It is up to me

What I am doing in my life.

Time fly's when you stay busy, so I am doing several things to stay occupied and productive.I love to produce and learn new things and grow as a person, often times in this environment of prison especially, but in life also people get complacent and therefore don't move forward. and we are constantly in motion so if your not moving forward then your moving backwards. I am challenging myself to be successful despite my life in prison sentence that I currently have I won't use that as a crutch to be complacent and let my life rot away. I have faith that my life has purpose and meaning as do each and every life. and I am determined to live up to that and be successful in fulfilling God's plan for me. 

This is what a typical day looks like for me, 

I wake up around 6:45 am and then get ready for the day and start out doing Spanish studies until breakfast. 

After breakfast I go to work and get done around lunchtime, after lunch I practice piano I have a keyboard in my cell and am learning music, it is very fascinating. when I learned to play guitar a little bit it wasn't formally by any means just how to play some chords and I just went from there learning timing and whatnot but on the keyboard I'm learning everything and there is definitely a lot to it. I am attending a music class which I attend once a week also. 

After that I draw I love to draw and paint I have a passion for creating something from nothing. I love art in all forms. it is such creative expression and a way to release your emotions in a healthy way and share yourself as a piece of me goes into every work of art in which I produce. 

Also, each day whenever my gym time is I go and lift weights I enjoy exercising, and also eating good. so whenever my gym is I squeeze that into my schedule. 

I also talk with my wife several times a day which is the highlight of my normal days. 

Dinner is between 5-530, after that have a couple more calls with wifey, then I go and do home work and study, 

Also, I am enrolled in college, and am working on a bachelor's degree in Theology and I enjoy more and more the study of God. 

On Monday evenings I go to the law library, and do research on my case working towards a relief from this erroneous conviction, and throughout the week I pull my legal work out and read and study. 

On Thursday new nights I assist in teaching a painting class it is satisfying to be able to share my knowledge with the next person so they may share my passion for arts and enjoy the struggle and process of learning.

I don't watch much TV, I watch a few shows here an there. I have been watching tyrant recently, although I am getting somewhat bored with it. I watch some of the political soap opera and see how it unfolds with each new piece of dirt that comes out on both candidates that are running for president it is unreal that these are the people that we put up to be president. 

Anyways this is an overview of what my days look like, thought I would share with you.

Love

To me the #1 rehabilitating factor is love and support.

For me, what made me realize there was more to life and seeing the error in my ways and to care about something again and take responsibility, it was love.

Love changed me. Plain and simple. I am the man I am today through love and heartache and ultimately to find my soul mate. As corny as that may sound and may be it is the plain and simple truth. That is not to say that at one point I thought "well if this doesn't work out, I will just revert back to my old ways", no, I had come far enough to realize that I wanted to be a better person regardless , asking myself  "Why should I do that? "Just at that moment of clarity I was blessed to meet the love of my life. And wow how my life changed even more.

To be able to connect with somebody on a whole next level. And to understand as well as be understood. The feeling that this brings is unlike anything I have ever experienced. I cannot even begin to describe how much more life makes sense, my whole life I've never known what I wanted or what I wanted to do, but now everything is so clear and my life together with my fiance makes perfect sense. Even if at the moment were this journey will end up is not clear. I am confident having a sense of security within about everything working out. It almost seems strange that a man in my position having such an optimistic outlook, I feel that life has given me a chance to make something out of nothing, and turn a life that was going nowhere, into a life that could change lives someday.

What we have a lot of people wouldn't understand. And I want to go further into explaining that so maybe people could understand this what has been called a "taboo". I have written a book, it is a book of poetry but it also tells a story and within the story is a journey through love, loss, heartache, prison, how I've changed and who I've become. I am still in the process of doing illustrations. All of the book is illustrated. So I'm excited to get that done.

Thank you for listing again please bear with me, I am new to this, but I enjoy expressing myself and sharing with whomever has an open mind enough to read it.

Please check out http://www.tomtaylorsfineartplace.com/ if you would like to preview some of my work or learn more about me, if you are interested in art work check me out. I love to do portraits I am good with black and grey that is my specialty. I have awesome deals and quality work they make wonderful gifts, great for a keepsake of your kids, to capture a special memory, a loved one, family portrait, valentines, anniversary, wedding, any occasion is going to be something I would love to capture and bring life for you.

Take care until next time

Tom Taylor

Lock down

Hey how is it going, well for me, I have been on lock down for a week now. There was an incident that involved an inmate brutally attacking a cop, which I think it is not right, I guess that guy could not handle whatever had happened I am not sure what led to it going down.

Let me just say that as petty as things have been nit picking on every little thing pushing buttons, it doesn't entirely shock me that something like this would eventually happen however, I don't understand why this guy had a beef with this particular cop. At least from my perspective, that guy was not a guy who did treat people unfairly, he had always been fair with me and had respect which is all I ask for.  I don't know, maybe he treated others differently but for me I didn't see anything that would cause somebody to do this. It was crazy.

So where I was?  well let me tell you that this the cop was my boss of my previous job and last week was my last week. He had just had me sign my pay stub 5 minutes before this and I was just getting up not to long before this and heading over to go use the phone, I had just got on the phone was talking to my woman, when I heard a loud noise and commotion and saw what had happened, at that moment I hung up the phone and moved away from the area, as the cops were coming in and telling everybody to cell in. After that they took the guy out on a stretcher as he had been hit with a steel stool I believe that came from the desk in the cell. I was in disbelief really. It was crazy, the had a police officer come in crime scene tape up around the day-room, they were taking video of all the blood and everything. I thought that the guy could have died and I prayed for him to be ok, What I have hear that he is ok but it was serious, I think he is still in the hospital and we are still on lock down.

There has just got to be better ways of dealing with issues. Now that this happened I am sure that there will be changes. It has been my experience that whenever something major occurs that there are a series of changes, new rules, and some stuff taken away. It is never good. The thing that I don't get is that it doesn't have an effect on the guy who did this, because he won't be back here never again and its just the rest of us will be punished for it. Well next time I'll tell you what it has been like this last week of lock down. Until next time.

Hey be sure to look into Tom Taylor's Fine Art place and check out my work. I want to do work for you. My woman is working with some graphic designing and putting my art on to T-Shirts. Also I am thinking of doing Tattoo designs for sleeves and stuff or some prison art stuff. What do you think of those ideas? Do you have any ideas of what you would be interested in? Let me know.

Take care and please send out a prayer for that man who was injured

Tom Taylor

Ya jive ass turkey

Let me tell you a funny story I was thinking of that happened awhile back. It was one of the funniest things I've seen since being in prison.

Ok, So this guy "John" gets out of the hole after being told on by a guy "Carl" that is in the unit, and in here they decided to put them back together in the same unit. Go figure right, anyways "Carl" was on the top tier, and "John" starts to go up the stairs to confront "Carl", well when "Carl" sees "John" coming for him, he takes off moving fast down the teir and then "John" starts chasing him and yelling, "get back here, ya jive ass turkey" I have never actually heard somebody use that phrase in a real situation but it was funny, so he chased the guy back down to the day room and then "Carl"ran up into the podium where the cop is and tried to hide behind the cop, well "John" chased him up in there, and the cop apparently didn't want anything to do with it so he ran up out there and at that moment "John" started to attack "Carl", well  "Carl" ended up beating up "John" and  that is why he was the one who end up being sprayed with mase by the cop, considering that he was the one who was trying to ran away in order to avoid a confrontation.

I've got to tell you it was surreal watching this all unfold. Like is this really happening right now. I had a front row seat, I was sitting at a table nearby drawing. And it was probably the funniest thing I've seen. Nobody was really hurt. I mean I've seen a lot of things, but I'd thought I'd seen it all, but this could of been on a blooper movie of prison confrontations.

Not that I condone that behavior. I do my best to operate in a way to stay away from confrontation. I am different than I used to be before, I used to look for confrontation without caring about the consequences. Now with a more mature outlook I realize the error in my ways and  care about myself, and my family and loved ones. I guess what I am getting at is even in a world filled with negativity, hate, and violence, there is a way to navigate and operate above that. And to look to surround myself with people who are like minded, with a similar mindset. Focused on building us up, to better ourselves, which it is not so easy.

One last thing feel free to ask questions, I am thinking about getting some content from other people I know to post, would you like to read that? Thank you for listening, thank you for your time.

Tom Taylor