I just took a shower.  I feel clean and good about myself.  Afterward, I socialized with a few other inmates in my cell block.

It is New Year’s Day, and I realized I have just taken the first few steps I will take in the year 2003.  In these steps, I have decided that I am done with my past, and I am focused on my future whatever my new future will bring.  I am comfortably prepared to tackle my future, and I am excited about today, and my tomorrow to come.

CLICK HERE TO READ MY STORY OF HOW THIS NIGHTMARE ADVENTURE BEGAN:

While talking to my cell mates, I realized I have been around this jail long enough to predict what happens on a daily basis, and I predicted that we will be seeing some New Years Eve Drunk Drivers make their way into the general population of this jail today.

I was correct.  I just met our new cellmate, and he is in here for getting into a bar fight last night at 4 AM.  In fact, he gave us the report that the booking area of jail was packed full of various drunken offenders last night.  Charges of DWI, Fighting, Damage to Property, Domestic Disputes; and Many, Many, Many Probation holds,  were par for the course last night amongst people who frequent jail it looks like.

The new guy in our cell block said that the booking area was so full last night, people were even sleeping on the cell floor.

I guess when jail and prison becomes your part-time residence (if not permanent home), you begin to wonder about what goes on inside of it, like I am doing now.  What type of people are in here?  What type of crimes are common?  How do so many people get in here?  This is what I wonder about all the time now.  It’s funny, because I’ve never spent a moment thinking about this before I became an inmate myself.   I live here now.  This is becoming my home, and I am interested in the people entering my world.

Even the staff of the jail, the jailers, are beginning to play a special role in how I view life, and how I see life on a daily basis.  I have been here for four straight months now, and I am realizing I am not going home anytime soon.  I don’t ever talk personally with the guards, but they are becoming part of my life now.

It’s funny, but I don’t feel like they ever judge me, or consider me a criminal.  They see me as a person — a human being- that made some bad choices, and is now living out the consequences in real time of those bad decisions.

Certainly, not all guards, in all jails or prisons, are this way.  There are a couple of real jerks in here.  But most of the staff are simple people who are just doing their job description, and making sure I am alive is part of their job description.

I would not want to be a jailer.  It would be like living in jail myself for most of my free life.  Ick!!!!  I’ve had enough of this for an entire lifetime and I am only four months in!

This jail has slowly, subconsciously, been evolving from a concrete building into my home where I am having to explore my deepest self to find a new definition of purpose, meaning, and existence.

It is New Year’s Day today.  I wonder what is going to happen to me in the next year ahead.  Here we go… On to 2003.

CLICK HERE TO READ WHERE I AM TODAY: