My city is small but still a “city” at abt 15000 people. We are volly but a few paid. We run abt 700 calls a year.
I’m all the standard training - emr too.
I think when things got thick with my first wife’s cancer, I was 26 and new at fire and making ok money in sw.. so I “used” fire to have “random” encounters that forced me to stop thinking abt cancer. About death. Which is odd. Cause I’m usually one of the regulars at the medicals, traumas, untimelys, etc…
So I got used to that “fire time = me time” feeling. SW didn’t matter and let’s be honest, sw is thick or dense but it’s not hard.
Not hard like what we see or sticks to us at fire.
So yeah. Juggling? I just… “made do” I reckon. Used it as an escape. And when fire is slow, as sometimes it is, I use training as an escape.
When she died when I was 31, fire was there for me. Software - gave me the corporate required bereavement days then it was back to the office because back then wfh was not as common as it should have been.
Maybe I haven’t really juggled well. I think also with adhd that I have - “exercising” both my brain and body in these two ways has helped.
But when I think those things, I realize that’s a perm solution to “short” term albeit painful problems. I can do this. I got this.
Then when it gets real bad, I remember Pascal’s wager and if there really are people I can “see” again - like my first wife who died at 41, when I was 31… that little thought experiment/bit of faith saves me.
It makes me sad, truly, to see that a bulk of the stories are related to finance. Finance for services that a caring nation would/should provide.
Sigh.