MECHANISED

When reading this, what does you mind conjure up? A machine like in Terminator? Perhaps you thought of a computer, wires and other essential components to a machine? Well if so you're half right. What I'm referring to however is the making of something automatics, unspontaneous, mechanical, routine and more so monotonous. And what's more mechanised than prison?

I find myself fighting not to be mechanised and on the other hand the tendency of following a routine and adhering to it in a dogmatic way. It's so monotonous (prison) that it's actually depressing. For instance, a day will consist of this: Let's say one wakes up at 6:00am, gets up and washed themselves, and their cell; turn the TV on and do something 'till breakfast comes around 7:30am, eat it and afterwards defecates, before or afterwards, idiosyncrasies vary. Lunches are given with breakfast and it varies if one will eat it then and there or eat it later. Then one is left to their own doings unless they get yard or go to medical. Besides this movement there's none until 2:10pm when showers are run (if the LAZY c/o's run them). Dinner comes around 4:30pm and that's pretty much it. The main stuff happens around the same time... everyday. You see a set pattern and try to make one yourself. Or not.

As noted above I personally don't and try not to get set in a routine, due to me being in prison. Stuff happens and throws off your whole day. Out of nowhere a big search happens and you find yourself stuck in a room or cage for hours waiting for the search and seizure to end. Lockdowns come and you're stuck in your cell for days on end. And when you're on lockdown for say an average of 3-6 months (a liberal estimate) you have a set pattern you created. Now when you're off lockdown movement is abundant... [missing line]... the same thing and leaves to come back and do it again. Sticking to a set routine, although it may not seem so at first glance you have restricted, cornered and confined your time to an allotted certain activity. Like people who have appointments that time is already taken, and plans must be made around that.

On the other hand, one will probably think of chaos or 'anarchy' when there's no routine or pattern. If people just do stuff to do it then it really seems like chaos. Even society is one the one hand mechanised and on the other fluid like water. Parents put their kids in school, go to work, etc, etc. other 'mavericks' if you'll allow that word, do things on their own terms. So the thought of just doing "it" is contradictory. I hear someone, somewhere inside my head saying, "isn't not having a routine a routine in itself?" True, but your movement is more accessible and more like a freeway instead of a subway.

Prison doesn't allow one to just do as they please but you must dictate your doings within the establishments of how the prison runs. You can't just wake up thinking, "oh, I'm gonna go for a jog." In this instance I'm in a -catch 22- situation, I gotta base some things on routine and allow myself some elasticity to move around. Doing the same thing day in and day out is boring and like a mythical creature such as the vampire sucks the life blood out of you. It depletes you to a living machine. It's like the food they give us in prison, same thing all the time, just a day or two different. By just doing as you please to some will feel and look like chaos but it should be a chaos of your design and under your control. I don't want to be a cog and automotive piece of flesh that the prison has control of. The prison can be a dicta... [line missing]... to do yet finding myself breaking my plan. Other times when I don't "plan" or have guidelines on what to do I wish I had made plans so I sit wandering what to do.

Like a machine that's cold and only functions for the same purpose... prison itself does that with its residents. I don't have a routine nor do I fully just do as I please. The goods and principles I set for myself dictate what I do. The standard I hold myself is my routine. My character is the chaos I cause. I feel as if I 'strayed' from my topic, if so my apologies. I do hope the reader will find it good enough to have taken they time. Mistakes are solely mine.