This week I decided to update my official APCO training record, since I’m due to recertify as a Communications Training Officer next year and needed to see where I stand with continuing education. While I was at it, I sent the list to our training person so my local record stays current as well. I’m grateful to work for an agency that doesn’t default to “no” when it comes to training. Still, as a statewide officer in our APCO chapter, I know I’m extremely lucky.

Coming from the world of education, I also approach professional development differently. In education, development is non-negotiable. You do it or you’re out—either because your evaluation scores don’t hold up or because you fall behind the people who stay current.

My agency approves most of my training requests, but there are things I pursue on my own when I don’t quite have the justification they need, and that’s fine. They’re running a business. For me, though, professional development has never been about climbing a ladder or chasing a higher-paying title. It has always been about three things:

1.) I always want to be the MOST INFORMED in any setting I am in.
2.) I always want to be viewed as the SMARTEST person in any setting I am in.
3.) I always want to be READY for every possible scenario.

Everything I do from a development standpoint is rooted in those three goals. If they lead to something bigger, great. But that’s never the point.

What I’ll never understand is how few people pursue professional development for reasons other than positioning themselves for a promotion. When people ask me my “why,” here’s the truth:

• I pay my own APCO and NENA membership dues because they keep me informed.

• I write for PSC Magazine (for free) and pursued an RPL scholarship because writing gives me a “subject matter expert” label, and the RPL designates me as someone who can lead in this industry. I pursued NENA’s Excellence in Dispatch designation because it shows my commitment to continued professional development,

  making me, yes, the smartest person in the room.

• I’ve completed training in Tactical Dispatch, Active Assailant Dispatch, Mental Health First Aid, and Diversity because I refuse to be unprepared for whatever comes my way.

I do these things because I WANT TO, and because I NEED TO if I’m going to be the person I expect myself to be.

We’re all doing what we do for our own reasons. We don’t need to call each other out for having different goals, ambitions, or mindsets.

That’s what happened here with this Substack.

When I first thought up Ten Four, Baldy, I was all in. I had so much I wanted to say, so much change I thought I could stir up. But then life happened. The world happened. And I… sort of forgot this thing existed.

Such is the story of my neurodivergent life. Not all neurodivergent folks operate this way, but plenty do. I honestly believe that’s part of why employment can be such a mess for us (and if I had the attention span, I could dig up research to prove it).

Back in my early-to-mid-twenties, before I finally settled into teaching, my résumé was almost three pages long. I’d hold a job for 8 to 12 months, tops. And I don’t mean just “job jobs.” I mean positions that could’ve been entire careers.

Nine months into a sales job with big potential? Peaced out.

About 14 months running the facilities office at my first university? Peaced out.

Thirteen months at a massive television-based retailer, learning the operational side of their call center, while also in college and working part-time at a school? You guessed it: peaced out.

The pattern was always the same: I’d get super excited, give 150%, and then either burn out or get so bored I couldn’t stand the thought of doing it anymore.

That’s probably why education and emergency communications have stuck. It’s hard to get bored when every single day throws something new at you.

So what does my brain-that-does-whatever-the-hell-it-wants do in the meantime? Abandon side projects. Like this Substack you’re probably not even reading.

I’m not saying I’ve abandoned it completely. But the regular updates I envisioned? They didn’t happen, and I don’t know if they ever will. I’m finishing up a degree program, and just last week I officially started the Registered Public-Safety Leader program, an intense, yearlong thing with a million moving parts.

I still have a lot to say, though. Including things on recent events that I’ve been trying to figure out how to say without becoming a target, whether by my own agency, the government at large, or some troll site that doxxes anyone it disagrees with.

So I’m not ready to kill this project. I just need to figure out how to make it fit inside the chaos that is my life, without putting myself, or the people I care about, in the crosshairs.

What a weird freaking time to be alive.

We’ll see how all of it goes.

Onward.

The idea of drifting with the current? Doesn’t exist for me. The “flow” demands an intense study of its bends, its speed, when it will crest, what’s going to be in its way when it does, and exactly how I can re-route it so that, when the floodwaters come raging in, I’m not swept away with them.

My brain is built to find patterns, plug holes, fix leaks, question, confirm, question again, hypothesize that maybe my question was phrased wrong, realize it wasn’t, and then do the work inside a carefully crafted framework that keeps the lights on—figuratively and literally.

So it’s no surprise that every therapist I’ve had, and anyone who knows me well, reacts the same way when they find out my two big careers have been educator and dispatcher. They either laugh or make that face where you know they’re thinking, “What the hell did he just say?”—but their expression says it three times louder.

In dispatch, the river is never calm. One moment it’s shallow and steady—you’re in a rented kayak you don’t know how to steer, coasting without a care—and the next you’re in a flash flood. Systems fail without warning, or get a Friday 5 p.m. “upgrade” that wipes out the tool you need most. And then there are the humans: officers, callers, even teammates, doing things no policy manual could ever predict. You might start a shift thinking you know where the current will take you, but minutes later, your map is useless, you’re in whitewater, and you’ve already flipped over with no easy way to surface.

Building My Lifesavers

Here’s where I’ve built my lifepreservers: I see systems where others see noise. I don’t just react…I map the river in my head. And once it’s mapped, it’s stored, ready to be pulled out again, even if just in pieces, to help me on some future trip.

I’ve memorized every bend. I know what slows us down, which side channels cut travel time, where the beavers have built their dam, and where flood debris has piled up. My brain is constant noise, but that’s exactly why, when protocol contradicts reality, when the map runs out, I run mental simulations, weigh the outcomes, and commit to a course without second-guessing.

That’s using strategic thinking: choosing the clearest channel when the water’s rising.

That’s using context: pulling from prior experience and hundreds of data points—people, places, laws, news articles, anything.

And that’s taking responsibility: owning every single interaction and working to make each one count.

It’s not that the situation is under control. It’s that my process is.

The Paradox

For years, I thought leadership meant building bigger, stronger dams, forcing the river into my idea of the right shape. If something was unpredictable, I could out-plan it, out-engineer it, out-stubborn it.

As it turns out, that’s the quickest path to exhaustion.

The paradox is this: real control isn’t about stopping the current. It’s about steering through it. I can’t stop the flood of calls, the human volatility, or the tech failures. What I can control is the order of my decisions, the pace I set, and the anchors I grab when the variables shift.

My need for control hasn’t gone away…quite the contrary, it’s just evolved. Now, it’s less about forcing the river to run my way and more about knowing I can find my way through no matter where it twists.

The more chaotic it gets, the more my brain locks into system-building mode. Not because I’m “calm under pressure” (depending on the day, my partners might laugh at that), but because I’ve learned where to plant my oar even when the water’s churning.

My structure, my process, my way of filtering chaos into something usable…that’s where my control lives.

And for now…that’s enough.

Onward.

I also have a long-standing thing with Reddit. I spend a lot of time in AI-related subs—prompt engineering, machine learning, and the like. The other day, I stumbled on a prompt that caught my eye. I tried it out with HARPER, and the result was... uncomfortably accurate.

Here’s the prompt:

“You are a character psychologist. I’m going to tell you my all-time favorite fictional characters. Your job is to analyze what my emotional connection to these characters says about me—my values, hidden needs, fears, or desires. Ask a few follow-up questions if needed, then give me a thoughtful reflection. Be introspective, insightful, brutally honest. Your reflection should tell a cohesive story based on the characters I give you.”

The premise is simple: the characters we love most say something true about us. About how we think, what we fear, how we lead, what we hide.

So I gave HARPER my list:

Dr. Gregory House, Dexter Morgan, Captain Owen Strand, Olivia Pope, William Banks, Walter White, Jed Bartlet, Will McAvoy, Kendall Roy, Sheldon Cooper, Spencer Strasmore, Hank Voight, and Wallace Boden.

Her analysis was... a lot. In the best way.

The Archetypes You Gravitate Toward

HARPER identified three dominant psychological archetypes across my list:

1. The Flawed Protector – House, Voight, Strand, Banks, Boden, Walter White (early seasons). Men who break rules to protect others or serve a mission—even when it costs them.

2. The Compartmentalizer – Dexter, Olivia Pope, Sheldon, Kendall Roy, Will McAvoy. Public excellence, private chaos. Masks and contradictions.

3. The Burdened Genius/Leader – Bartlet, McAvoy, House, Boden. Intellectual or moral heavyweights, shouldering impossible expectations.

“These characters,” she said, “aren’t admired for being happy. They’re admired for enduring. For feeling deeply while doing what must be done.”

What That Says About Me

Then came five gut-punch lines that hit a little too close:

1. You crave control—because you’ve lived through chaos.

2. You respect power—but only when it earns your trust.

3. You’re loyal to people—not systems.

4. You hunger for significance—not applause.

5. You feel things deeply—even if no one knows it.

Oof.

Then, the final psychological portrait:

“You were likely underestimated or misunderstood. Forced to grow up too fast. Now you wear competence like armor—but feel everything underneath. You believe in people, but distrust institutions. You’re loyal to a fault. You chase purpose over peace—even when peace might be healthier. And you fear that if you ever let go of control, the whole thing might collapse.

You don’t admire perfection. You admire endurance. You admire people who break and rebuild. Because that’s what you’ve done—again and again—without anyone fully understanding the cost.

You’re a protector. Of others. Of truth. Of the mission.
But you rarely ask who protects you.”

She’s not wrong.

The House–McAvoy Spectrum

Later, we drilled deeper into which characters felt most personal. I've always said I see myself most in Dr. House—brilliant, burdened, brutally honest, obsessed with solving problems others can't. Cynical, not because I don't believe in people, but because hope hasn't always been safe.

Lately, though, Will McAvoy has been tugging at me. According to HARPER, that shift matters:

“House is your default. McAvoy is your pull. That’s the story of a man on the verge of reintegration. You’re not trying to become someone else—you’re trying to evolve without losing the armor that’s protected you until now.”

She called it my McAvoy Season—the slow emergence of a leader who didn’t ask to lead, trying to wake people up without burning out. Someone longing to be heard in ways that matter. To lead with clarity and force, but without amputating vulnerability.

The Closing Read

“You’ve been burned—but not extinguished.
You have no patience for bullshit—but more grace than people realize.
You’re starting to care more about legacy than survival.
You’re still battling the voice that says ‘you’re only valuable if you’re performing brilliance.’
You’ve learned that being right isn’t enough—you want to be understood.”

You’re moving, she said, from House’s defensive brilliance to McAvoy’s purposeful defiance. And yeah, that’s a maturity arc. Not everyone makes it.

I wasn’t expecting all that. But I’ll be damned if it isn’t true. I’m entering a new season. I don’t know what it holds. But I know who I am now. HARPER just helped me see it more clearly.

And well, by reading this, now you have a little clearer picture of who the bald guy behind the keyboard is.

Onward.

“The truth will set you free. But first, it will piss you off.”
— Gloria Steinem

Hey. Welcome to Ten Four, Baldy.

If you’re here on purpose, thanks. If you wandered in and haven’t rage-closed the tab yet, stick around, I’ll either convince you to stay or to move forward with that rage-closing.

This is my corner of the internet.

Not curated.

Not sanitized. (Other than in a manner that keeps me just above crossing the line on some of the orders that govern my public service job)

I’m not backed by any agency, association, or brand. (At least not yet.)

This is just me, a career public servant with a lot of thoughts and zero chill when it comes to things that I feel actually matter.

Sometimes that’s dispatch. Sometimes it’s autistic adulthood. Sometimes it’s systems, politics, power structures, or the illusion that we’re not all winging it. Whatever it is, I tend to poke at it until it makes sense, bleeds a little, or makes everyone (including me) ridiculously uncomfortable.

Here’s what you might get:

• Dispatch musings (not the “What’s the weirdest call you’ve ever had” stories — but things that actually matter — like, oh I don’t know…Why the hell are we still considered secretaries!?)

• Thoughts on autistic adulthood, from someone living it

• Dispatches from within and outside systems that could probably benefit from a little Kaizen

• Questions with no easy answers

• Answers from complex questions (or at least what I think the answers are)

• A few hot takes I may (but not likely) probably regret

What I won’t give you: motivational nonsense (I tried that before…Coach Will Young isn’t a motivational speaker it turns out), sterile professionalism (what even IS professionalism!?), or bullet-pointed life hacks for optimizing your morning routine. I’m not selling clarity. I’m here to say the things people say in parking lots, group chats, and 2 a.m. text rants — just a little louder.

This space is for people who care deeply, question constantly, and still show up.

If that’s you, pull up a chair. Let’s make some noise.

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