prisons so expertly perpetuate. To explain my perspective, I wrote Earning Freedom, and this morning I edited chapters nine and ten of the manuscript. Tomorrow I expect to complete the final chapter edits and Carole ought to submit them to my agent next week. It’s very exciting to have seen this process through.

Today I ran 10 miles and followed the run with 300 pushups. My running tally is now 2,745 miles over the past 308 days.

Saturday, 17 October 2009

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