I’m not sure that’s at all true. I’m very skeptical that many of us will be able to work until age 65, whether it’s robots, we finally have the overdue “oh •!” Moment on climate change, or some populist politician of any stripe finally kicks the money machine into such a high gear that we get currency collapse. The younger folks especially aren’t wrong to chase that bag aggressively while it’s there.
yes, but also, there is value in having had adventures. I don't know, like, whatever you can do, make sure you pay off the bills, after that, who cares what airplane you're flying around. I got thumped out of this mess just when it was getting lucrative. That sucked for me, but the rollercoaster ride there in retrospect gave me WAY more interesting stories than most folks. It may just be because I am a weirdo (I'm fine with that), but not a lot of people have been to "secret squirrel long range radar sites" or built approaches into lodge strips, or flown the Napali coast to pick up a dying old person.
Granted, flying the JNU milk run would be dope at AS, but beyond the money, it seems that most of the guys who "made it?" the types of stories they had changed, the type of life they lived changed. Not all, but a lot.
Again, it wasn't all bad, but I think it might be better for your soul to change at 30 rather than 23 or whatever. But also, I could be full of •? Hard to understand what the road not taken is like.
I mean, "go get that bag" is definitely solid and I think young people should be doing that, but I think people should go have adventures.
t's not a place you can just find a niche and settle in, you're either a "have" or a "have not."
I disagree with this - I found a niche, and settled into it. For a long time I didn't, and was constantly looking to the "next thing" but I eventually decided what I wanted out of life (and it wasn't to sit in a flying building). It wasn't 121, but I did find it (albeit briefly) until I got sick. I even had decided to turn down a couple of 121 interviews. How wild is that along the way. I decided "no, I don't think that is me" and really it worked out. If I hadn't gotten sick, I'd still be happily driving around twin otters in the arctic or running an air taxi of my own. Big-Evil Oil LLC was lucrative enough to afford that. A lot of my friends have "found niches." It depends on what you want out of life?
What does "being ahead" even mean in this context? Like, so many guys have a house, get to be home frequently, and make a decent living. They're not getting UPS captain rich, but they're making $150-$250 depending on how much they work, the company etc. There are guys doing way better than that too, I would have been set to do much better than that by now had I not gotten sick. And many of these guys *enjoy* the work that they're doing. Medevac is one of these places, you see a lot of people spend 20 years at these shops, they raise a family at them, etc. because they *enjoy* the work and find it rewarding.
Obviously, that's a privileged position and these sorts of gigs don't work everywhere? But yeah. It's not black and white.
