The Carrot

I don't regret becoming a firefighter. Not for a second. This job shaped me in ways I never could have imagined. It taught me how to solve problems when there weren't any good options, how to stay calm when other people couldn't, and how to trust the people beside me when things got hard. It taught me about sacrifice, teamwork, human nature, and what people are capable of on both the best and worst days of their lives. I would do it all again. But after doing this work long enough, you eventually start asking different questions than you did when you first walked through the doors.

Where it began

I grew up in what I would call a quiet, supportive family. We weren't the loud family, and we never drew much attention to ourselves. My parents leaned more toward the hippie side, but they also came from a generation where kids were supposed to be seen and not heard, and some of that carried into how we were raised. I was also lucky enough to grow up in the last stretch of an analog world, where you could disappear into the neighborhood with your friends, ride bikes all day, and come home when the streetlights came on. I had my own challenges growing up and trying to figure out who I was, but somehow I found my way through school and eventually earned a master's degree in counseling psychology.

For a while, I thought counseling was going to be my path. At some point, though, it didn't feel like the right fit for me anymore. I wanted something different. I liked being part of a team. I had always enjoyed sports and the feeling of working together toward something that mattered. I wanted a career that felt active, meaningful, and connected to other people. That led me to the Phoenix Fire Department.

Getting hired wasn't easy. At the time, thousands of people were applying and testing for a limited number of positions. I remember the excitement and gratitude I felt when I was offered a spot in the academy. I was thirty one years old, physically fit, and ready for the demands of the job. Because of my counseling background, I also believed I had at least some understanding of the mental and emotional side of what I might see. I knew there would be trauma. I knew there would be death, suffering, chaos, and people in crisis. I thought that awareness might prepare me.

What I wasn't prepared for was the grind.

The tour

Some departments call a shift a tour, and I do think this work means something bigger than a single twenty four hours. A tour is the long stretch of living inside this job, going out shift after shift, battling the world and trying to solve whatever problems are waiting on the other side of the tones. You come home between shifts, but that doesn't always mean the tour is over. You sleep, recover enough to function, take care of what you can, and then start preparing to go back. Without an extended period of time away, you never fully step outside of that life long enough for your body and mind to reset. The tour just keeps going.

In the fire service, every department seems to have its own version of a schedule designed to soften the impact of being there for at least twenty four hours at a time. Some work forty eight hours on and ninety six off. Some work two days on and four days off. In my department, we work twenty four hours on and forty eight hours off. No matter how it is arranged, nobody has completely figured out how to remove the toll.

I'm writing this in the middle of a Phoenix summer, when the temperatures are above 110 degrees and the heat adds another layer to everything. I haven't had much time away from the firehouse lately, and I can feel my body wanting the tour to end for a little while. I catch myself imagining what it would feel like to sleep through the night for seven days straight, maybe even fourteen. Not because I want to disappear from the job, but because I want enough time to recalibrate, let my nervous system settle, and come back feeling like myself again.

The calls

The tones don't care how tired you are. They go off when they go off. You get up, put your boots on, get on the truck, and go help whoever called. Sometimes it is a true emergency. Sometimes someone is having a heart attack and we get to use every skill we've been trained to use. Sometimes there is a fire and the job becomes exactly what we imagined it would be when we first applied. Those calls still matter. They remind you why the work is important.

Other times, we are responding to people who are simply in a difficult place in their lives and don't know where else to turn. They may be dealing with pain, stress, housing problems, loneliness, or a situation they no longer know how to manage. Sometimes they believe the hospital is the only place that can help, and what they are really asking for is a ride out of the place they are in, even if only for a little while. The fire service has slowly become the place we send the problems the rest of the system doesn't know how to solve. Sometimes we are equipped to help. Sometimes we aren't. Sometimes all we can do is get someone to the next place and hope the next part of the system catches them.

That can be frustrating, but I also understand it differently now than I did when I was younger. A lot of those people are asking for the same thing many firefighters quietly want. They need a break. They want someone to help them get out of the place they're in, even if only for a little while. They may not have the words, resources, or support to make that happen, so they call 911. We arrive because that is what we do.

The calls are not always what wear you down. It is the repetition.

It is getting up over and over again. It is the interrupted sleep, the constant alertness, the summer heat, the physical strain, the lifting, the exposures, and the inability to fully shut off. It is witnessing another person's worst day and then returning to the station, finishing a report, climbing back into bed, and waiting for the tones to go off again. That is the grind. It rarely breaks you all at once. It quietly accumulates, one shift at a time, until one day you realize your recovery day has become your preparation day.

Nineteen years

Nineteen years later, I'm looking forward to the next chapter of my life. I chose not to promote, and I chose not to become a paramedic. I truly enjoyed the job I originally applied for. I liked riding in the back, being part of the crew, working hard, and doing what the job required. I never needed a different title to make the work meaningful to me. I liked being part of the team.

What they mean is they don't miss the policies, politics, paperwork, procedures, or constant chaos. They miss the people. They miss the crew. They miss sitting around the table, laughing at things nobody outside the firehouse would understand, and knowing the people beside them would show up when it mattered. That is what keeps many of us coming back. We show up for each other.

But if we are being honest, there is another thing that quietly keeps many of us there.

The carrot.

When you first get hired, it looks like a pension. It looks like security. It looks like the promise that if you just keep going, everything will work out. Twenty years feels impossibly far away, so you put your head down and go to work. Then ten years pass. Then fifteen. Then suddenly you're close enough that walking away no longer makes sense.

Somewhere along the way, the pension stops being something you think about once in a while and quietly becomes the finish line you've been running toward. Not because the money is the point, but because you've invested so much of yourself into this career that you want to see it through. The carrot isn't really the paycheck waiting at the end. It's the belief that if you can just make it a little farther, you've earned the chance to finally rest.

What it took to get there

Looking back, I don't think about the pension nearly as much as I think about what it took to get there. I think about the birthdays, the holidays, the interrupted nights, the summers, the friendships, the calls I'll never forget, and the years that somehow passed faster than I imagined. I think about friends who retired, friends who developed cancer, and friends who never got the chance to enjoy the next chapter they had worked so hard to reach.

Do I feel cheated? No. You don't know what you don't know when you're young. Like most firefighters, I trusted the people who came before me. I listened when they told me to invest in my retirement, and I wish I had understood even earlier the importance of building a life outside the firehouse too. Not because the fire service isn't worth it, but because no career, no matter how meaningful, should become your entire identity.

I don't write this with bitterness. I write it with gratitude and clarity. This job gave me far more than a pension ever could. It taught me how to lead, how to solve problems under pressure, how to trust other people, and how to keep moving when life became difficult. Those lessons followed me outside the firehouse. They helped me build businesses, strengthen relationships, and prepare for whatever comes next.

The real carrot

What I'd tell my younger self

I'd still do it again. I would just remind the younger version of myself to take recovery as seriously as the work itself, because the hardest part of this career isn't one terrible call. It's the grind. It happens one shift at a time, one interrupted night at a time, one Phoenix summer at a time. If you're not careful, you become so good at carrying everyone else's weight that you stop noticing the weight you're carrying yourself.

That part deserves just as much attention as the job.