Prison: My 8,344th Day

Samuel Colby - Book Report

by Michael Santos.

Q/A Summary

1. Opening: 2025 Version - There are no questions for this section, it is an introduction to the contents in the book about to be read.

2. Wake up: 1. Describe the Adjustment strategy that you're using. - I recently changed my schedule due to concerns over my style of journaling my daily reports, so instead of getting up at 2:00AM, I get up around 6:00 - 6:30. The very first thing I try to do to start my day is meditate in God's word through Proverbs, seeking wisdom to set the mood and thought processes I will have for the day, and I believe seeking first the Kingdom of God a priority to success. If I want to leave prison, I want to enter into God's promised land like Joshua and the Israelites did, using Joshua 1:8 as my go to. Once I finish the meditation, I first dress, then pick up the things lying around from the previous day, take out trash, put away floor coverings or anything else unacceptable in RDAP, clean off the desk, and wipe it off. As part of RDAP expectations, I have to bring out my plastic chair, labeled with my cell and rack, and set it where I'm assigned to sit, but before doing this, I try to comb my hair, fix my clothes tucking in my shirt, make a coffee, and lock up my locker with a padlock. I make my coffee usually with 1-2 scoops Folgers instant coffee, 3 scoops of a mixture of French Vanilla Cappuccino and creamer, 2 sweeteners and sometimes a drop of honey. My locker gets organized usually when I put stuff away, having six compartments; Top Left: all books, folders, paperwork, stationary, and my Tupperware. Left Middle: T-shirts, towels and rags, underwear, extra net bags, apron, salt less crackers, extra honeys, my makeshift sweater pillow, change of clothes, and soap I use for laundry. Bottom Left: Khakis, socks, Sodas, Ramen, fish, pepperoni, provolone, spicy rice. Top Right: Medicines, vitamins, toiletry, Shave bag, and any medical equipment. Right Middle: Open commissary items including coffee, creamer mix, crackers, proteins bars, oatmeal bars, breakfast bars, oatmeal, granola, PB&J, Box of Tea, Hot and sweet sauce, olive oil, pop-tarts or honey buns, and doughnuts on occasion. Right Bottom: Anything still boxed or bagged as back-up/new , trail mix, and everything on above two shelves listed. If I need anything, I find a place to hide it out of sight in the room so it isn't on radar for RDAP inspection. Everything in it's place, I go sometimes to main line for breakfast, and if not, I go directly to the meeting and sit in my chair. I'm usually in it by 7:25AM, when we are supposed to be. This is a Monday through Friday schedule. Saturday and Sunday I choose to sleep in, sometimes to do nothing but recharge my interests and imagination. I always meditate everyday in Proverbs in the AM and in Psalms in the PM, before bed. I try to quit coffee one day if not both on the weekend, and I take my medicine daily. This is my daily strategy. 2. In what ways does your routine prepare you for success? - I believe my meditation helps me to be openminded while at the same time prepared and disciplined in my thinking. Coffee is always a help, to stay awake or pay attention to something. The room cleaning and organizing helps me to set the mood for my sanctuary and for my day. Programming helps to get me goal oriented, eager to learn and grow, and helps me plan out my future, what's immediate and what's distant. These are all avenues to success in some way in life. 3. How would journaling influence your adjustment in prison? - I know the journaling I have been doing has opened up myself to feel accomplished through the hard days, knowing I get something done everyday regardless of where I am. I see it as progress, however slow it may seem, and it helps me to connect to my surroundings safely. Journaling helps with my writing skills and encourages me and my crazy plans to someday be an author of something good. Due to recent concerns with where I am currently held, I have been trying to implement a new guideline to my writing unlike anything I read or have known most of my life as it seems offensive to some and misunderstood by others, and could lead me to complications. I am determined, however, to discover a compromise that still works successfully for the purposes of writing in the first place, so I try to rediscover my account in a way that is completely safe and an acceptable way to those where I reside.

3. Getting Started:

1. In what ways does the time you wake in the morning relate to your preparation for success? - The time I use in the morning is first spent on aligning myself with the will and kingdom of God, to be ready mentally to meet the challenges a day may bring and to be prepared to seek my successful place in the promised land after prison. It keeps me goal oriented as a focus point to start my thinking, consideration and judgement from that I am aware enough, prepared enough for my day and hopeful to accomplish great things. 2. In what ways are you showing the people you care about that you're worthy of their support? - I send all of the manuscripts for Prison Professors to my older brother, Marshall, for him to read and post up for me on the site, and this includes all of the available platforms of journaling, book reports, planning and my history biographies. I ask for his feedback on occasion and tell him I do appreciate any he is willing to give me on a regular basis, and I respect his advice as the older and wiser, and in many ways much more successful in his faith than I am in mine. I also try to make sure to let him know whenever I finish a few works and send them out that I appreciate his effort to help me post and seek to be successful, his advice for my life, sharing of faith and Godly news, the love he has shown me in forgiveness and grace for my position. He has truly helped to shape my character, and I wouldn't be the man I am today if I didn't have him in my life at this point. His care helped me find value again, realizing I have a need for Godliness, living to a better, higher standard than I had not so long ago. I've found a resolve to be a better person for the rest of my days as I am concerned now, and I believe it to be something that will last since no one in my family has connected with me on a God level like he has with me. I have attempted to convey all of this to him in one way or another, and I do believe he is aware of my appreciation. I know I am not worthy of his support, and for this reason I try all the more to show him I am more than grateful and accepting of the love he has given. Right now, he is all I have willing to support me. 3. In what ways are you creating tools, tactics, and resources to help you transition into society successfully? - I'm working to add tools in writing and communication that I feel I never really went anywhere with in my life, and my hope is to be a writer, possibly having some novels, or working as an editor, or even writing for a company for a means of income. I hope to be able to use my musical talents for more than singing what someone else wrote, in hopes to come up with my own songs at some point when I have more freedom to work on it, as I have written songs in the past that I lost when I relapsed into addiction. My plans are to tackle the hurdles in my life with researching answers, to show on Prison Professors some of the overall work I have done, all since joining the site getting posted. I have been exposed to psychology for some time and think I grasp it pretty well, and I have enough schooling where I could come to a degree with little schooling required I would surmise. I hope to look into this possibility after my release as I have no idea how I could sustain that in my current transition. All of these ideas will make it onto an updated plan on Prison Professors, the work as I accomplish my goals.

4. Making Plans: 1. What role models inspire the adjustment you're making to prepare for success upon release? - I have actually heard of Dave's Killer Bread, sometime back in my history in recovery it was brought up and told us as a means of encouragement, how he hires all convicts and pays them modestly, giving them a chance to live a law abiding life. Over the years, I met people in the rooms of Recovery before I came to prison who managed to make it, albeit they may have fallen a number of times like me. I also have managed to find a way to make it before somehow, although it wasn't without trouble. My role models are currently, to start with, Jesus Christ, a number of Bible figures like Peter, Paul and others, Paul Bunyan and his books from being confined, Michael Santos and the Prison Professors program, Dave from the bread company, a former sponsor in AA, many struggling in Recovery to make it, and I'm sure there are some I can't think of just now. I really believe that struggle strengthens if it doesn't conquer, and that all of this is going to make a difference. My recent struggles with writing my brother does in a way show there is still resistance to a prisoner succeeding in writing, but I will somehow. I'm going to keep doing right, thinking right, and being publicly accountable for it on Prison Professors as a transparent record of all that comes of my efforts. 2. In what ways are you preparing tools, tactics, and resources that will help you overcome the obstacles that most people face after they get out of jail or prison? - I'm taking the opportunities as I can to add to past experience, seeking to show myself transparent and accountable through the Prison Professors public profiling, giving the part of my story that my record with the penal system does not show. I'm hoping for supportive interests in my efforts and help directing me, with my ability to provide, or a way to add the desires I have to accomplish a degree in psychology and become a counselor to help someone who struggled like I did get some shortcuts to getting serenity and the answers to a life they need to live. I believe my book reports will show the work I have done on my own to accomplish myself with knowledge, I have also asked my DTS in here to provide me with a book specific to my needs as he sees fit that I might get the chance to study before my release, having shared with him my specific trauma from childhood and seeing the books all over his office. I plan to continue to seek both while I am in and after I release to continually grow. I have saved some money although with money it is never enough. I face those who would try to hold me back, give my reputation a black mark, or oppose me in any way and plan to continue on parole. 3. Describe how the decisions you're making today will lead to more opportunities in your future. - What I do today always leads to more. My journaling helped me to learn my skill at writing a narrative, to be descriptive in multiple approaches while being careful at the same time. My book studies lead to better understanding, better tactics, and sometimes new talents to attempt, and the reports show a history of the learning outside of the schooling I already do and possess. I remember seeing a school that will accept work experience as well towards a degree, and I am sure I can find one that can put my mix of schooling and study together to say something of achievement and maybe even give me more goals to seek in that department. Most of all, I have decided how I want to live, and that more abundantly.

5. Role Models: 1. What role models give guidance for the journey you're on now? - I hold to most of the same in my Christian belief in the Bible. My brother has always held some part in guiding me and it has only grown to a larger scale with our recent involvement. I admire his amazing survival through his faith in God the most cherish able. I now consider Michael Santos, his dedication and desire to help inmates and the amazing story I've read of his incarceration. I think of my big brother in the chapel, Richard Vallee, who I serve with here and his lifelong sentence coupled with his resolve to be a humble servant to God. He had decades fighting against God's call, and since his acceptance, he has also had decades serving and gaining heavenly knowledge, and forming a precious heart unto God. I have appreciated his mentoring me in the chapel as long as he's been willing to, even when they attempted to throw me out over the investigation of my journaling. The Chaplain at Berlin FCI also comes to mind, his abundance of knowledge to share with the few prisoners that came to chapel for the protestant meeting, and how he taught me things I never knew, like how Jonah visited the sinful nation whose god idol was the picture of a fish man, I forget the name now, but how divinely God worked by having the great fish spit him up for them to see.