It’s ironic that a relatively short time ago I published Things Have Changed and Things Have Changed, Redux. Maybe this entry should be titled, “Things Have Changed Back.”

Through a set of circumstances, repeated too many times to count for a lot of cops that get out of the business for a shot at normalcy, I find myself back in uniform, pushing a patrol car and hustling calls. And although if you’d asked me a year ago if this was in the cards I might have become nauseous, the transition back has been unexpectedly smooth thus far. While I’d been out of a patrol car and serving in adminstrative and supervisory roles for the last few years prior to leaving, I’ve found that being back on the street is a little like a breath of fresh air. I’m enjoying the simplicity and relative purity of it; answer the calls, keep the peace, find the bad guys, go home. Lather, rinse, repeat.

I guess one of the main things about the life of a patrolman that appeals to me, and maybe a lot of us, is the fact that we’re out there on a daily basis as active participants in the human condition. That is to say, ours is a role that interjects us into a wide range of life’s experiences- good or bad, traumatic or mundane, joyous or sad. It would be ridiculous to say that we would willingly choose to participate in some of those things, but we accept the overall task as a whole and hopefully recognize it for the uniqueness that it holds. Ours is not a daily pattern of defined tasks, mechanically checking off the boxes and enjoying a relatively consistent emotional state throughout the day. It’s an existence of highs and lows, ranging from mind-numbing boredom to heart-pounding adrenaline dumps.

But there has to be a balance, and historically that has been a challenge for a lot of people in law enforcement, myself included. Too many long hours, too many off-duty jobs in uniform, and too much identification with the job can easily and subtly alter one’s persona to the point that he or she lives their life with an attitude like some cheesy TV cop show character. We… meaning I, have to make a concerted effort to live a portion of our lives as the “regular guy,” as I used to refer to it. After all, we have our own human condition to live.

When I left law enforcement in December of 2014, there’s just no other way to say it: I’d had enough. Enough drama, enough interrupted sleep, enough politics, enough stress. I knew that life would be different once I left, but I wasn’t real sure what that would look like.

Now, less than a  year later, I find myself contrasting little things about daily life before vs. daily life after. Nothing earth-shattering here, but worth noting in my world, if for no other reason than to help me realize how far I’d become removed from some of them.

I’d really not given any of this much thought until a few weeks ago while I was driving to work and a great, hard-rocking song came on the radio: “The Confessor,” by Joe Walsh. I cranked up the volume to a truly obnoxious level, and it occurred to me that I haven’t been comfortable doing that in years. As a patrolman, I never listened to the FM in the car, because I was always paying attention to the high-band radio, waiting for the dispatcher to send me to the next “go arrest so-and-so for doing something stupid again” call or listening out for my buddies in case they needed help. I’d allowed that habit to bleed over into my civilian life, often driving my personal vehicle for miles before realizing that I didn’t have the radio on at all (I found out later that my children secretly told their mother that they didn’t like riding with me because of this). So now I crank up the radio or a playlist as loud as I like. Sometimes I even sing along (I have tinted windows to hide my shame).

Emergency lights and sirens no longer concern me, beyond the obvious, “Oh crap, I gotta get out of the way,” response when they come barreling down the road. Previously, if I was off duty and saw a unit speeding along, I would invariably think, “I wonder what he’s going to.” Now, I just get out of the way, let the car pass, and go on about my business. Likewise, if I was out in my back yard and heard multiple sirens out on the highway, possibly indicating a big incident, I dreaded the next few minutes, waiting for my cell phone to ring with a notification or request for me to respond. Now, it’s just no big deal. It’s a liberating feeling, really.

I’ve also stopped examining car tags while stopped at traffic lights, looking for the obvious violations; another habit that my wife delicately pointed out had bled over into my personal life. Now, I simply don’t care about car tags. Don’t care if you’ve got one, don’t care if it’s expired. Mine’s all good, and that’s all I’m worried about.

Same goes for minor traffic infractions. Let me qualify that by saying that I was never much of a traffic Nazi. Sure, I’d stop the blatantly stupid or unsafe ones, or I might use a minor infraction to stop a genuine bad guy, but when it came to average Joe going a little too fast on the way home from work, my heart just wasn’t in writing a ticket that was going to cost him a grocery bill. Some Chiefs and Sheriffs might not like that mindset, but I’m of the belief that there were people out there who were genuinely deserving of my law enforcement efforts, and then there was everyone else.

Which brings me to people in general. Saying that cops become jaded is far too cliché. I always thought this was true to a degree, but I mostly thought it was just another over-used crutch for some of the guys wearing badges to be assholes. But guess what? After I had a few months to decompress a little bit, I realized that I’d become the asshole. I held some people in extraordinary disdain. This wasn’t built along race, gender, or any other kind of lines; it was what I referred to as “trash” in general, and trash comes in all shapes, sizes, and colors. I’d largely lost sight of the fact that there are a lot of good people in this world; I just didn’t get to interact with them under positive circumstances enough for it to sink in. Sure there are still bad guys out there, but there are also a ton of good guys. And now I get to meet them and talk to them all the time. And that makes me smile.

Sleep. I haven’t slept this well in years. I never realized what a horrible effect law enforcement has on the quality of one’s rest, until I got out. Between the early years on night shift (telling myself I loved it because it sounded cool), the pagers for the SWAT team and dive team, and then later the constant phone calls throughout the night once I’d been promoted up through the ranks, I rarely got a night of unbroken sleep. Consequently, neither did my wife. Even on nights when the phone didn’t go off, it was always a thought floating in my subconscious that prevented my mind from fully committing to sleep. I think I’d simply resigned myself to a semi-zombie type of existence and accepted it as the new normal. Now, if the phone goes off in the middle of the night it’s probably a true personal emergency. Or a wrong number. Or a drunken friend needing a ride.

Speaking of telephones, I don’t hate them nearly as much now. I used to cringe every time it rang, because it was either an intrusion on my personal time, or it was a complaint, or it was yet another demand on an already unmanageable schedule. I actually fantasized about pitching the thing off the Longstreet Bridge into the depths of Lake Lanier. Now, I kinda like it when the phone rings or a text comes through. It’s almost always someone I want to talk to, regarding something I want to talk about. Fascinating concept.

Lastly, there’s freedom of time. I’m no longer bound by subpoenas, on-call rotations, special events, after-hours public meetings, ad nauseam. Now, when I get off work, I’m off. No more, “Oh, I can’t have a beer because I might get called out,” or “I can’t take the kids to this or that because I’m covering the on-call this weekend.” Now, if I get home and don’t have anywhere else that I want to go, I have a beer and enjoy it. If the kids ask if we can go somewhere this weekend, odds are that I can say, “Sure, why not!”

I realize this is all a bunch of small potatoes in the grand scheme of things, and probably means less than nothing to most people. But to say that my quality of life has improved is a gross understatement. More importantly, I think it illuminates some of the sacrifices and restrictions on the lives of my friends still working in public safety- sacrifices and restrictions that they gladly accept every single day because they love the job. God bless them.