The Slow Times

Is it just me, or does it get harder to come to practices the longer you go between calls? Normally, I really like to go to fire practice (course, I've only been at this a year or so), but it's been about 3 months since we had a call that I could attend. I'm finding going to practice is getting tough.

I'm not sure if it's the late winter blahs or what, but I'm dragging ass to get down there. Part of it might be that our training officer is away, so we haven't been doing a lot of the more adventuresome training stuff in a while. I mean, it's been months since we lit anything on fire! How are we supposed to learn without the fire?

I'm mostly kidding here, but I'm kinda annoyed with myself. I like firefighting for a lot of reasons, the people, the new skills, the burning of things, but I thought I did it mostly because I wanted to do something to help the people in my community. Getting bored after a few months of relative inactivity makes me question why exactly I'm doing this. Of course, I have been getting there, and doing the training, and I'm taking a correspondence course on scene management, so it's not like I'm giving up.

I assume it's tough for everyone to keep their enthusiasm up when the trucks aren’t rolling, but it does provide a good opportunity. Sometimes a chance to think about your reasons for doing something is important, critical even. Not to worry, I still get to fire practice; it just takes a bit more willpower these days.