Last Day!

My last day was Monday! Everything lined up the previous week and I was able to get out two months earlier than planned. That last week was a bit of a mess, with me training my replacements, teaching a class, running a shooting range, and switching to a normal hours sleep schedule.

Here’s all of the stuff that happened: 

Sunday of last week the guy replacing me picked up my dog. My dog is going to a better place. No, not grandma’s farm, an actual better place. The dog I was partnered with is trained to find explosives and firearms, so he’s nicer than the dogs that find people. Despite that, he has super high drive and energy, and though he was nice to my kids, he’s like a bull in a china shop. Knocked over my oldest multiple times, and I didn’t trust him to not accidentally hurt my youngest. That meant we didn’t keep him in our house. Instead, he stayed outside in a giant climate controlled kennel. He seemed comfortable and happy with this, but this meant he wasn’t really a family dog. Just a guy I worked with and took care of. My replacement’s kids are much older, and he’s got a more dog friendly house. Now my old K9 partner gets to run around that house and bigger backyard. While I sorta miss my dog, I’m glad he’s somewhere better. Plus I don’t miss picking up poop, the barking, or having to let the dog out constantly.

Monday night I went to what ended up being my last actual shift. Another supervisor currently in the K9 unit was taking over my data related responsibilities, and he came in to get some clarification on how to run all of the spreadsheets. I’d previously given him a hours-long marathon class on how to pull the data and manipulate it in excel. He returned with some questions, and I got him warm and fuzzy with it all after answering his questions Monday night. My replacement came in, and we had a supervisor meeting in which we spun him up with the intricacies of running the unit. With all of that done, I realized my normal shift responsibilities were handed off, and I just had few other tasks to complete before I left the department entirely. Thus ended my last actual working shift. No more putting on a uniform and responding to calls, yay!

I went to bed at my then normal time at 4am on Tuesday, and was so excited I’d never have to work late shift again that I woke up before 10am. Kinda blerg about the sleep deprivation, but that’s been a constant for over a decade. After waking, I headed to another of my final obligations; teaching a FIRE class. This dude on my department had started a day long elective finance class for officers that spanned all sorts of information including personal finance, budgeting, retirement planning, medicare, etc. He’d started the finance class years ago, and slowly pulled in more people to teach different parts of the course as his retirement date grew closer. A few years ago I started teaching a little 20 minute primer on the FIRE movement. Tuesday’s class was special because it was also the retirement party for the dude who had started this whole thing. It was cool because lots of people came to say goodbye, some of which I hadn’t seen in years. Though word had gotten out about my impending departure, I was careful to not hijack this dude’s retirement party. All in all it was a good experience. Got to see a lot of people before I bounced, taught my class, and then snuck out. In my own selfish way, it was the perfect stand in for my non-existent retirement party: I got to get all of the social benefits without being the center of attention. 

Wednesday and Thursday I did little besides get all my gear ready for turn in, and try to get my body used to getting on a normal person schedule. Double blerg.

Last Friday I had my last actual work commitment before my official outprocessing. The K9 unit was running an assessment process for applicants and I had to help shore that up before leaving. One of the hurdles of the tryouts was a shooting test. A couple of the other K9 officers had just went through firearms instructor course, but were waiting on their certifications to be finalized before they were allowed to run a shooting range. That left me as the only guy in the K9 unit that could administer the test. So that’s what I did on Friday. Bonus for me, retirees were doing their annual LEOSA qualification that morning, so I jumped in with them. Double bonus, a bunch of my friends who are full time firearms instructors at my department’s range were running the LEOSA quals, so I got to go out to lunch with them before running the K9 shooting test in the afternoon. A good day all around.

The weekend was amazing. Woke up in the morning like a normal person, and actually got to see my family before noon. Still struggling to get on a normal sleep schedule, but experience has taught me that it will take months. In the meantime I have coffee, naps, and patience. 

This Monday was it! Turned in all of my stuff, got my LEOSA ID card, shook some hands, and walked a few blocks from the department’s HQ to meet my wife for brunch. Brunch was good, went home, did yoga, then went for a walk. Picked up the kids, then friends that live in our neighborhood had us over for tacos. It was magical as fuck.

The rest of this week has been pretty fucking great too. Still shifting the sleep schedule, but it feels so relaxing to know I have very few things I actually need to do each day. This has left plenty of room for naps and space to chill. Overall it’s been pretty amazing. I still think about all of the things, and how it could rapidly spiral out of control, but nowhere near my previous level of anxiety. There’s been stuff I’ve thought about doing, and then I think-I’ve got the rest of my life to get there. For at least the next few months I’ve given myself permission to chill. Yeah, I’m sure I’ll get bored, and this is totally the honeymoon phase of early retirement, sabbatical, mini-retirement, or whatever the fuck this turns out to be. But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to enjoy the shit out of it while it’s still new and shiny.