What happened after my Judge threatened to send me back to prison? #probationofficer #whitecollarcrime #prison #sisyphusthemyth #adversitybuildscharacter #lifeafterprison

I opened up the mailbox to see a tax refund from the IRS for more than $32,000. I was not expecting this check and when I saw it, I thought, "Damn, no, I cannot believe this money is here. I wish this was two years later." From there, I immediately notified my probation officer, Isaiah Murrow, to let him know about the money because per terms of my probation, I'm required to let him know about any tax refunds because I had court-ordered restitution. I'm not caught. I've reminded him. I've never missed a restitution payment. I think I said more than as expected. He said, "It's not up to me. It's up to the judge. Let's schedule a hearing and you can ask him." At the hearing, I asked my judge if it would be possible to keep some of these resources because I was like $60,000 in debt on credit cards, trying to build my careers and ethics and my color crime speaker. And a lot of the debt was because I was printing copies of my self-published book, Lessons from Prison and Ethics Emotion, both you can get for free. And after he heard about these books in my career, he started laughing. He said, "You know, the last thing America needs is a felon speaking on ethics and white color crime." From there, he asked my probation officer, "If I disclose the tax refund of my probation officer found out on his own, my probation officer said no, but printed told me. Judge Wilson said good thing, or else I'd have sent him back to prison. From there, he said if I did not turn over the whole tax refund, less than $1,000 I had paid to a lawyer that day to help me. If I didn't pay it all back, he'd bylet me and send me back to prison." While the judge was making fun of my career, something interesting happened. I took pity on him. I showed mercy in a way that I suppose I expected judge to show mercy to others. When he sentenced me, I was a scared little boy who had never overcome any adversity in my life before. And then just a year and a half later, after prison, back in that courtroom, I wasn't bothered by what he said. I took pity in a sense of empathy that a sentencing judge wouldn't recognize that people could become better, recognize that humans can make bad decisions, and then work to overcome. And I thought of getting philosophical. The myth of Cicifist that I read in prison, remember Cicifist was condemned to hateys, to roll a boulder up to hill, and it would always come back down and he'd start over. Well, like Cicifist, I carry the burden of this conviction, but I'm not going to carry it for people like my judge who doesn't think that I could become better, or try to impress people who think they're perfect. I'm going to carry the burden for the victims that I create. I'm going to carry the burden for my family. I'm going to carry the burden for others who make bad decisions and who through their own efforts can demonstrate how and why they can become better. At the end of that, he said, "Not only am I not going to let him keep the money, he's not allowed to spend more than $500 a month, and if he does, I'm going to send him back to prison too." And I liked that he was making it harder for me. I liked that I could prove that I could overcome these challenges and it showed how much I had grown while he was making fun of me in that courtroom.