Editors Note: Please join me in welcoming our newest contributor Sgt. Mark St. Hilaire as he leads us off for a Happy, Healthy and Safe New Year!
The New Year’s Resolution: What Is YOUR Action Plan for 2012?
As I reflect back on 2011, I am a little overwhelmed thinking about the things that occurred over the past year in my life. I have experienced many changes in my agency, new commitments within my family and my community service, illnesses and the deaths of loved ones and friends, some physical changes as I approach the golden anniversary of my birth and most of all, observing and reading about law enforcement officers who self-destruct in their careers through their unusual behavior and actions on and off the job. It has been an emotionally exhausting time and I am grateful for the many training opportunities, the maintenance of my fitness-eating plan and especially my peers who helped prepare me to meet these challenges.
As this New Year begins, many people participate in the ritual of a New Year’s Resolution. Many people accept the challenge and yes, many of our resolutions succumb to an early death. I stopped making resolutions on the annual basis because I felt discouraged when I could not keep my resolutions.
In the New Year of 1996, I had been a police officer about 10 years. I weighed about 350 lbs.; I had a distorted view of my career, working nights, an adult beverage problem. I had come to the point that I was so frustrated and I was miserable… Continue reading
