January 16, 2015
I've been keeping myself extremely busy every single day. Every minute that I keep myself structured and occupy my time with productive goal oriented tasks, my life feels easier, I feel more comfortable with myself when I'm utilizing my day efficiently. It's so strange and wierd to me because in the past, before I came to prison and got sober I would think about all the things I was puting off in life and needed to accomplish and it would stress me out to the max just thinking about how much I needed to do. Now I have so many more things to accomplish in a single day, but just as soon as I get up and start chipping away at my goals, I feel a calming sense of peace, something deep inside, assuring me that everything is going to be alright. I get up just before my alarm clock goes off at 5:15a.m., wash up and make myself a cup of coffee, catch fifteen minutes of the news before they unlock our cells for breakfast. As soon as I get back from breakfast I workout for 2 to 3 hours, or untill about 9:30, hop in the shower, go back to my cell to read my daily spiritual books and study horticulture until 11:45 when I go to early lunch and directly to class. I get out of class at 3:00p.m., I go straight back to my unit cell and practice my guitar for an hour. After that I do a number of different things until dinner, such as writing my blog, reading some of my magazine subscriptions, complete any homework I might have from class, or work on an art project. After dinner sometimes I have meetings with the other Jaycees members or a class like the business class that my good friend Kurt facilitates, or even a guitar lesson. If nothing else, I continue doing what I was before dinner until around 8:00 at which point I relax and watch television until I go to sleep around 9 or 10p.m. and do it all over again the next day. Not only does keeping my day busy like this feel better for me, it also makes the time seem like it's flying by. After living this way, I just can't picture myself going back to that stagnent, unmotivated, unproductive, deteriorating way of life I once lived before coming to prison. I just can't wait to get out into the world and use these tools and skills that I've honed over the last few years....
Steven Dybvad
