I awake after about 6 hours of uncommonly restful slumber. It is about 5:11 a.m. and my daughters’ smile still floats on the backs of my eyelids. All three kids were in my dreams again tonight. I imagine they are on most nights. I look at their pictures every night and wish them goodnight every night. My world is very small right now and they are a huge part of it.

Every Thursday and Friday, and every other Saturday and Sunday, I work in the law library from 7:30 a.m. until about 8:30 p.m. I try to help other inmates find answers to their questions or ask the right questions of their attorneys. In between, I read through my transcripts and relive the disgusting tragedy of Kenosha called justice. It is all very sickening. I feel absolutely no closer to going home than I did two years ago when convicted. The things I have identified aren’t yet in any post-conviction motion and I don’t understand why. My brother said I am not appreciative and that I don’t have a grasp of reality. He only makes my time harder. I can locate and explain my arguments and have catalogued legal theory to back up my arguments with authority. I am not here entertaining curiosity or selling tickets. I am mapping out my way home. A realistic and cognizable plan for all the mess they made is no simple task.

Bloodshot eyes and heavy dreams about being at my kids’ school and seeing them sitting in class. An older and larger kid was recruiting people to help him lift a boy in a wheelchair, while the boy remained in his chair, up high enough for the boy to touch the wall above the lockers. Maybe because he normally could not and encouraged, enabled and celebrated the boy in the wheelchair. I grabbed half and suffered the scolding of the principal who prioritized safety or “the rules.” I guess humanity is greater than safety for some of us and my greater sense of goodness compelled me to act. Just a dream, probably reflecting my heart’s protests against institutionalism.

A few people have written to me or made comments to me on the phone to request I start or restart writing journal entries. I oppose the notion that anyone is forced to pay to read who I write. I do not control the website.

Envelopes to send everyone a letter every month is not practical, especially when the prison seems to “lose” about a third of my mail.

Today, I was taken to La Crosse to get trigger point injections for my back. It feels like someone lifted their elbow off my back and I actually pass out in the van on the way back to the prison. Then, an hour in the law library, and back to sleep.

About a week ago, one of the guys that serves food saw advertisements for a documentary airing tonight on the CW network. Crime Nation. I watched. This place was eerily quiet. The occasional shouted commentary let me know the rest of these guys were watching too. The blurred faces of the familiar pictures of my kids erupted tears. There was a lot that I had never heard, seen, or considered and I am left in more shock and confusion. I can’t comment on it all right now.

After I was arrested over four and a half years ago I had asked my brothers to maintain my rental units while I resolved this mess. They didn’t care enough to bother. Now that everything is beyond my ability to recover, my younger brother sells tickets to the show while my older brother loots my corpse. It appears to me that there has been no sincere effort to bring me home, or help me, beyond the minimal accommodations provided by the exploitable group members. Now, recently there have been other issues at the website requiring a subscription, but I didn’t ask for that. My money was spent on defense counsel that has gone deficient in their performance. The group’s donations have gone counsel also deficient in her performance. Most of my family appears to have completely disregarded me unless it offered them some attention or profit. No matter how many times I have asked for specific help or voiced my prerogative, it falls on deaf or incompetent ears. Even worse is when people try to express their shock and sadness as though they could possibly weigh the importance of anything compared to myself. I routinely suffered two to five nervous, shaking, loss-of-bodily-function breakdowns for over a year and a half. I see how not-serious it is, what has happened to me, in other people’s perspectives. At best, it is just entertainment, including the people who supposedly cared the most.
“Are you not entertained.”

Happy New Year.

Merry Christmas.

Nines.

​Friday the 13th! A guard tosses my cell and takes the bedsheet I had exchanged for the blanket that made my skin break out in a rash. It wasn’t an issue for probably more than a year but now that it is wicked cold they start messing with inmates’ bedding. The sergeant, Nice, claims there are no notes in the system to verify it and tries to claim I raised my voice at him even though I did not. He gave up the accusation when he saw other people in the hallway that weren’t the regular unit officers were looking confused at his false claim. The privilege to pretend something is true and the power to inflict punishment meets objective witnesses and their confused expressions actually defused the situation before he got carried away abusing his authority. The guard that originally swapped the wretched blanket for the sheet was kind enough to recognize that I was staying fully clothed day and night and laying directly on the plastic bunk mattress. She was a good one.

I hear my brother is trying to peddle excuses and lies.
Because I asked my attorney to finish the post-conviction draft and send it to me months ago, instead of scheduling phone calls across the two weeks it was supposed to take. Then somehow I was being exaggerated in the claim that I canceled all calls with my attorney. Not true. I was being told that the post-conviction motion was 99% done. It was not. Six weeks ago I requested a simple list of issues to be argued in the post-conviction motion and my attorney could not produce them and did not send them. So, I wrote my own list and read them to her on the next phone call. After that it hit me. I wrote the list of issues without any transcripts or line summaries. I didn’t even get to watch or rewatch the trial to critically review the court proceedings. A year and a half after conviction, my attorney still could not explain to me what we would present to the court to dispute what was done to me. My brother is busy telling the group members I act irrationally or emotionally, when in fact I am now certain I am only in here because of the neglect of the people who claim to have my interests in mind but don’t bother with the simplest tasks on my behalf. It took me less than thirty minutes to list 43 issues but my attorney produced less than ten in more than a year. My brother refused to just Google a simple question about a cell phone and instead just yelled at me for twelve minutes about not being grateful for all that everyone has done, yet I don’t really know what people have or have not done. I have never seen the website, or any YouTube shows, or anything. Someone else was willing to Google my question and provided me an answer in under five seconds. It just doesn’t make sense that the help I need the most is the least priority for anyone—my attorney or my family. Instead, they feed the group with excuses and disparaging comments about me. And now making bogus claims that information about what happened on record in court proceedings cannot be mentioned or it may jeopardize the post-conviction motion? That is a complete lie. And then when group members defend me, my brother claims my failing memory, although it is imperfect, has repeatedly pointed out what a presumptive ass he proves to be. I will spare you the examples for now. You know he was one of the first people I added to the visitors list after I was sent to prison. He came to visit me a few times but didn’t solve his curiosity or have answers to questions about the case. He has actually never even bothered with setting up a video visit even once. Never bothered to check how I am. Only shopped me for information he could use to perpetuate his opportunity to be some center of attention. Actions or inaction, always speak louder than words. Those of you who have made time and supported me for at least twenty minutes in the last six months have probably made more effort than him. I think that speaks volumes. Time to remove him from my visitors list.

My grandparents and great-grandparents lived in separate houses on the same farm. I dreamt I was at my grandparents' house and my great-grandfather pulled a car into the driveway. He left a gallon of water out near the car and I got impatient waiting for him to come back so I could ask him for a drink. So I took the gallon up the hill and poured the majority of it into a small bucket from which I intended to drink. When he returned I explained I was thirsty, to which he made no argument in my apportioning myself some water, and we then walked over to my great-grandparents’ house. At their house I met other family members and talked to my grandfather about renovating their house because they had been… have been… looking after my kids. Comparing the lower floor to the upper floor to try to understand the structure by which potential modifications could be made, I heard my boys talking in their room and could feel my daughters' presence behind a separate closed door, presumably her own room.

Clock goes to the bathroom on the wall just after two in the morning. I guess it has been a while since I bothered to write about a dream. Here I am, about four and a half years away and still dreaming and crying over missing my kids. I think the best I can tell, that writing about it, or anything else, doesn’t seem to help. I suppose for me writing about things forces me to stay or revisit experiences or emotions that ail without remedy. Entangled in the chains between my head and my heart, I fail to improve and am worse from the start.