I didn’t know what success was.

I mean, I thought I knew.

As I handed my gear across the counter, there was no fanfare.

No farewell celebration.

No one wishing me “good luck”.

Just me standing in an sterile front office connected to a warehouse building built long before I’d been born. I handed the person in front of me all the gadgets I’d deemed important for the decade prior.

Everything from my dress uniform to my gun.

Just like that, it was all over.

I had been a detective for almost 13 years.

I said goodbye to patrol work, fugitive hunting, tactical work, and detective work. I said goodbye to the stripes and the badge that advertised the rank of Sergeant.

For those nearly thirteen years, I’d given everything I had.

I’d loved it, right up until I didn’t.

On paper, I left for a better opportunity. But that wasn’t the whole truth.

The truth was more complex. It was also hard to say out loud.

I’d begun to hate my work.

The question is, how did work I once loved turn into something I couldn’t stand?

There are two parts to that.

One part is how policing become something I no longer recognized. That however, is a story for another time.

The other part is the mistake I made. It was the part that was within my control.

The mistake was not knowing what success was.

Or even worse, I was living someone else’s version of it.

Growing up, my family and I lived in a mobile home. My parents worked hard, but we struggled.

So success, to me, meant the opposite of that. It meant to have a reliable job. It meant having money, benefits, safety, and admiration. It meant achieving the things my parents would have been proud of.

I worked like a man possessed. If I wasn’t working, I was thinking about a case or a way to find whoever I was searching for. I was training in investigation, search and seizure law, SWAT, or anything else I could find.

I answered the phone in the middle of the night. I worked weekends, nights, and holidays. There were many times I worked for over 24 straight hours.

In doing that, I had become a stranger in my own home. What’s worse is that when confronted, I didn’t react well.

I was a mess.

For years I’d lied to myself. I said it was my work ethic, something to be proud of. Others just didn’t get it.

Bullshit.

It was entirely my ego masquerading as work ethic.

I wanted to be the best at what I did because I wanted other people’s admiration. It was me searching for identity and validation. I achieved some work success, but that success was hiding something I couldn’t admit.

Deep down, I was broken.

I was cold to others.

I had built a life void of balance. A life built around my work.

A life that was spiraling out of control.

So almost 13 years after it all began, I ended it.

I didn’t just leave a job that day. I left an old version of me in that sterile office along with all the others things I didn’t need anymore.

I had a gut-wrenching conversation with that old version of me. A conversation where I told him I finally saw him for who he is.

A broken, shell of a man who was hiding his insecurities behind his work.

The man who walked away from that office wasn’t the same man who walked in.

The new man realizes that success is in owning his time and finding balance in life.

It’s in the ability to love others and to make sure they know how you feel about them.

That man built a family that has his full attention. Work takes a backseat to his life. He travels when he wants and where he wants.

He’s happy, honest, and caring.

While he’s never worked less, he’s also never had more.

Moving forward that man will always know who he is, and what success looks like.