FROM THE FIELD
Dispatches from someone who learned the hard way.
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October 23, 2026
Getting a Job With a Felony: What 1,500 Applications Taught Me
Read More →I applied for more than 1,500 jobs and got zero interviews. Not “a few callbacks.” Zero. And here is the part that matters most if you are trying to work out how to get a job with a felony: almost none of those employers ever found out I was a felon. They never got that […]
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October 23, 2026
How to Rebuild Your Life After Federal Prison: A Real Timeline
Read More →Most of what you’ll find about rebuilding life after federal prison is written by people who have never done a day. It’s generic, it’s hopeful in a way that costs the writer nothing, and it skips the part you actually need. I’m going to give you the timeline as it happened to me. Not the […]
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October 20, 2026
Half a Paper Towel
Read More →There was a stretch where we could not cover the most basic of bills. I know “extremely tight” means something different to everybody. So let me tell you exactly what it meant in my house. It meant I started thinking about how expensive paper towels were. I would pull them one at a time. Then […]
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October 13, 2026
The Prison of Sacrifice
Read More →Some of the people reading this have been to prison. Actual prison. Where time — the most valuable and irreplaceable thing in the world — is taken from you. Those folks, more than anybody, understand what time is worth. They have missed birthdays. Christmases. The moments that don’t come back. The pain of missing out […]
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October 6, 2026
Robert Downey Jr.’s Comeback Story: From a Jail Cell to the Biggest Star Alive
Read More →Imagine you’re 27 years old. You’ve just received an Academy Award nomination. Directors talk about you like you’re a once-in-a-generation find! Nobody doubted the amount of raw talent and ability that you have. The talent was never in question. Hollywood was abuzz with your name — but they started to question everything else. This is […]
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September 30, 2026
Martha Stewart’s Comeback Story: From Federal Prison to Bigger Than Ever
Read More →The fall — and then the dramatic rise — of one of the most elegant and poised women in history: how Martha Stewart’s $45,000 stock trade nearly destroyed her, and how she came back even stronger. What I can say is Martha Stewart was as close to perfection as possible. Her hair was always perfect, […]
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September 23, 2026
I Tried to Want Less
Read More →So you screwed it all up. Somehow, some way, you made a decision — or a series of decisions — that ended in disaster. You ruined it. You burned it all down. And now you’re standing in a position where you think it’s over. I’ve met a lot of people who have gone through some […]
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September 14, 2026
The Stack of Receipts
Read More →One of the biggest lies we tell ourselves about redemption isn’t exactly a lie. It’s a falsehood we repeat to ourselves enough times that we start to believe it must be true. That it happens quickly. It doesn’t. Redemption takes time. This is true for all three — success, redemption, transformation. We as human beings […]
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September 8, 2026
I’m Not Nice. I’m Kind.
Read More →The emotional transformation has been slow and painful. There is a shedding process that happens, and while I would love to make this story short — like an Instagram post where I have some epiphany — the reality is that habits, especially emotional ones, take time to marinate in your belly before they slowly change […]
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September 1, 2026
The Notebook
Read More →One of the actions that has made the largest impact on my life is my old-school notebook. I learned this trick in my twenties from a mentor — shout out Nickodemus. Every day I would get a lined notebook and write down what needed to be done, large and small. Then I would stack rank […]