I spent 20 years as a career criminal.

To do this and not be a career convict, your entire lifestyle has to fit your career choice. A few examples:

• Friends never got to know where I lived or my last name. It makes it socially restrictive when you can't have people over.
• Phone numbers are a controlled thing, you have a couple or three at a time, all must be memorized, and it is important who knows which one.
• What was in my pockets/wallet could never be a random thing. It must be thought out, every time. You hear about people getting caught because they dropped a parking ticket at a crime scene? It should not have been on their person.
• Everything must be habit because consistency means freedom. Making sure the stove is off when you leave the house, Always having the exact same backstory. If you do it the same way every time, you don't slip up.
• You drive like a granny. Every traffic law obeyed, every time. "Huge load of contraband found during routine traffic stop" doesn't happen if you don't get stopped.
• You have to be polite to people, and you always avoid fights. If you carry a gun, any fistfight is a potential gunfight, and if the law gets called over a minor dispute, you have a big problem.
• You have to work hard to make all the people in a deal happy. In the criminal world there is no small claims court, so a disgruntled person may resort to informing, violence, etc.
• You try never to be in the presence of children. Take any offense... Now add "in the presence of a minor" It makes it much worse.
• Your career ends the first time you get arrested. A person with a good lawyer can beat any charges... once. If you go to court on murder, smuggling, dognapping, whatever, and it is the only thing on your record then the jury, and even the judge and prosecutor, can be swayed. They just don't expect serious crimes out of first time offenders. But if you have even a single prior? it get's a lot harder.
• You learn to plan from the trial backwards. In other words, you have to be constantly thinking "If I had to explain this to a jury, could I?" Your life is about manufacturing opportunity for doubt.

Overall, the life of a career criminal is very restrictive. I couldn't have a tattoo, couldn't casually mingle with people, couldn't dress in a way that stands out. You can't ever really relax.

Don't get me wrong, it was tons of fun, the money was decent, and I don't regret doing it all those years. But it is truly a lifestyle, at least if you don't want to spend the rest of your life in prison getting raped.