Update 9-15-2020

Two weeks have gone by since my last entry. It seemed longer.

I remain dissatisfied with the VOA halfway house. I write that even though I am out on a 3 hour pass having been promoted to Level 4. Whoopie! I went to CVS to get my refill of Zoloft. I do like the Zoloft as it seems to keep me from getting too agitated. I have been smoking a few cigarettes, all the same. Puffing, not inhaling. They taste bad which is a strange counter-balance to my roiling stomach. I cannot go to the IUPUI library (due to a lack of computer supervision for a villain like me) but I can go to the Center City Mall. If I were the maniac the federal government thinks me, should I be let loose in a mall? I guess since there is nothing to do in the mall [and subsequently, fewer people] the VOA feels safe in letting me go there. Having been there and finding not even an open restaurant, I can understand their feeling of safety. I had to go across the street to the PNC Center to find an open Subway (my first in around 11 years).

I do not mind not going to the library as I purchased through Thrift Books John Dos Passos' USA Trilogy.  I am half way through the first novel, The 42nd Parallel. More about that later.

I have not yet decided if I trust my case manager. Allegedly she has a bias against sex offenders. Such malice I have not seen. Instead, I get this when we meet:

1. when I asked about speaking with my federal probation officer who will need to approve my apartment, she says I need to give her a note 2 weeks before my departure (10/7/21 is when I leave, so my deadline is 9/22); and
2. I need to remind her over and over of my intentions to settle in Muncie [we had been meeting every two weeks since my arrival]. 

If I had not asked about the probation officer, I do not think she would have offered the information. Our next meeting is 9/27/2021. If I had waited till then would it have been too for me to get my apartment approved? [Turned she found out there was no need for the PO to approve the apartment.] If so, What would I have done for a place to live? Rather than bias, I prefer thinking her talents do not rise to the occasion.

If not for myself, I would not have a job. If not for my people [and the internet], I would be without any leads on where to live.  Where is the aid in translating me from prison life to civilian life?

I offer this observation as my answer: the halfway house concerns itself first with meeting bureaucratic dictates, then with incarceration of its inmates and then with managing its drug addicts and its mental health inmates., and transition into civilian comes up when they have a few spare moments. Ms. Greenup dutifully asks me questions from the checklist on her computer. She has never engaged me in conversation. Sbhe presented goals for me back in May without any input from me - without asking me why or why not I had any goals of my own. Instead, she inserted my obtaining employment by May 28 as an aspirational goal and then did nothing to promote that goal. Frankly, I have not cared overmuch about her role. 

Four things being in the VOA has allowed me to do: 1) get a knock off of a London Fog coat; 2) raise money for an apartment (they do feed and shelter me);  2) use of the computer lab to get this blog started; and 4) using their computers to get my play "Masque of the Red Death" in an electronic format. I could have gotten only #2 done in a homeless shelter.

I should probably thank them for the free wi-fi also.  I would have gone completely bonkers without anything to read. Instead I have been using my flip phone to fulfill my urges to read. And for music, too - YouTube has been a joy. I have been using my 2 hours of charging my electronic monitoring device for listening to Jonathan Franzen and Jhumpa Lahiri and other writers. Last night I listened to a lecture on D.H. Lawrence and this morning it was John Dos Passos. Don't tell the VOA about all this unsupervised computer use.  I would hate to undermine their confidence in what I would do with unfettered computer use.  (Right now I am listening to Howling Wolf's Moaning in the Moonlight album.) You, dear reader, may be surprised at the lack of my temptation to indulge in criminal activity. It was never a compulsion and now I feel I am living on borrowed time and have no time to waste on useless ugliness. I have debts to pay I do not have the time for anything distracting me from my obligations. But let's not upset the government and its agents with any contradictions to their party line. They do think they mold reality.

But why should you trust felonious me?

I have seen an eye doctor - I got new glasses that look good on me and reassurances of relative good health for my eyes. 

There was a second meeting with my primary care doctor. All is good there - except for my lungs and her wanting a colonoscopy for me.

I am getting along at Jimmy Johns. I will miss those people as much as I will not miss the VOA.

I need to get back to my writing. I hope to raise funds and I will need to pay the rent.

sch