After the Fall

I’m so thankful you are here, reading this, giving me your most important asset: your time. I’ll do my best to prove worthy of it.

For several months, I’ve been working on a new book. An hour here, two hours there. Over time, it adds up.

Starting today, I’ll share a piece of it with you each Sunday through this newsletter.

Each week you’ll see a new chapter, and I’ll also record a podcast to go with it. When the book is finished, I’ll publish it on Amazon and Audible.

Any sales of the book will support Prison Professors Charitable Corporation. Michael Santos started the nonprofit. White Collar Advice was the initial funder and still helps fund it today. Together, we’ve been able to reach millions of people in prisons and jails with free courses, books, and programming.

This week, I’m beginning with the Preface. The book is calledAfter the Fall, and it’s about what happens after crisis, when the illusions are gone and you have to decide how to live, and what to do moving forward.

Preface —After the Fall

The first time I tested this book, I read a draft of Chapter One to my son, Jason. Dude was asleep by page two.

Not to worry. Alyssa was in the next room, eleven years old and deep into a Harry Potter book. I walked in, probably more excited than she was, and said, "Can you put your book down for a few minutes? I want you to hear part of my new book."

She looked up. "Um... sure?"

I started reading. About 37 seconds in, she cut me off.

"I'm going to say this politely, and don't take it the wrong way. Please leave my room now," she said, patting me on the shoulder in a sympathetic way.

So far, not good.

But I wasn't out of test subjects. That same night, around 9:30 p.m., I turned to Sandra, my wife of nearly twelve years.

"Sandra, big news. Chapter One is done. Want to hear it?"

She said, "Babe, tomorrow, for sure. Cannot wait. Been with the kids alone all day and just sat down for the first time. Try Michael."

"Michael? He's up at 2 a.m. every morning; he's been asleep for hours!"

Good God. Who's next, our dog Maverick?

No. I got it.

"Hi, Mom."

"Of course, honey. Read it to me."

I did.

"Best book ever," she said.

That was the first round of feedback.

In prison, I started writing a daily blog. It was October 12, 2008. I sat next to Michael Santos in the prison quiet room as we worked on my first post together. When I finished, I sealed it in an envelope to mail to my mom so she could type it and put it online.

Before I dropped it in the mailbox in Dorm D at Taft Prison Camp, Michael stopped me.

"The end of this blog says you will write daily. Is that a commitment you can fulfill?"

"Yes," I said.

That promise, one blog a day until my release, became the first commitment I kept inside.

Later, in another blog on my birthday, January 22, 2009, I called myself a fool and a fraud. Fool: not because I broke the law, but because of my response to it, doubling down, making matters worse for victims and for the people who loved and supported me. Fraud, because I knew better, broke the law anyway and pretended if anyone was the victim it was me. Writing those words was cathartic and true.

When I was transferred from Taft to the Vinewood halfway house on May 20, 2009, my mom and brother picked me up from prison (they also drove me to prison on April 28, 2008). We had lunch at Pacific Dining Car in downtown Los Angeles before I reported to the halfway house in Hollywood. I had about five hours.

Before lunch, I went online for the first time in more than a year. I had never seen my blog while inside; there was no internet access. Thousands of comments had stacked up.

That's when I noticed something. My mom had edited out the phrase "fool and fraud." Those weren't her only edits, I promise you that.

She told me later it hurt too much to read.

But for me, it wasn't hurtful to write. Overcoming a crisis, especially a self-imposed one, doesn't begin with fantasy. Fantasy is what led me to prison: entitlement, arrogance, the illusion that I was different. Admitting I was a fool and a fraud was the first step in picking myself up.

Why Philosophy?

I first saw names like Epictetus and Montaigne at USC. I underlined a few quotes, closed the book, and went back to baseball and whatever I thought was urgent at twenty-something. If there were a gun to my head, I couldn't have quoted a line back to you.

Years later, in prison, Michael asked me what I wanted to do after my release. I had no idea.

That's when he started handing me philosophy. Epictetus. Montaigne. Seneca. Plato, so many others. At first, I couldn't make sense of it. Michael was patient. He broke the ideas down (hundreds of times) and explained them in ways "even a USC graduate could understand," as he would say.

I also studied how he spent his days and learned from watching him live the philosophy he preached. He woke early, wrote, taught classes, built a network, and continued preparing for a release that was still four years away. His eventual release came on August 13, 2013.

I started small: a blog, a book report. Day by day. Tortoise, not hare. I tried to identify my values and live by them. I was not always successful.

In college, I had underlined sentences and closed the book. In prison, I talked the ideas through with Michael, wrote about them and tried to use them. Slowly, I began to understand why I was reading in the first place. That's when I became a believer and fell in love with ethics/philosophy. (To the detriment of my kids.)

Some days they get Jim Rohn on YouTube, the full series. Other days it's Dante's Inferno: "Abandon all hope, you who enter here." And then, thankfully for them, I break it up with music.

Alyssa and I love Queen. No song we don't know. And by now, Alyssa knows what's coming when Freddie Mercury sings, "I've done my sentence."

"Alyssa, humans make bad decisions," I tell her as Freddie sings. "We all do, and then we have to live with what follows. Sometimes it's an actual prison sentence. Sometimes it's the sentence of sitting at home for years waiting to get sentenced. Sometimes it's the sentence of living someone else's dreams. Or people-pleasing. Or fear. You name it. I presume this is all making sense to you. This is good stuff, right?"

She gives me the look, the one that says she's heard enough.

"Dad, great talk. Can you turn on 'We Will Rock You'?"

"You got it," I say.

Why This Book?

I've worked with more than 1,000 people since my release from prison. I have heard so many stories, some I still think about randomly at 2am when I cannot sleep or mid-swing on the golf course. Some are hard to believe, but all of them taught me something. So, this book.

Each chapter includes a personal story, usually a conversation with someone in our community, and a philosopher whose ideas helped me teach something, challenge an assumption (like believing the outcome is already decided) or just try to make sense of seeing United States of America v. [Your Name] on a federal indictment.

Sometimes I had to ask whether I followed the same advice I was giving. On a scale of one to ten, how closely do I follow the advice I preach and sell? Do I live the message in the Straight-A Guide, or have attitude, action, accountability, aspiration and achievement become buzzwords I use because they sound good? Writing, I think, helps me stay on track and own where I am failing and succeeding.

I'm not naive. None of the philosophical ideas in this book are mine. They have been discussed for centuries and are easily available through Google or an AI search. What is mine is how I tried to use them and share them with you.

You don't have to read this cover to cover. Start with a chapter that interests you. USC Professor Cerling suggested Kierkegaard when shame still consumed me. Michael pointed me to Seneca when I feared judgment. When envy ate at me, it was FBI Agent Paul Bertrand, of all people, who suggested Nietzsche. My Rabbi gave me Witold Pilecki, for dignity and courage. And when I wanted to understand how someone keeps writing and preparing through decades in prison, I studied Michael again, the way I always do.

One day, I hope Alyssa and Jason finish this book. They don't need to love philosophy. They certainly don't need another Jim Rohn video. I just want them to understand why their dad keeps talking about bad decisions, prison, fear, ethics and what comes after.

They weren't alive when the FBI showed up. They know the man who came home, and they get to decide what they think of him.

For now, Jason sleeps through Chapter One and Alyssa wants Queen.

Fair enough.

Thank you,
Justin Paperny