OFF SCRIPT: The Blue Light Blur #15

Not belonging anywhere for a while

The strange space between two versions of you

Christmas 2025 sat in a strange place. By then, Chief Firearms Instructor Inspector me and civilian me had not quite passed the torch between them. One identity had been set down, but the other had not yet fully taken shape. I was no longer in the old world, but I had not fully arrived in the new one either.

That in-between space was harder to name than I expected.

As I often do in periods of stress, I kept myself busy. There was planning to do for the new role, practical things to separate from the old one, and the ongoing process of trying to understand what this new chapter was actually going to feel like. More importantly, though, I began doing things for myself again.

That mattered more than I realised at the time.

When creativity returns before certainty does

What I had learned from the final years of policing was how easy it is to lose yourself in a role and hand over more of your life than you ever intended. Positions, titles and institutional identities can quickly become all-consuming, and they replace people far faster than people imagine while they are inside them.

Once I stepped away, something unexpected happened.

The mental blockers lifted.

It felt like having a blindfold removed and suddenly seeing clearly again. In that period between finishing one world and properly entering the next, I wrote a short film, a first draft of a feature, and finished a novel I had been working on since accepting the new job in October.

I felt liberated.

That freedom did not mean the uncertainty had disappeared, but it did show me something important. The creative identity I had buried beneath the uniform had not gone anywhere. It had simply been waiting for room.

The question of who you are now

The uncertainty still lingered. When I had the opportunity to visit the new workplace before officially starting, it did not settle my nerves. If anything, it sharpened the question of who I was in that moment. I knew I needed the old identity to be respected and left behind, but the speed of my departure had meant there had been no slow fading out. The return to hand everything in had already shown me how quickly I could be erased from one world.

That should not have surprised me, but it did.

It also raised an oddly personal question that I had not anticipated.

Was I still 3071?

Collar numbers become part of the fabric of policing identity. They are spoken more often than people probably realise. They become shorthand. Recognition. Presence. Even my private Instagram account had carried that number in the username.

When the job ended, I found myself wondering whether I should delete it, rename it, or leave it where it was. Was that number still part of me? Would it always be? Did I even want it to be?

It sounds small until you have lived inside a system where numbers become part of who you are.

Out of sight, out of mind

There was a sudden severance after leaving, partly self-imposed and partly revealed through others.

When I bumped into former colleagues, conversations hovered awkwardly in safe territory. Weather. Generalities. Vague questions about how things were, without ever really getting specific. It often felt as if people were uncertain how to speak about the job once I was no longer in it, or perhaps uncertain how much I wanted to hear.

A trusted few remained my conduit back to that old world. They kept me informed about what was happening, the internal dramas, the things that had changed and the things that had not. Those few mattered because they were the people who had moved beyond role-based connection and into something closer to friendship, even if I have never considered myself particularly good at that word.

For everyone else, the shift was quicker.

Out of sight.

Out of mind.

That is not always cruelty. Often it is simply how institutions work.

Creating your way across the gap

I have always processed through creating. That was one of the things I explored so much while writing NeuroEdge. Creativity has always been the place where my brain makes sense of itself, and without that outlet I suspect this phase would have felt far more like mourning.

Instead, the things I wrote carried me forward.

The novel was about a futuristic detective so it had an anchor in policing (very tenuously). The screenplay belonged to a different world entirely. That mattered. It allowed me to move through the transition without being forced to relive everything directly. Creativity became the bridge between past and present.

Not an escape.

A bridge.

The danger of lingering too long

The space between two worlds should not be underestimated. It gives you time.

Time to decompress, to reconnect, to process, and to mark the ending properly. For me, that was invaluable. But I also became aware that this period carried its own risk. Too much stillness can easily turn into melancholy. Too much looking backwards can cast a shadow over what comes next.

That does not mean the blur should be rushed.

It means it should be inhabited consciously.

There has to be enough space for reflection, but not so much that the past begins to stain the future.

Not belonging as part of the transition

Looking back now, I can see that not belonging anywhere for a while was not a sign that something had gone wrong.

It was part of the transition itself.

I no longer belonged to policing in the way I once had. But I had not yet fully grown into the new shape of my life either. That left a gap. Uncomfortable at times, but necessary.

The instinct is often to fill that gap immediately. To rush toward a new identity, a new certainty, a new place to stand.

Sometimes, though, the more honest thing is to let the space exist for a while and learn what starts to emerge when you stop gripping the old version of yourself so tightly.

Mirror moment

There are seasons where you no longer feel at home in the old world and have not yet rooted yourself in the new one.

That in-between space can feel unsettling, but it is not empty.

Sometimes it is simply the place where the next version of you is gathering itself, quietly, before it fully arrives.