For new attorneys, it's brutal. The little acoustic trio I used to play in had a lovely singer - she was terrific. And she was a junior associate who was miserable with the workload. She finally bailed on us a couple years ago.
Heard last week she got out of legal, has been singing and has cut a new album. It's amazing.
One tiny little datapoint, I know.
The above advice has resonated with me lately as I have been getting closer to "the goal." And I've wondered...because I'm in the first category. From a pure economic survival point of you, I can not-fly for a living.
But, my soul is dying a little from the choices I've made. And while I can live with them, I want the chance to make a different choice....for so many varied reasons that, ultimately, I'll sum up in a sec....
<punches some buttons on the time machine...apologies for the length of this...>
The rest of this post is more addressed to the GenPop, but you've always been really good at articulating things I'm thinking so I'm going to (with a little bit of shame) appropriate your post here because it's relevant
@Acrofox .
I very specifically remember an argument about the airline life around 10-12 years ago here, where
@mtsu_av8er was making the point that if you're happy doing what you're doing at the regional, then that's it and you're good and no reason to bitch about it. He got an inordinate amount of crap from people on this website telling him that he was wrong to be enjoying what he was doing, essentially.
You notice he doesn't post here much anymore. I'm not claiming causation, but I suspect he was ultimately happier not wasting his time defending a decent philosophy that worked for him.
So many of the complaints I have seen about The Industry come from people who have never really worked outside of it. There are just as many pilots romanticizing a "normal" day to day job (especially one like mine where I pretty much set my own hours, have good salary and benefits, etc) as there are guys like me on the outside looking in. And the thing is, I can fly, right now, for myself, when and where I want. I do have that luxury.
But, like our friend Fox here, I see more to the job than just the flying. And the part of the gig that really attracts me is that
I can leave the job at the job when I'm not there. I like the idea of the non-flying aspects of the job, and, in my mid-late-40s now, I've learned not to define myself by what I do, but rather how I feel about doing it, and the impact I have on other people.
The inability to really have a positive impact in people's lives is a large part of what's driving me out of a 25-year career. I woke up at 3 o'clock this morning, sweating a little from a stress dream because I realized something a potential client said in a meeting yesterday was potentially a dealkiller for us, and there's
a lot riding on the deal. As I gradually calmed down and went back to sleep, thinking about how I was going to deal with it today, I thought to myself,
"this is no goddamned way to live your life."
Because this happens a lot more often than I would like to admit. Perhaps it says more about me than the career.
I recognize that a large part of how I feel in the paragraps above is steeped in how I respond to my reality - I get that. I am also becoming aware of the idea that perhaps I can change those responses and reactions and learn to live happily and well in what I'm doing. My daily reality is, in many respects, many of y'all's plan B.
Yeah. I can keep this job. I just don't want to. Or - more finely put - I don't want to be the person I am in this job.
So - to sum it up, The flying version of me is a happier, more content, better person - both to myself and the people around me.
I love the above three paragraphs, because there is a resonance of contentment there that I aspire to. It's at least partially congruent with some of the things I love about flight instruction, which didn't really dawn on me until I read the above. And I suppose - in fact, I know - that there are many ways to achieve that level of contentment.
The fun part is that I'm still learning who I am in some ways, and what I want. And while I work toward the qualifications, the absolute luxury will be having the opportunity come up and being able to be honest with myself and walk away if it doesn't feel right. This makes me a very, very lucky person. I, too, will probably never fly at a Major. I'm okay with that.
