Moment of Weakness:

A friend of mine gave me her dads number and had me call him to talk about "Firefighter stuff". I finally connected with him today and he answered some of my questions and gave me a few tips and some ideas on where to go next.

One of his suggestions was that I call a friend of his, who is a female Firefighter Paramedic, to get an idea of what to expect and to hear about what she went through and how it was for her. I called the number he gave me for the station and spoke to a man who was a little short with me and said that he couldn't give me her information because he didn't know me. So I called my friends dad and asked him to put in a call for me. He did and I now have the correct contact info.

However, when I hung up the phone, I just felt like crying. All my doubt started flooding to the surface. Would I be strong enough physically, emotionally, mentally? Could I even do this? And I gave in to them. I let myself cry. I let my doubts circle me and taunt me. I sat and sulked for about 10 minutes. Then, I noticed that James was online. I sent him an instant message basically saying that I didn't think I could do this. He spent the next hour or so pulling me out of my funk and back up to the surface. The gist of the conversation was that I have the ability to do anything, I just need the mentality. It's all in my head. And, as James pointed out, I didn't choose to do this because I thought it would be easy. I've known all along that this will be a long, difficult journey.

I texted a fellow EMT and asked him if he ever had doubts about his abilities. He said "Why doubt yourself? If you ever think you can't, just know there is always some sort of training to make it so you can. It's going to be hard. It's going to be demanding. But what's a little work to get what you want? This is the rest of your life we're talking about." Well, I cleaned it up a bit and made it "flow" better, but that's essentially what he said.

It got me thinking. Sure, I didn't know I wanted to do this until about 8 months ago, but that doesn't mean I don't know what I want to do now. I began to think about my build, physically. I am not a dainty flower. I am taller and stronger than most women. With some conditioning, I can do this job and I can do it well. My personality will fit perfectly with this job. I was made to do this.

I CAN do this. I can.

I need to get my head in the game.

I need to get my body in the game, too.

And right now, I need to go get ready to crash my first fire class!