Shaka Senghor

And that's when I started to write down the most absurdly ambitious, audacious goals ever.

I want to be a best-selling author.

I want to meet Oprah.

Like, I would just write it down no matter how wild it sounded, right?

Mm-hmm.

Um, and, and then I fell into a bout of depression.

You know, we talked earlier about being depressed in prison.

So the prison itself is depressing, but there's another level of depression you can get to where you just don't, you can't even get off the bunk.

You know, you're just like, I just want to give up.

I just, I don't want to be in this anymore.

Um, and it was because I realized I had this gift all around and I couldn't give birth to it.

Oh, what was the gift that you couldn't give money to?

Writing.

I had wrote those letters and my family would be like, write me more letters.

They're so detailed.

I'm not thinking of myself as a writer.

You know, Tom asked me, what else could I do with my mind?

I'm just writing prison articles.

I'm not thinking I can become a real writer.

And so, but once I went through that depression, which was probably about a year, I wrote two books, started a third, fell into depression, couldn't finish it.