Twenty Years....Pension Time?

Aside from that eighteen month hiatus - call it a Leave of Absence - it's been twenty years blogging. 

7,305 days with just shy of 25,000 posts (24,876 we think) and over 1.6 MILLION comments posted.

We don't think the internal counter on blogger is completely accurate as it didn't exist when we started, but it currently shows 98.8 MILLION visits. It probably missed the first couple years (as many as eight), so 100 million pretty much a given, and probably closer to 110 million. 

Where do we even begin to thank everyone? It isn't truly possible to do so in any meaningful way. This was a hobby....a distraction....from what we saw as the slow decline of an honorable and enjoyable profession that granted us so much:

• the opportunity to make a decent middle class living;
• the ability to provide for our spouses and kids;
• a world class city with mediocre sports teams, awesome restaurants, incredible museums;
• lifelong friendships, on the job and off, most of which we maintain at some level;
• the chance to Serve and Protect

Corny? Sure. True? Absolutely. 

But even at the beginning in the 90s, we were told by old timers of clouds on the horizon. We saw the seeds planted, the shortcuts and undercutting coming back to haunt the Department, the political winds constantly shifting direction, the endemic rot within the command structure. 

And we decided to "not go quietly into that good night." So we started a blog. And it was amazing and tedious and horrible and worrisome and God knows how many other adjectives we could come up with. We were inspired by the old SecondCityCopNetwork, run by a sergeant out of 025 who got sued when his name become known and we tried like Hell to avoid that. We only bailed out for those eighteen months so that we could top off our pension without spending it stripped at callback, awaiting a political decision that was already pre-determined and would have cost us tens, maybe a hundred thousand dollars in legal battles.

But it was mostly fun, which is what a hobby should be.

In any event, thank you for twenty years. So much has changed. The kids have all moved on. The Department changed, very little of it for the better. Chicago is in a death spiral along with Illinois and we don't see a good way out of it. We're attending retirement parties almost every other week, but not too many funerals which is good.

God Bless and stay safe. We'll be around.