Saturday, April 10, 2021

Today marks my one-year countdown to freedom!

After 19 years, the world I left will be profoundly different. Sitting on my cell bunk, I imagine what freedom will look like and feel like in 365 days. I imagine its new flavor and texture, how it will taste to my exiled soul.

Occasionally, I piece together varied glimpses of freedom from TV, from conversations with some of you, and from faded memories of life predating April 2003, memories which have bound themselves to peripheral fragments of lucid dreams, pressed into a peppermint-flavored reality that is sweet yet bitterly unreliable.

In 365 days, I’ll examine freedom through a different lens (past colliding with modern), beholding it from an eagle’s vantage point. I’m improved by the ticks of time, ever evolved by prison’s sub-worldly experiences and its melting-pot populace.

Indeed, my carceral experiences have rendered me all the wiser and discerning. For what once tripped me up, I spot from a distance. What I once considered beauty is now hideous. What I once considered pleasurable (or even tolerable) is now detestable. Those I once considered companions, well, they’ve shown themselves as otherwise. But some, on the other hand, have proven themselves true.

* * * Preparing to Make My Million Dollar Dreams a Reality * * *

I just finished reading Invent It, Sell It, Bank It! by Shark Tank’s warm-blooded shark Lori Greiner, who has a whopping 120 invention patents to her credit. She’s a powerhouse inventor/businesswoman. Lori’s empirical wisdom taught me how to further develop my three best inventions and make them into a million dollar reality.

In preparing to write my own patents (and have an attorney later polish them up), I have five other invention books to read:

• The Independent Inventor’s Handbook
• The Inventor’s Complete Handbook: How to Develop, Patent, and Commercialize Your Ideas
• Navigating the Patent System
• Fun With Patents
• Patent Pending in 24 Hours

But b e f o r e reading the books listed above, I have one book in particular to read: Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, who based his book on the financial principles of Andrew Carnegie, a canny, lovable, old Scotsman who supposedly developed a “magic formula” that has made fortunes for more than 500 exceedingly wealthy people, whom Hill claims he “carefully analyzed over a long period of time.”

Pairing well with Hill’s book, my Small Business Entrepreneurship classes through Edmonds College resumed last Wednesday. That said, I have two homework assignments to complete before Monday – preliminary preparations for achieving my million dollar dreams.

Most important, though, I look forward to spending quality time with family and friends who have walked with me (closely and from afar) on my 19-year journey to freedom.

See y’all in 365 days!