Well, Here I Go....

"So.... Mike, what's retirement like?"

I hear that a lot, lately.

"What are you gonna do?"

"What are your plans?"

"What do you do with all that free time?"

"So, retirement must be awesome, right!?"

"Got your honey-do list done yet?" That one is usually followed by a knowing sort of insider's wink.

Uhm... actually no, I don't. Haven't even started yet. I'm kind of afraid to look at it.

I'm sort of afraid of all of this stuff. This "retirement". Its spooky. 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

After almost 30 years as a dispatcher with the Sacramento County Sheriff's Department, in California, I decided to retire as of January 9th, 2020.

To be honest, I was ready to lay it down.

Long years of doing essentially the same job day after day with evolving technology had taken its toll. Years of answering telephones, 911 and others, and some pretty hairy and traumatic incidents while working with the deputies over the radio, had a detrimental effect on my phyche.

I had become an emotionally fragile human being.

Before you roll your eyes, or make some other body language denoting disbelief, let me explain a little.

I don't deal with emotional trauma very well. Most of don't. Most of us never learn to what to do with the emotional baggage that accumulates over time, especially if there are a few severe traumatic events in our lives.

Everyone who works in law enforcement, be it on the phones or on the streets, have post traumatic stress. All of us. Its the nature of what we do. We experience trauma, which creates enormous stress on our psyche. You can't be in the profession and avoid it.

What we do with it, how we handle it, how we process it, how we heal from it, determines whether that post traumatic stress can become a disorder or not.

So, as to my story, I didn't handle all the stress very well. I tend to compartmentalize, and avoid thinking about the traumatic incidents that caused my stress. In the old days, they'd have said "I stuffed my emotions down deep where they can't get out, so I can keep on going".

In a nutshell, I am an emotional basket-case at times.

I cry when my wife and I watch Hallmark Movie romances.

Every.Single.Time.

I cry at beautiful music performed on TV talent shows, like The Voice or America's Got Talent.

Every. Single. Time.

I cry at movies I've seen dozens of times. My wife and I watched Titanic the other night.

Every. Single. Time. And for Titanic, a lot.

We keep a box of tissues on the table next to our chairs. I go through a lot of tissues.

Why do I cry Every. Single. Time.?

I like to think its because I'm starting to heal.

For me, "feeling the strong feelings", those powerful waves of emotions that can just overtake you, hurt a lot, because it felt like it was ripping me up inside. So much of my emotional life has been compartmentalized, and every time one of those walls was pushed on, it hurt!

So, I kinda became numb to it all. If your numb, nothing hurts, right? You don't feel the pain, or the grief, or the heartache. I got myself all insulated inside my nice compartmentalized emotional fort.

The problem is, I also stopped feeling the joys, and the happiness that life brings along with the hurts. Numbness kills it all; the joy, the hurt, the glee, the anger, the empathy, and yes, even the love for one another can be extinguished. I kinda stopped feeling all of it, at least for a while.

It was a safe place, if a bit lonely.

So, yeah....... I was ready to lay it down when I retired. Very ready.

I am tired of being that person in survival mode, keeping my emotional sanity at the sake of my emotional soul. So tired.



So.......back to the original question....

"What are you going to do with your retirement, Mike?"

Jeez, I don't know! I have ideas and thoughts and things I want to do, but those are all to be determined.

I do know one thing, for certain, that I want to accomplish in retirement.

I want to find myself again.

I want to rediscover who Mike Jones is.


Yes, "the real Mike Jones!"

That's what this journal is about. I hope you find it interesting, or helpful, or maybe occasionally funny. I hope to keep this up and take you with me, and maybe some of you can add insights or thoughts along the way. I look forward to that.