Missouri Prison Tech

Prison's a backwater, for sure, but developments and inroads by rights organizations and for-profit corporations have changed a few things for those of us on the inside. Our access to technology has made especially impressive strides. Here in Missouri, the introduction of tablets marked an apparent turning point in how the Department of Corrections meets the present.

Following a clunky start, prisoners in Missouri are able to do quite a bit on those tablets. We can now make phone calls, listen to FM radio, access public domain books, rent movies and TV shows, send and receive e-mail, research law, buy mobile games, listen to podcasts, subscribe to a news feed, and purchase music. A lot of the features cost money that many prisoners don't have, but having the free features beats having nothing at all.

Because the tablets don't offer even the most basic, firewalled internet access, quite a few people are enthusiastic about a newer app, Edovo, which appeared in the beginning of 2025. Edovo offers video, audio, and text on myriad topics curated for incarcerated users. There are MasterClass courses, guided meditations, LinkedIn Learning classes, Grow with Google videos, Veritasium content, <<link to OpenStax textbooks, prep courses for Modern States Education Alliance's CLEP exam, reentry resources, digital magazines, works of classic literature, WikiHow articles, and a lot more. In some ways, Edovo is YouTube (plus e-books) for prison, serving educational, self-improvement, and spiritual interests—and no cat videos.

The Reentry Center, where I work, has virtual reality goggles for Transfr career simulations. Anyone interested in exploring different fields of employment can make an appointment to test them out. The sims include: installing rooftop solar panels, plating a signature dish at a restaurant, demolishing a bridge, assisting with knee surgery, and numerous points in between. I've read about other states using VR to give prisoners pre-release virtual tours of transitional housing and simulations of activities that might induce anxiety, such as going to a laundromat or using self-checkout at a store.

The most recent addition to prison's tech landscape that I've learned about is a service called Beyond Bars AI. It's pretty much what you'd expect from the name. Artificial intelligence is everywhere else, so why not in prison? Paid subscribers get to e-mail prompts to an AI that responds directly to them via our tablets. Not everyone in prison can ask an outside friend or relative to play proxy for ChatGPT, so this service presumably saves people time and effort, and empowers the incarcerated person to do their own research.

Just last week, I learned that Beyond Bars AI introduced a voice feature, a concept that sounded a little gimmicky to me. By calling a phone number and saying your DOC number, state, and name, you get ten minutes with Nova, an AI ready to converse about... whatever, I guess. The call is charged to your account at the usual rate of 5¢ per minute, but the voice AI service is free until the end of the year.

I had fifty cents to lose, so I gave it a shot over the weekend. I have several people in my circle who say they're only too happy to relay my prompts to AI, but there was something undeniably appealing about using such a tool on my own. (Autonomy is a powerful thing.) The ten minutes flew by as I asked Nova questions and got not only the information I wanted but additional ideas I wouldn't have considered on my own. This might be my new Saturday thing—at least until free usage ends in 2026.

Nova got me thinking about possibilities. A large percentage of people in prison have undiagnosed mental illness, and there's virtually no way for them to get therapy to help overcome underlying issues that brought them here. Someone with an inclination and good funding could set up a valuable (not to say profitable) system to provide the incarcerated population with AI therapy sessions at no cost to them. The hardened convict, unwilling to risk vulnerability by exploring his feelings with another human, might open up to a nonjudgmental AI. I expect that a DOC implementing such a system would see its recidivism rate decrease. Violence and other antisocial behaviors in its facilities would likely go down, too.

This might be an audacious idea; I'm guilty of having those, from time to time. But what a fantastic benefit it could have for people inside and outside alike!

Technology is only as good as the intentions we wield it with. Tech advancements that have made it through the once impenetrable razor-wire barrier are significant. But much is yet to be desired. The pricing structures of a lot of these services isn't great. In many cases it's exploitative. Moving forward, we'll need to remedy that. A lot of the software is junk, too, so more quality control is called for. These are solvable problems.

Putting more automated processes in place could cut down on issues caused by chronic corrections staff shortages. Integrating systems to better manage administrative tasks—health services requests, case manager correspondence, and such—could ease staff members' workload. Adding access to tools that enhance prisoners' sense of autonomy would surely make prison safer and more beneficial for its residents, its employees, and society.

2nd Opportunity at ERDCC

While serving a twelve-year federal prison sentence for financial crimes, Chicago native Augie Ghilarducci devised and taught a reentry program for his fellow inmates. His program became mandatory in the feds and is now taught in prisons and jails across the United States. Today, 2nd Opp (aka the 2nd Opportunity Program) seems to be his life. Augie travels around the country, functioning as an ambassador for the brand, which not only educates the incarcerated but provides support once they're out, in the form of personal mentorship and referral to much-needed reentry resources.

At Augie's in-person introduction to 2nd Opp a couple of summers ago, the topic excited his audience of ERDCC residents. That eagerness showed in the Q-and-A session that followed—as did their skepticism. When would classes start? Who was allowed to enroll? How could he assure them that classes would actually be held?

"They paid for the program," Augie replied, looking almost confused by the question. "I don't know why they wouldn't use it."

His experience in the feds must've been very different from what prisoners in this state contend with. The audience's doubt was justified. Like so many government entities, the Missouri Department of Corrections is infamous for reneging on promises. Foremost on my mind at the time was the DOC director's plan to reward prisoners' acts of exceptionally good behavior. That plan never took effect. Other people who saw Augie's presentation thought of the many features our Android tablets were supposed to have but didn't, including a means of communicating with medical staff and case managers, an interface for ordering commissary, and other useful apps. I don't have enough space here to list all the vows broken by the DOC.

Another matter is ERDCC's scarcity of structured self-improvement activities. To anyone hungry for a better life, 2nd Opp had obvious appeal: a twenty- to twenty-five-hour course that covers mental health, career exploration, financial literacy, professional development, and higher education—all to prepare students for the door. Despite its life-changing potential, the program seemed doomed to be just another carrot left dangling before our eyes.

And so it was. Two years passed without a peep about it from the prison administration. Even in a place like this, where aborted dreams are the stock in trade and the population clings to vain hopes, residents eventually forgot all about 2nd Opp. Well, most of us did.

A few weeks after I started my job in the prison's Reentry Center, I broached the subject with my boss. He expressed vague recognition of the program's name but couldn't say for sure. He furrowed his brow in thought, then grabbed his keys, abandoned his desk, and said, "Come with me."

We unearthed the 2nd Opp materials—five course DVDs, a facilitator's manual, and 500 student workbooks—from the back of a dusty storage closet. He flipped through a workbook. "This looks interesting," he said.

I pointed to Augie's photo on the back of one of the DVD cases. "Here's the guy who created the program. People got excited when he spoke about it."

"All this was locked in here before we remodeled the building! It looks like solid information. Why the hell haven't we been using it?"

That was my question all along. It took two months for the inquiry to travel up the chain of command, but bigwigs in Jefferson City eventually answered. They gave us an immediate green light to begin 2nd Opp classes here at ERDCC. My boss not only offered me the privilege of facilitating them, I even got my choice of partner to teach alongside.

I immediately chose Wade, a friendly, professional guy I brought onboard at XSTREAM last year, when I was still the team lead. I couldn't forget how well Wade and I worked together, nor how sincerely committed he is to helping people.

We had a WebX training the following week with Augie himself, certifying us to teach the class. He seemed as committed to the cause as when I first met him in the visiting room during his introductory presentation. The Path Forward, his video podcast, is available through our tablets, and its biweekly episodes put that commitment on display as he interviews people who've reentered society and found success. All around, Augie strikes me as being a nice guy. He even sent us T-shirts.

Our inaugural class started in October. We've got twelve students, all eager to learn, all highly engaged with our classroom discussions. As we move through the curriculum, Wade and I expect to touch base with Augie via WebX, as often as the Reentry Center staff can conveniently schedule meetings. Wade and I are eager to see where teaching takes us. More importantly, though, we might get to see our students lead better prepared, more hopeful lives.

There's More to Reentry Than Toilet Paper

Some people just don't recognize a good thing when it's presented to them. Case in point: this week's uninvited guest at the ERDCC Reentry Center.

Slouchy and bald, with thick glasses and a long, gray goatee, a little pear-shaped man trundled into the Reentry Center on Tuesday and asked to use the restroom. It was a warm, sunny day in Bonne Terre, and most of his housing unit was outside, enjoying its daily recreation period. The guard at the Reentry Center's front desk said he could enter as long as he signed in.

Why didn't the man just use the toilet at his house? It would've saved him from walking at least twice as far as he did. Unfortunately, the guard didn't think to ask. The man scribbled his name on the sign-in sheet, did what he wanted to do, then returned to his recreational activities on the yard.

That afternoon, without being released by the staff running his house, our visitor inexplicably returned. He once again signed in, once again went into the restroom, and once again left without apparent incident. This time, the guard reported the event to my boss.

Such behavior would probably seem odd no matter where we were, but ERDCC is a place where strangeness thrives, settles in, raises kids, sends them off to college, celebrates their astonishing success, then retires and opens up a snazzy, circus-themed Airbnb. I'm saying the weirdness here manages to operate at a particularly advanced level, while simultaneously being kind of vanilla (which is weird in it's own way, but that's beside the point).

Still, my boss is a former captain with twenty-one years' experience in corrections. He understands the difference between weird and weird. These restroom goings-on had captured his notice. Reentry is his domain, and he will abide no fuckery.

He checked the restroom. Every roll of toilet paper was gone. We had ourselves a TP thief.

The Reentry Center's Wednesday activities include a 2nd Opp class, the Global Leadership Academy meeting, and Anger Management. That morning's bathroom visitor wasn't enrolled in any class, presentation, or program, but he nevertheless finagled a way out of his housing unit and showed up in our building, asking to use the restroom for a third time in two days.

The moment the man signed in, my boss abandoned the spreadsheet he was working on, sprang from his desk, and beelined for the suspect. It wasn't much of a conflict. The man was caught red-handed and quickly surrendered the stack of paper towels and two flattened rolls of toilet paper he'd stuffed in his socks.

"I was gonna let it go," my boss told him. "but you got greedy. I mean, hell, you already got me for three rolls this morning!"

The man smiled and corrected him. "Four."

"Get the hell out of here," my boss laughed. "If you come back in here, I'll write you up for being out of bounds."

The guy was lucky to not get a conduct violation and a bill for the cost of what he stole. A roll of toilet paper costs 95¢ at the canteen. If he's stealing it, he probably couldn't afford the wholesale price the state would charge him for it. It's a little sad—but also ridiculous.

Stranger in a Strange Land: A Dream for the Future

Completely stopped on the freeway during rush hour, I put the car in park, take out my phone, and begin recording a TikTok video. I talk into the camera about the happiness this standstill inspires in me. I explain that, in prison, I would yearn to have exactly this sort of moment to myself, and how being in my own vehicle now—although momentarily kept from going anywhere in it—represents such a wonderful level of freedom that I'm compelled to express my joy in a video.

After I get home, I use the subject of my TikTok video as a jumping-off point for a bonus episode of my podcast. Some of the episodes are topical, addressing the challenges I face as a retuning citizen, but what I most enjoy is recontextualizing mundane experiences and everyday nuisances. I like sowing in listeners (I hope) the seeds of gratitude for our astonishing, precious lives.

Before the day is out, I edit and upload the podcast. I see that my rush-hour TikTok video has seven heart reactions and a thumbs-up emoji. It's a start. It's also purely theoretical.

No, you haven't missed any big news; I'm still in prison. The scenario described above is pure imagination. It's something I've considered for a while. I often think about how to make the most of my wrongful imprisonment after I'm finally exonerated. People who engage with the formerly imprisoned have told me that the people who most successfully reintegrate are the ones who lean in to their experiences, openly sharing what their time in the system taught them. It makes sense. That's how I arrived at this social media concept I call "Stranger in a Strange Land."

I envision it as a series of videos and writings that document my return to society after more than two decades. The thinking goes like this: if I can synthesize the lessons of my twenty-odd years of imprisonment into a public-facing platform, my story can be of benefit to others. I could share how I found purpose, meaning, and deep happiness despite terrible circumstances. I could offer people perspective. I might even spark inspiration in the process.

The world looks today very much like what British wordsmith William Burgess had in mind when he wrote A Clockwork Orange. One term he used in that book, "real horrorshow," could substitute for any news headline, any day of the week. That's the view from where I sit, anyway. More than a few people agree. I suspect, though, that despite the attachment people feel to their doomscrolling and hyperbolic echo chambers, it might be worthwhile to buck the trend by creating alternate narratives. That's how I envision "Stranger in a Strange Land": a possible antidote to the hatemongering and hyperactivity that seem to dominate contemporary society.

In addition to being a therapeutic outlet, I see potential here for an extension of my Zen practice. My camera could linger in moments of mundane beauty—an iridescent puddle on the sidewalk, a caterpillar climbing a tree, the sinuous curves of a snowbank, water circling the sink drain—either accompanied by commentary or silently meditative. The feed would offer prompts for everyday awe, and highlight things I missed during my decades of imprisonment. In this way, I might expose people to otherwise invisible reasons for gratitude.

And of course all of this would tie in with my desire to speak to audiences about thriving amid life's travails. Monologues and interesting, intelligent conversations with thoughtful guests (I'm thinking here of writers, philosophers, meditators, other former prisoners, and more) would help to elevate the podcast above so much of what's out there.

Post-release video content can find popularity. Just look at the accounts of ex-prisoners like Keri Blakinger, Dontrell Britton, or Morgan Godvin. Each has a unique style and focus, and there are quite a few others putting stuff online these days. Some are earnest, some are serious, but all of them did time and now use the experience to engage with people in a positive way. I'd love for "Stranger in a Strange Land" to be an extension of that. A guy can dream, can't he?

The Staggering Heartache (or Not) of Coaching Returning Citizens

Working in the prison's Reentry Center gives me an active role in people's pre-release self-improvement efforts. It also highlights the severity of my own LWOP sentence—the infamous life without parole.

I'm allowed to help returning citizens prepare résumés, coach them for job interviews, tutor them in computer literacy, do after-hours research on other states' reentry programs, and write proposals that could bring better opportunities to these people who are so eager to return to society as engaged, productive members of society—but no one who has more than one year left on their sentence may benefit from the Department of Offender Rehabilitative Services. The DOC's computer system shows my release date to be 99/99/9999.

People ask how I can do this kind of work with such a heavy sentence hanging over me. "Isn't it hard to watch them leave, knowing you can't?" one friend asked. "How do you deal with the jealousy?" another wanted to know. Still another wanted to know if I secretly resent the clients I see. These are all good, valid questions. My answers probably seem either annoyingly vague or disgustingly pious.

I'm not jealous of others' successes. If someone has expended real effort or dearly yearned for a particular outcome, I enjoy seeing them achieve their desires. Also, it makes me happy to make people happy. Whatever the opposite of schadenfreude might be, that's what I feel.

The people I help seem sincere in their intention to do good after prison. They want to work respectable jobs, stay clean, get an education, and generally live a good life. I tell them all that my greatest hope is to never see them again. In other circumstances, that comment might be considered rude. In this place, it's a testament to my desire that they do well out there.

I don't discuss my sentence with them, but of course they talk. That's what people do. Word got around that the shadow of LWOP hangs over me, and now they have a different perspective. Before this tidbit got around, they thought I was just performing the duties of a job like any other.

In prison, almost no one gets to work a job they actually want. It's all kitchen slavery, factory toil, janitorial drudgery, library tedium—forget about interests, let alone passions. Beyond cultivating the general experience of pride in a job well done (which is tricky under these conditions), few prisoners are fortunate enough to find employment fulfilling. I recognize fully how precious an opportunity my reentry job is. That's why I sought it out.

The first client I helped to complete a Medicaid application told me he was getting out "on Thursday." It blew my mind. The excitement he must've felt, having not years or months but days remaining on his sentence! This was unfathomable to me, and I told him so. He smiled. I smiled back. Sharing in even a fraction of his joy felt nice.

"You don't get paid?" one staff member asked me this week. "If there's no money involved it's not a job, it's a passion."

In a sense, he wasn't wrong. There's purpose in this work. It doesn't just keep me from being press-ganged into food service work, it lets me share inspiration and teach life-changing skills. It's said that if you do what you like, you'll never work a day in your life. Every day I'm reminded how true that adage is.

Preparing to Leave

George stares at the monitor, whispering the words onscreen as he reads them. His hooded, watery eyes follow the cursor right, then down and left, then right again, line by line, as he uses the mouse to follow every word of the exercise prompt.

This is George's first time at a computer in years. He said that the last time was in a computer literacy class he took at a different prison, all the way back in the '90s. Before that, decades of wild living had brought him no contact with the digital realm. As I took a seat beside him at the keyboard, ready to guide him along, I asked how much of the class he still remembered.

"I know how to do this." He jiggled the mouse back and forth. "That's about it."

Clearly, George and I were in for a journey. But of course, preparing for a parole date isn't easy for anyone.

At the moment, George still lives in one of the good-conduct wings here at Eastern Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center. Both of us came down as very young men. No stretch of language or imagination could qualify us as that now. I observed my twenty-fourth anniversary in the system this year. George's time inside amounts to nearly double that. Each of us have traveled a long, rough road, but at seventy-one, George is finally nearing the end of it. He's being released on parole in November.

With less than a year left to serve, George qualifies for services from the Reentry Center, the new facility within ERDCC's fences, where residents can come for career exploration classes, housing assistance, post-release benefits, and more. (I blogged about the Reentry Center here.) Imagine a modern career center—computers, job flyers, motivational slogans, and so on, then post a guard at the door—that's a fairly accurate picture. The state of Missouri opened this facility at ERDCC in May. A few weeks later, I became one of three prisoners to get a job there. That's how I met George.

He trundled in one Tuesday afternoon, wearing a white do-rag with the standard Missouri prisoner uniform of gray pants, a white T-shirt, and clunky, black 10-hole boots. He's a big guy, average height, but close to 300 pounds. It surprised me when he said how old he was. The man doesn't look a day over sixty.

My boss, the Employment Transition Supervisor, welcomed him and did a short interview to gauge George's needs. Probation and Parole approved his home plan, but how he's going to get by out there is another matter. More than anything, he wants a job. At his age, most Americans are retired and living off some combination of pensions, Social Security, or life savings.

"I wanna do bricklaying," he tells us. "Then, after a while, start my own concrete business—sidewalks, patios, porch steps—maybe do a little landscaping on the side."

He's someone I expect will work until he falls over dead, probably with a shovel in his hand.

My position at the Reentry Center encompasses many roles, from administrative assistant to guidance counselor. I'm also on hand to provide technical support. People sometimes have issues interacting with the web-based platform that examines their interests and skills, coaches them on interview techniques, then helps us create their resumes. I sit with every client for a little while at the outset of each exercise, to field any questions that come up.

When George asks about a dotted blue line under a phrase he's typed, I explain how grammar check works (and how it sometimes doesn't). When he misspells "experience," I show him the magic of right-clicking. When he inadvertently enlarges the browser viewport 300 percent, I point him to the zoom control. As eager as he is to progress, I'm hardly surprised by how quickly he catches on.

The early assignments encourage users to focus on personal strengths. A colorful illustration of a tree laden with different fruits prompts everyone to list their personal achievements. George thinks long and hard before answering. Another client needs help, so I walk away to let George contemplate his accomplishments for a bit. When I check on him again, I see that below an image of a shiny pear, he's typed, "Surviving prison."

"Wow," I say, impressed. "That's...."

Words fail me. I'm struck by this plainspoken truth. Not everyone in his position would be able to acknowledge the challenges that life in the system has posed. I've known too many people who, especially as the decades fell away, started accepting the banal horrors of prison life as "just how it is," as though the circumstances we struggle through are normal. Whether they did this out of denial, misplaced self-preservation, or fear is a personal matter. I just appreciate that George recognizes himself as a survivor and is neither cowed nor brainwashed by the trauma he's lived through.

I tell him so. He takes a deep breath and settles back in the chair. "You know, back at the old Walls"—what everybody today calls the now-decommissioned Missouri State Penitentiary—"they had a sign at the gate where you came in: 'Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.' Well, I never did. I never let 'em beat me down."

At three o'clock we gather our stuff and make to leave for the afternoon. As he tucks a folder full of notes under his arm, he voices concern for the future.

"You know, I been down thirty-six years now. It's a whole different world out there than the one I left. I ain't never used a cellphone, I don't know the internet..."

I cut him off. "We've got tablets, though. They run on Android, the same as half of the phones out there do. If you can operate a tablet, you can use a smartphone. As for the internet, didn't you know you were on it today?"

His eyebrows rise as he shoots me a doubtful look.

"The exercises you've been doing on there—those are all web pages. You can't go to other websites because of security settings, but when you use the computers here, you're actually online."

"No shit?"

"No shit."

Such a little thing, and yet he smiles, suddenly less anxious about rejoining the world. George is becoming a man with fresh hope—the one thing that everyone should leave prison with.

Resignation/Resuscitation

You wouldn't think that a prison job could keep a person busy enough to induce burnout, but that's exactly what happened in my leadership role at XSTREAM.

Exhaustion, anxiety, distracted thoughts, and occasional testiness over the past six or seven months tipped me off that I was feeling more stress than was healthy. The hours kept me away from my cell for a minimum of seven (as many as fourteen) hours a day, seven days a week, which you'd think would be nice, considering the environment. It wasn't. Stress gnawed at me, even on the good days, sometimes feeling as if I was being eaten from the inside.

The other members of my team relished those long days at their desks. They'd rather stay at work, typing actor names into the database, than be around their cellmates. I never shared the aversion. Either I value my free time too much or my cellmate of the past two years, Bob, is just more tolerable than most people here. Many were the nights that I left work "early" (i.e., before the building closed at 8:30 PM) because I was just plain beat. My colleagues usually stuck around—I guess because the poor bastards don't have lives of their own.

I gathered Team XSTREAM together last Friday to lay it all out. Not wanting to mince words, I concluded my little monologue: "I don't want to work here anymore." Everyone suggested that I simply take a month or two off, clear my head. That wouldn't work, though. The on-the-job issues I'd been struggling with would still be there, whether I left for one month or for six. There was no fixing this. Still, I thanked them for their kind support.

What made me nervous was approaching our boss, the Recreation Director, about my intention to quit. I didn't want to have to justify my decision and decline a bunch of offers to make changes to the workplace, my schedule, or the workload. I'd reviewed possibilities in my head all weekend, and none of them were quite good enough to compel me to stay. I was resolute.

When the boss came in on Monday morning, I asked when might be a good time for us to have a serious conversation. We sat down in his office a bit later and I explained how I'd been feeling, the conversation my coworkers and I had, their idea for a remedy, and all the reasons that I doubted it could work. To my utter amazement, he shook his head and said, "You're preaching to the choir. I wish I had the option you've got here. I've still got two years before I can retire. I'm burning the candle at both ends." He gave me his blessing to do whatever was best for me.

I thanked him, then made my ask: "Can I count on you for a recommendation, whatever I move on to?" I had planned to put in for a clerk position rumored to be available at ERDCC's Reentry Center, a newly opened facility at the prison, where people within one year of release can request help with job-hunting skills, work on their résumés, and even get vocational training. XSTREAM made a lot of signs, labels, and decorations adding to the building's slick, professional appearance, not to mention video-recorded their big open house event a couple of weeks ago. I hoped that our work would afford me a leg up in the application process.

Within an hour of my request, my boss called the Reentry Center and put in a good word on my behalf. They offered me the job without hesitation, no questions asked. I didn't even have to formally apply. (Of course, even after changing employers, I'll still host TV shows for XSTREAM. The team wouldn't let me get away from them entirely.)

I'm supposed to report to the Reentry Center sometime at the end of this week, to talk about the job and my options there. It sounds a little like I'll get to create my own position, with the possibility of even facilitating classes or programs myself. I love the idea of working face-to-face with people who want to use this time to make more of their lives! This feels in some ways like a major shift; in others, it feels like the most natural transition ever.

My last day at XSTREAM is a week and a half away. This probably won't surprise you, but I'm already sleeping better.

Unreasonable Ideas

Where do you want to go? Where do you want to be? Do you want to travel or grow roots? Do you live in the city or on some land? Describe your house. How many rooms? Do you have a garden? Do you have a shop? Is there a hoop above the garage? [...] Activate your imagination by adding unreasonable accomplishments. You'd be amazed at what is possible.

—from The Re-entry Guide: A Returning Citizen's Guide to Successfully Navigating through Re-entry, by Frank Patka and Ryan McCrone

I want to go to Berlin. At dawn, I want to buy freshly baked Semmeln at the neighborhood bakery, walking home amid the diaspora of ten or fifteen different countries. I want to enjoy my breakfast with coffee made from beans I just ground, while sitting at a high window to watch the city bloom into springtime wakefulness.

The apartment where I live is cool and aglow in pale orange from the rising sun. The cat purrs loudly, affectionately circling my ankle. Below this floor or perhaps next door, someone is singing, a tenor voice, tuneful and even. I can't make out the language of its lyrics, but its sound is lovely.

After eating, I sit in meditation. Then, with a fresh, clear mind, I begin the morning's writing. It's a novel I'm working on, my second. Writing fiction remains a challenging diversion from the essays, memoir pieces, and poetry that held my focus during the decades I spent in prison. My literary agent in America isn't confident in the book's marketability, which only makes me more thankful for her trust in my ability to create meaningful work.

After a few hours, I have an interview with an American podcaster, to talk snout overcoming bitterness and developing resilience. Even though it's the usual subject matter, interviews always make for interesting breaks from my routine, and I enjoy them even when they turn a little difficult.

Conversations like these always compel recollections of my early days in prison, the contrast between the scared, confused young man that I was and the self-assured person I became. For about the first half of my life, I didn't know what actually benefitted me. I wasted a lot of years, mindlessly chasing a good time. Because now they're more about contribution than about consumption, my pursuits today have meaning: video production for a nonprofit, teaching coping skills to people in need, speaking to educate and inspire, volunteering my time.

Later in the evening, I meet some friends for dinner. I wonder when, exactly, silverware stopped feeling strange in my hand. I eat deliberately, savoring each bite with care and close attention. Table talk consists of the heady and the ridiculous, from philosophical concepts to pop culture. We make tentative plans to take a trip to Poland in the summer. Then we go our separate ways and I head home on the train, watching the illuminated city pass my window. As the carriage gently rocks down the tracks, I think back to all those nights when I searched—usually fruitlessly—for a glimpse of the moon from my prison cell. I peer up at the sky over Berlin and think, Yeah, it's a good life.

This is all speculative, of course. Ask me again tomorrow and I might just as well say Vancouver or Amsterdam instead of Berlin. The locations are mere details. But the substance, you might say the heart, of the life that I want won't change.