Fourteen months after I walked out of Snake River Correctional Institution, a counselor at the Multnomah County Department of Community Justice office on SE Hawthorne suggested meditation. She meant an app. Ten minutes, eyes closed, a calm voice, a subscription I could not afford. I tried it twice in my room at the halfway house on NE 15th. Both times I was on my feet at the sound of the front door before minute three, pulse over 120.
Here is what worked instead. Push-ups on the floor, counted. A run at 5:15 in the morning, counted in blocks and breaths. A gym membership I got for $0 with a one-page form and a food benefits letter. Fitness became my form of daily meditation because it is a practice built on counting, and counting is the one skill six years of custody drilled into me. Other people counted me five times a day for 2,190 days. Now I count myself, once, before anyone else gets the chance.
I use the word meditation narrowly. A fixed daily practice. Attention held to an anchor for a set time. A cost I can write down. Sitting still with my eyes closed failed all three tests. The morning count passes all three. What follows is the record of how that happened, what it costs in dollars and hours, and which systems had a hand in it.
The encounter: one form, one letter, $0
February 2023, a Tuesday, 9:40 in the morning. Matt Dishman Community Center on NE Knott Street. I carried a manila folder to the front counter. Inside was the income-based fee form for Portland Parks & Recreation and my SNAP award letter from the Oregon Department of Human Services, which is what the form accepts as proof of income. That letter took three trips to the DHS self-sufficiency office to obtain. The three trips are their own post. In reentry, paperwork is never one document. It is a chain.
The standard adult monthly pass was $44 at the time. Drop-in was $8. With the income-based rate, both were $0. The form was one page. The clerk read my award letter, checked a box, printed a card, and slid it back. Total time at the counter: 11 minutes. Total morning: 3 hours and 10 minutes door to door, including two buses each way on TriMet. Total money: $5.60 in fares, plus $0.10 to print the letter at Central Library the day before.
I keep a dignity ledger alongside the dollar one, so I will be exact about this too. Since release I have handed documents across a lot of counters: Multnomah County courts, DHS self-sufficiency, the DMV. Usually the paper is the price of being tolerated. At Matt Dishman the form asked exactly one question, which was how much money I made. Answer: $0. That was the whole interview. No box about my record. No follow-up appointment. I walked out with a lanyard, a locker, and something to show for a morning, which had not happened once since the gate at Ontario.
Why sitting still failed
Six years is 2,190 days. In custody I was counted five times a day, at midnight, 5 a.m., noon, 4 p.m., and 9 p.m. That is 10,950 counts, and every one of them meant a body upright in a doorway, eyes open, alive and accounted for. You learn to sleep light. You learn that closed eyes are a liability in a room with one door and two other people. I wrote about the long ride from the gate to the halfway house in an earlier post. The counting is the part that came home with me.
The counselor’s app asked me to close my eyes and notice my breath. My body treated that instruction the way it treated a cell search. What my body would accept was a job: hold the plank, breathe out on the down stroke, count the blocks to 60th. The count demands the same thing a corrections officer demands, which is attention on call. The difference is that I set the number and I own the number. That is the entire difference. That is why it works.
The practice, in numbers
The alarm goes at 5:05. Ten minutes to dress, no phone. Out the door at 5:15, down NE 15th to Killingsworth, east to 60th, south to Going, and home. 3.6 miles. The first month it took me 34 minutes. Two years later it takes 26.
Before the run, the floor: four sets of 25 push-ups, one minute of rest between sets, breath out on the way down. After the run: 50 squats in two sets and a 60-second plank. The whole morning runs 55 minutes. In the cell I did the same push-ups on concrete, four sets of 25, every day, which comes to 8,760 sets over six years. The practice did not start when I got out. It came home with me. What changed is who holds the clipboard.
For the first 90 days my curfew ran from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m., so the outdoor route was off the table. I ran the stairwell instead: four flights, 22 steps a flight, 40 minutes up and down, with the overnight staff initialing the sign-out sheet at 5:30 and never once asking why. In month four my supervising officer dropped the curfew condition at a monthly check-in, and the route on Killingsworth opened. That is the only time supervision has made my life larger instead of smaller. I record it here as a fact, the same as the rest.
The anger, on schedule
I was angry for most of six years inside and for about two years after. I am not going to perform that for you. Here is the data instead. In my first year out, I skipped the morning count 19 times. On 6 of those days, something went wrong by noon that I logged as an incident: a raised voice in the DHS lobby, a job interview I walked out of at minute ten, a letter from the court I tore in half and then had to request again at $0.50 a page. On the 346 days I kept the count, the incident log is blank. I am not claiming the push-ups made me calm. I am claiming they gave the adrenaline a schedule, and adrenaline keeps its appointments.
The run is where the anger goes now. Not gone. Scheduled. There is a difference, and I stopped pretending otherwise somewhere in year two.
The ledger, year one
- Running shoes, one pair, 620 logged miles: $65
- TriMet fare, 12 round trips to Matt Dishman: $67.20
- Printing the SNAP letter, one page: $0.10
- Gym lock and lanyard: $12
- Monthly membership, income-based rate: $0
- Total, 365 mornings: $144.30
For comparison: the state ID card at the DMV cost $44.50 and 11 hours across four visits that same year. My supervision conditions cost me two job offers outright, the moment the application asked the question. Between the SNAP letter and my OHP card, I can prove my poverty on demand, but no document I carry proves anything to an employer except the one I cannot remove. The count is the cheapest system I participate in, and unlike the others, it pays out the same day.
The dignity line is this. The gym counter is the only counter in two years where I handed over a document about myself and the transaction ended that morning, in my favor, with no follow-up. Twelve visits, twelve clean exchanges. I do not have another system I can say that about.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is exercise really meditation, or is that a stretch?
Functionally, for me, yes. Meditation, as I use the word, means attention held to an anchor on a daily schedule. In sitting practice the anchor is the breath. In mine it is the breath plus a number: the 25th push-up, the 40th block, the 60th second of a plank. Some clinicians call rhythmic exercise moving meditation. I call it the only version my nervous system would sign.
How much does a Portland community center membership cost?
The standard adult monthly pass at Matt Dishman was $44 when I signed up in February 2023. With the income-based rate from Portland Parks & Recreation it was $0, drop-in included. The qualifying document was my SNAP award letter from Oregon DHS. One page, one counter visit, no fee. Rates change, so call before you go.
Can you run races on post-prison supervision?
Yes, with permission. Leaving Oregon requires a travel permit from the supervising officer, one form filed in advance. I ran a 10K in Vancouver, Washington in September 2023. My PPO approved the permit in 6 days, and I carried the folded paper in my race bib, because a traffic stop on the bridge without it would have been a violation. The paperwork trail is its own post. Inside Multnomah County, no permit is needed. The route on Killingsworth is mine any morning I keep the count.
What if I have no money at all?
The floor is free. The sidewalk is free. Stairs are free. One hundred push-ups and a 3-mile loop cost nothing and require no letter, no ID, no appointment, and nobody’s permission. The gym pass is a luxury I earned with paperwork. The practice underneath it never cost a cent, inside or out.
Why 5:15 in the morning?
Because supervision can take any other hour. Random calls, same-day check-ins, a urine test on 40 minutes of notice; those arrive between 8 and 6. At 5:15 the phone does not ring. In the beginning that hour was the only property I had. I kept it after the curfew ended because it stayed mine.
Tomorrow is a Wednesday. Alarm at 5:05. Floor first: twenty-five, breathe, again, four times over. Out the door at 5:15, down 15th, east on Killingsworth. The count starts at the corner, and it is the only number in my day that I set myself. Twenty-five. Breathe. Again.