Saturday, January 28, 2012

Taking my Own Advice


Today is my Friday.
Work was more than stressful.
Saturdays for me at this time are usually very uneventful.

Reality is:  it is winter, cold, dreary, and most of the drunks and riff-raff middle and high school kids are not up until about the time I get off work.

By 9:25am...my morning was eventful.  It started at one side of town.  It continued for nearly 2 hours.  And hot damn was it a long 2 hours.

During that time, I continued to remind myself that I needed to "just breathe".  Something that has been very hard for me in recent days/weeks/months. 

This afternoon as I was writing an incident report about what happened I had the opportunity to think about the things that I said to one of my passengers.  The advice that I gave him to diffuse the situation, bring himself down off the ledge of freak-the-hell out mode...and how it really did pertain to myself. 

I am reminded that it is much easier to give advice, talk others off the ledge (and trust me the situation at hand was one of incredible intensity) and help them stay present...than it is for yourself.  I seen this particular person 2 more times during the course of my work shift.  And as he began screaming at some up-to-no-good teens...I walked up to him, calling him by name and reminded him what he needed to do.

I need a me in my everyday-to-day life.  Someone to remind me...to stop internalizing (in his case  flipping out on others) and to just take a deep breathe.

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