I'm writing to saying goodbye...

[Maximilian_Jenius]

You bailing on JC too?

Still here, though my engagement has honestly dropped a bit. Been a bit more of a lurker. But, nah... just aviation, at least as a career anyway. We'll see if I ever fly again, as my much needed aviation sabbatical continues. But IR training and my AMEL, we're the best parts of my primary training (to me). I absolutely hated Commercial, it was a HUGE . At some point, when I can afford it. I'd love to get more hours in a multi, just for the fun of it and eventually rent one solo. I love seeing all the Seminoles, from AeroGuard at KDVT fly over my house in the pattern. I absolutely love multi-engine GA planes. I think insurance mandates at least fifty hours PIC, to be able to rent a multi solo. I have one hour of PIC in a Seneca. Giggle. Gonna be a while at $500 an hour, and $75 an hour for a MEI in the right seat.

 

[///AMG]

Even if you have decided this isn't a career path for you, I'd certainly encourage you to keep flying. I imagine you have the means to, and it sounds like the desire as well, maybe save doing a bunch of chandelles, or whatever the commercial involves these days. GA flying is a perfectly sufficient outlet for a lot of my friends who never wanted to do this professionally if it didn't involve afterburners. Not being at a 121 doesn't make you any less of a pilot. I imagine that it is a lot more fun and "free" in a lot of ways.

 

[ppragman]

Life is short dude. Do the things you want to do, not the things you think you want to do. Congratulations! We need more people doing the work you're going to be doing far more than we need more pilots. o7

 

[ozziecat35]

Knowing you, you gave it everything bro, and that’s something to be proud of. Like you said timing’s a bitch and in the end the luck wasn’t on your side, but not for lack of effort. Good on you for making a decision you have peace in. Next time I’m in town first ones on me.

 

[Maximilian_Jenius]

Knowing you, you gave it everything bro, and that’s something to be proud of. Like you said timing’s a bitch and in the end the luck wasn’t on your side, but not for lack of effort. Good on you for making a decision you have peace in. Next time I’m in town first ones on me.

Thanks bro, it means a lot. If I was thirty-five to forty years old, or better eighteen to twenty-five, I'd be all over it. This career is meant to be started when you're younger. It's harder, but not impossible when you're a career changer. Life sucks and it isn't always fair. But that's life.

 

[KVNC]

I don’t frequent JC all that much any more but I have to say I felt a little sad reading this thread. I recall reading your posts since I was a teenager on here and your fight chasing the dream. That said, there’s no shame in doing what’s best for yourself. My wife is an LCSW and has her own practice. She loves it and is very fulfilled by it. Probably more than I am in the day to day of my career. Also, she has out earned me through a good portion of our relationship. It’s a solid career. I wish you luck!

 

[Maximilian_Jenius]

I don’t frequent JC all that much any more but I have to say I felt a little sad reading this thread. I recall reading your posts since I was a teenager on here and your fight chasing the dream. That said, there’s no shame in doing what’s best for yourself. My wife is an LCSW and has her own practice. She loves it and is very fulfilled by it. Probably more than I am in the day to day of my career. Also, she has out earned me through a good portion of our relationship. It’s a solid career. I wish you luck!

Ooof, lol...

Thanks for the words of encouragement. That's the goal to have my own practice. I'm on the social work forum on Reddit and have read that an LCSW in private practice, depending on the cases load that their willing to take on, and specializations and can make between $150k-250k. Not bad, very encouraging. Especially if you're doing it via telehealth.

I just talked to one the Social Workers at one of my in-patient jobs, last night. They have LCSW supervision, which is awesome and it's free (huge) for full time Social Workers. That's starting to be harder to find as mental health facilities and private practice therapist, have started charging for supervision, for profit to the tune of $55-80 an hour. With three thousand mandatory hours, it really adds up. So, yeah... things are really starting to look up. I'm encouraged. Still waiting to hear back from the state universities that I applied to.

 

[///AMG]

You don't remind me of this, but this topic (career change, challenges) does. Navy bud of mine is having a rough time getting hired in 121 land. Chatting on phone, he's kinda getting desperate now that he has retired from Uncle Sam, and is worried about putting food on the table. I told him "dude, there are literally a million awesome things you could go get paid to do right now......like 3 of them involve flying airliners (or even flying). Don't stress". And fortunately for you, you've got a mature career now. Sometimes the grass isn't greener.

 

[Maximilian_Jenius]

You don't remind me of this, but this topic (career change, challenges) does. Navy bud of mine is having a rough time getting hired in 121 land. Chatting on phone, he's kinda getting desperate now that he has retired from Uncle Sam, and is worried about putting food on the table. I told him "dude, there are literally a million awesome things you could go get paid to do right now......like 3 of them involve flying airliners (or even flying). Don't stress". And fortunately for you, you've got a mature career now. Sometimes the grass isn't greener.

Honestly, that was me too. I'm no spring chicken at forty-nine. Each year each set back out of my control, was like a ticking clock for me, with age 65. It was super, super f-ing stressful and depressing. Which was leading to furtherance of my depression and anxiety, and my desire to not want be a failure. Or disappoint myself, or others counting on me. To make this lifelong dream a reality, come hell or high water. But the dream was becoming a f-ing nightmare of stress and depression. I was drowning. So, I had to give up to win. It was hard... hard. Lots of tears. I sat at the Sky Harbor observation area for hours, one day, lots of feels. But I told myself that I needed to be okay with my decision when I left. No second guessing, no looking back. No regrets. The car ride home was hard. But it got better as I got closer to home and had clarity and acceptance.

I'm excited for my new next step. I've said that I am a good stick in a plane. But this psych stuff, it comes natural to me. Everyone has natural gifts I guess. This is mine. My mom says that as a kid I was a natural leader and therapist to all my friends. I scored exceptional in high school, in regards to emotional intelligence and empathy. The test suggested that I should work in the human services field. I'm finally listening.

 

[Maximilian_Jenius]

You don't remind me of this, but this topic (career change, challenges) does. Navy bud of mine is having a rough time getting hired in 121 land. Chatting on phone, he's kinda getting desperate now that he has retired from Uncle Sam, and is worried about putting food on the table. I told him "dude, there are literally a million awesome things you could go get paid to do right now......like 3 of them involve flying airliners (or even flying). Don't stress". And fortunately for you, you've got a mature career now. Sometimes the grass isn't greener.

In retrospect, I think that as a career changer that things would have been easier and the dream would have become a reality, had I probably had six figures in the bank. To be able to quit my job. Pay for training, and only focus on training and have money to live off of, while in training. Not having that, and still punching a clock and working sixty plus hours a week, yeah it kind of divided my loyalties and attention and dragged it out. Too far.

Aviation is all about luck and timing. I had neither.

 

[drunkenbeagle]

In retrospect, I think that as a career changer that things would have been easier and the dream would have become a reality, had I probably had six figures in the bank. To be able to quit my job. Pay for training, and only focus on training and have money to live off of, while in training.

Even if you had done that a few years ago, the odds of getting a job in the last year have been less than great. And ironically, it gets even harder to find instruction work once you have ATP minimums, as some/many employers assume you aren't going to be there for long.

 

[ppragman]

Not being at a 121 doesn't make you any less of a pilot.

Arguably, the best pilots I know never set foot in a 121 cockpit, or only did so much later in their career. If anything, straight to 121 out of CFIing probably reduces your skills and capabilities. You're probably a better airline pilot than I would have ever been if you go that route and I'm not saying they're unsafe, but... I don't know, I think you miss out on something when you don't have to do something in the airplane where you have to face death here and there. Like, having to make decisions on your own unsupported by dispatch or another set of eyes to check your work until after everything is said and done is probably (maybe) a good thing for us. And I don't just mean pilots. The best guys I ever met in the airplane had really circuitous routes to success and had done some weird things working in some objectively dangerous situations. They also LOVED flying - no scratch that - they were IN LOVE with flying and literally couldn't see themselves doing anything else, so they "made it work" often times when perhaps that shouldn't have.

And @Maximilian_Jenius - to add to this, it's alright. Aviation eats her young, and it's totally OK to say, "wait a second, I'm going through this so I can drive around a piece of heavy sky machinery?! WTF?"

Looking back at my time "post-career" I really think there's a sort of resilience that gets built up when you're just going to do whatever it takes to learn and grow and "make it." You will put up with whatever sort of • you need to put up with (albeit usually temporarily) if it moves you towards your "goal" - whatever that is. If that goal is not defined, or something nebulous like "a good and comfortable life" it's going to be very hard because it's half a decade to get there at least. Knowing more about myself "now" - I don't think I would be willing to eat crap for 5-7 years to get where I eventually got to. Hell, I am literally contemplating going back for *more* school to do some engineering course ware and broaden my horizons and even now, at 37 I am thinking, "man, doing the aerospace engineering curriculum would be really fun and awesome... but I just got done with grad school and it was exhausting - do I really want to subject myself to that again for 2 years?" I cannot imagine having the energy or patience or motivation to start a flying career over again. Even if there was a magical pill where I could take it and I'd get my vision back to normal but the catch was "you have to start from scratch on your flying career certificate wise" I do not know that I would be willing to do it. I miss it literally every day - but... the ass pain associated with the job is high and someone tapping out is totally understandable.

I remember when we talked about going to the bush, going to Grant, or whatever, Max. That's kind of a young man's game - I mean - the bush, the west Alaska or the arctic, the type of flying, the work, the stress. In my mind it was ALL very fun - but not every person is cut out for that, and that's ok! Conversely, I have two friends now who have made it into the right seat of the 747 at ACMI du Jour and have decided, "wow, I really don't like this - the money is better, but I'm not fulfilled." Two friends who have said, "the brass ring ain't for me." One of them went back to flying 1900s up here, then pivoted into training and management. He's doing extremely well for himself and home every night (I should call him!). The other just said the hell with it and took a job doing King Air Medevac and left it all behind at least for now. Some people think they are crazy - so be it - but those guys know what they want out of life and are getting exactly that.

Even me, I went down to the lower 48 to build turbine time. I moved like 5 times in like 3 years lol. It was terrible. I lost a relationship over it but also I ended up meeting my wife on this circuitous ass route so it wasn't all bad, but I won't say that flying cargo and prostituting myself out for turbine time was a particularly pleasant experience. I remember the "house meeting" when the police searched the cheap ass flop house I lived in in FSD for $200/mo (@jhugz remembers this time in my life). I also had a LOT of fun, but I was 23 with 4000tt and a penchant for drinking heavily on the one day off I got a week. I'm not saying it was all bad, but I also wouldn't do it again, and I sure as hell wouldn't do it now and I certainly wouldn't do it when I was your age (that's not a slight, it's just I no longer have the tolerance for those kinds of shenanigans and I can't imagine dealing with it in a decade).

Anyway, I just woke up this morning to go to work, and I was kind of thinking about this post a little bit - you should know it's ok to tap out of flying. 15 years ago I might have even talked • or rolled my eyes "oh, boohoo, I am making it, how hard can it be?!" but that Pat was kind of dick at times and he was 22. Currently, this version of Pat today has seen some • and is (just in general) very tired. I just want to reiterate that it's totally ok - even admirable that you're doing the stuff you want to do instead of looking for this external sort of validation that flying gives you, and you not wanting to subject yourself to the "suck" is probably a smart move. I see a lot of chronically unhappy people in this world that are doing a lot of stuff because they either A) have no idea what they want so they're just trying to do something that the people that they admire want, or B) get what they want but are so unhappy in their life that they lack the ability to enjoy precisely the thing they always thought that they wanted, or C) never "make it" so they are always kicking themselves for not going for it.

You're none of thse - you decided to basically abandon that and focus on yourself and the stuff *you* want to do... that's pretty cool. I hope school is hard in the most fulfilling way and you're successful in all the ways you didn't know you wanted to be.