Welcome To My World ....

There are a lot of things that define us as a person - hopefully. Sometimes there is one main defining point.

Imagine a room with several occupied chairs placed in a circle facing each other. One of the occupants stands up, all eyes focus: "Hi, my name is Greg. I'm a firefighter. I've been a firefighter for 17 years ......"

17 years. All of my post-21 years. Starting as a volunteer with my home town department; Certification courses; bi-monthly training with the department; more certification courses; responding to calls; more certification; accepted the training officer position; selected as an officer of the department; more certification courses; more teaching at training; officer duties and meetings ......

If I had been diligent enough to keep testing until I was hired by a career department, I'd be eligible for retirement in three years. THREE YEARS! Retire at 41 or keep working if I wanted to. For circumstances present at the time I did not continue testing and was mostly happy all these years with the relative calmness of my home town volunteer fire department.

17 years later; countless hours of training and response; obsessing about this or that fire department related issue; balancing work and family and fire department with strange priotization rules. I am changing a little bit, I hope.

I think I have a better focus on my priorities. I don't concentrate on fire department issues as much as I used to. I think about other things more than I used to. As an officer of the department I can't totally blank out, but I don't have to obsess like I used to.

Thus, my re-definition process has brought me to the option of this blog. Of course I will talk about my firefighting experiences - past and present - as much as I feel is appropriate, but I will also spend time with other things that interest me. Family will be part of that, but as limited as possible to protect the innocent ....

If you are lucky(?) enough to land on these pages, maybe you will find something interesting here. If not, good luck elsewhere!

As for me, it's time to take up the hose and head back to the station until the next conversation.

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