Wednesday: Calling Up for a Report

I await the big snow storm. Everybody at work but me discussed the approaching storm and whether they would be at work. My bus driver says the buses will be running tomorrow. One of the honchos at work said she would understand if we did not come till Monday. (Til Tuesday is a wholly different matter.) If the buses run, if I can make it to the bus stop, I will go to work. I need the money.

I left early today. Really early. See, I had a phone interview for a new job at 3:30. I thought this I could do here rather in my current employer's parking lot. Especially since it started raining since this morning. Whatever is lacking in the stores for puzzles and silverware is not my fault. I put them on a pallet. Whatever happened after that is not in my job description.

Part of why I could leave early was that we had run out of boxes to put on pallets. Maybe this is a sign of troubles in the global supply chain?

I started these notes back in 2010. I have not seen those notes in the papers my sister brought me. KH saw them, did not like. He said they read like a person detoxing. They were that. They were coming from my madness of self-destruction into my finding some way of coping with that self-destruction. They were meant as an apology to family and friends and whoever else might read them. 

I meant to kill myself. I had been angry at myself, I hated all of existence so much, I wanted out, and I also wanted no one to mourn me, no one to eulogize me in anyway that would, could, portray me in any way but the bad example I felt myself to be.

Then news came to me of someone threatening suicide. I thought if I proceeded with my plans - to put myself to death because I had put myself in a position where I had no choice - this would fuel his suicidal thoughts. About then I realized what I done to myself. It was a WTF moment.

I may have had a complete breakdown during my pretrial detention. For the longest time I did not get off my bunk except to eat. My neighbor got to play Scrabble. I know that I could not add up Scrabble scores before I left for prison.

I took a 151 sentence because I expected the lungs not to last that long. Just because a person is not suicidal does not mean he has any interest in staying alive. Coming back to Indiana was the worst case scenario.

Part of me, maybe the part I was most angry with myself, reared itself after reading United States v. Dorvee. That I was getting more time for pictures when a child molester would get less time angered me in its Congressional mandated madness. My feelings seem to have been shared by this article comparing the substance of my crime with crack cocaine. (My government mandated monitoring software let me view this law journal article.) I got away from the law only to be dragged back.

Apology turned into journal which in time became therapy.

Before going to prison KH suggested I go back to writing fiction. As I had tried very to drive away my friends and he was one who would not go away, I thought in the circumstances I should do as he requested. CC told me she could not write about Muncie, that gave me a subject. 

In prison Gabriel Garcia Marquez pushed me towards lucidity. I took lucidity as being beyond merely sober. All the writing - journal and fiction - kept me towards several goals.

The first goal was to do something useful with my time. I was in different writing groups during my prison stay. I hoped to encourage others to commit creative acts rather than criminal ones.

The second goal came after being mauled by Marquez and recalling Albert Camus's The Rebel took the position fighting nihilism by creative acts. I had doubly embarrassed myself - by my crimes and then by not committing suicide - I needed to find a purpose if I were to stay alive. Depression led me into nihilism and nihilism fueled my depression. I had let the ugliness that I saw in the world overwhelm. I had been weak, a chickenshit, by not taking a stand against the ugliness and mendacity that I saw in realtime and online. Writing had let me do what I can to say, No we do not need to turn ourselves into garbage just because the world seems to want us to do so.

Lastly, I had placed myself under my obligations to KH to keep writing. I had trashed too many obligations in the year or so before my arrest. My staying alive had not paid off  those obligations. The more lucid I became, I may have found more obligations. Atonement got lodged in my brain.

I am on supervised release. There is sn order telling me what I cannot do. I have a probation officer who seems to think I am s mix of Professor Moriarty and Hannibal Lecter. When we first met and I told him I was writing, he asked if I were writing erotica. I was shocked but then I realized I had set myself up for this kind of reaction. When he came to see me and I showed him the one novel's manuscript I had eith me, there was something like terror in his eyes. Whether that came from my suggesting he read some of it, or he had never supervised a writer, or from a suspicion of criminality lurking in my handwritten pages, or some combination of the above, I do not know. Would that I had not been clumsy and broke my laptop. I would have a lot of work done by now. He has told me approving the laptop is not a high priority of his. I assume this is his way of exerting control. It probably also his way of making sure I do not turn into a maniac and begin committing more crimes on the internet.

E worried that my coming back to Muncie, I would fall back in with the crackheads. I never understood this. I have lost all interest that. I made a choice after making a public ass of myself to stay alive, to do something useful with what time I have left to me in this world.

My supervised release order forbids things I have no interest in doing. But the order says nothing about me doing anything positive for the world. My own plan is to do something worthwhile with my time; that something being my writing.

Depression was a problem. I hope anyone reading these notes (which will need wait for the laptop) will have the sense to get treatment. My recent experience with Zoloft reinforces the idea that if I had had the sense, the energy, the support, to get treatment then I would have avoided prison.  There will be more articles about this under the Depression label.

I hope that any readers wanting to indulge in criminal activity will see there is nothing to be gained from a prison sentence.You can find more articles under the Prison life label and the Halfway House label.

I am sorry if I have duplicated what can be found under the Supervised Release. I have been preoccupied lately with the difference between the government's ideal of keeping confined in the shall nots of its supervised release order and my ideas of atonement and obligation. 

It could be I am as delusional as any lunatic. Could be I am a lying sack of bull manure. If do here is my public statement to use against me.

Well, I have been at this for hours.  And you have been more than patient with the length here. Bear with me a few moments.

As I said, I left work early. Since I had time, I went my doctor's for my covid booster. After that it was back to my room by way of McClure's. Arrival at the room was 2 hours after I left work. I called KH. My phone rang a few minutes after that. It was a call from food stamps. Then I got the ball rolling on the colonoscopy. I then called about my lung scan. Finished off with a call to the mental health counselor. What I did not get was a job interview. Some problem with the number. I did get an email from the interviewer so all might not be lost. I fixed dinner and started writing this.

This is what the view is from my front steps:

I will close with advice I wish I had taken. Go get a hammer says Willie Nile.

I will finish watching Resident Alien and then do a little reading.

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