Every single person who has climbed onto a fire engine has had the feeling of being straight up happy. Riding backwards, window down, enjoying your time with your crew—be as salty as you want and roll your eyes, but we’ve all felt that way at some point.
Riding back to the station after a call this morning, it hit me that I hadn’t had that feeling in a minute. Don’t get me wrong—there’s still plenty of amazing days with my shift at work, but the blissful ignorance we all experience in the beginning has long worn off. Ignorance. Call it being naïve, maybe? The feeling you had before you had a fire chief who couldn’t be bothered to show up to work, or before promotional processes got screwed up, before you really felt like just a number, before officers on scene felt like they had to choose between “safety,” “aggressive,” and writing a memo.
The truth is that it’s not years of sleepless nights that grinds us down. The kind of stuff that eats at you is hearing yet another story of a buddy let down by admin, or watching a solid firefighter leave for another department. Call it exhaustion culture. At some point in time, your career will lose that very specific spark.
You might bring up your frustrations at the kitchen table, or vent about it online…but really there’s only one cure for that let-down feeling that hits all of us.
Do something. “C’mon, do something.” Like the stick figure meme prodding at you with a stick, I’m going to poke at you with this thought: you will never be able to fully save a sinking ship alone. You will always feel helpless and deflated watching a culture problem eat away at the craft that you love. Why not combine those two realities? Pick the closest problem and do something. I’m pretty sure that every positive change in the fire service started with someone deciding to somehow change it and not knowing where to start but starting anyway.
Yes, saving lives is cool, but let’s face it: we still have to like what we do. If the proverbial “house” is a mess, start by picking up the area in front of you. Don’t just leave the mess and complain on the internet. Don’t just accept that things not being right is the new norm for your department. Fix it. Change it. Better it. Sitting around feeling helpless will never be why we signed up to do anything; so why buy into that as a culture?
And that new kid next to you? The one who still has their spark? Don’t douse it; fan it into a flame. Don’t be the person who makes the grumpy comments about “this generation” or laments how much it must suck to be brand new and how you’d hate to start all over. Let them be excited about their first fire. Tell them to call their family member who’s on the job so that person can catch their excitement, too. Just because we have some heavy lifting to do as the older generation doesn’t mean we can’t set a few minds on fire while we’re attacking the big problems. Maybe ensuring that spark stays alive for the future generation is the cultural agenda you attack and protect.
C’mon. Do something.
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Stephanie White is a 21-year veteran of the fire service. She started her journey as a volunteer, and has been a career firefighter/paramedic in Virginia for the past 19 years.
Over her career she’s been actively involved in firefighter health and wellness while being assigned to some pretty great companies. She is currently enjoying the challenge that is spelling and writing while living the shift-work life.
Stephanie is the managing editor of Firefighter Nation.
