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.