A new start?

[Damian2]

Hi all!

Before I launch into my little tale I want to make you aware of something. As you read this I don't want you to feel sorry for me. All I want to do is get some stuff off my chest...

To date I've yet to even complete the Hawk and Harrier I posted about back in May. I owe two gents models, Scooterman's F-5 which I rebought and need to send and the person I owe an A-1 Skyraider for the T-28 they sent me (please pm me your shipping details!!)

There's no easy way to get to the point of this so I'll just blurt it out awkwardly: at 25 years of age I have had my second breakdown. It was preceded by months of depression centred on how my life had turned out and where it was going. I have not been happy with my life for the last 3 or 4 years. What made it worse was that I could not blame anyone other than myself. I had given up on chasing my dream for a life more ordinary and it was killing me. To compound that I had an insight into what I truly wanted to do. I wanted and indeed still do want to fly. But I could not get there by myself; it seemed for so long that because I made the wrong decision in 2000 that I would serve out a punishment for the rest of my life.

To add to that because of the state I was in mentally my marriage was disintegrating as I had pulled away from my wife to such a point that we were two people who merely lived in the same apartment. I could not face me let alone her. I truly felt like a failure. Sure I have a job that pays ok for mundane work and I half way to my law degree but inside my soul (you could say heart) was rotting. I had insulated myself from my friends, family and loved ones.

It's been 4 months since my "episode". I can tell you there has been a lot of shouting, crying and picking up of pieces. After talking at length with my wife and parents about how my depression and what I felt I needed I found the help that was necessary to get my life in order again. To that end my folks have agreed to loan me enough money to attend flight school and my wife has changed jobs to one that pays more so I can take a year off to get my commercial rating. Without them my dream would remain unreachable so I owe them a lot.

I start March 27th 2007. Wish me luck...

[lenny100]

i know what you are going through a i myself have the same problem, but after 6 "breakdowns" here in the uk you are unemployable, (the law says your not but i live in the real world).
Good luck on your recovery and i hope you life dreams come true.
my doctor recomends doing a mentaly active hoby such as makeing "airfix kits " as he puts it, so keep on glueing.

[Aircav]

ALL the Best
Steve

[Captain Canada]

Good show, Number 2 ! Glad you went out and got the help you needed....to often people.

Take care !

 

[nev]

Good luck with it mate.  Glad you got help, my wife had a nervous breakdown a few years ago and she's teetered on the edge a couple of times since.  What amazed me was when she was going through it, the number of phone calls, letters and visits we received from friends and family who'd had a similar problem.  Before that we never realised how common a problem it is (and were amazed at some of the people it had happened to, people you would put down as "strong" characters).

Good luck with the flight school thing, pilots are supposed to have the highest level of job satisfaction of all proffessions    

[AeroplaneDriver]

Damian,

It's easy to let yourself get down when you're chasing a dream that never seems to get any closer.  I also went through a spell in my mid 20s when I got pretty down about how my life had "turned out".  All of the friends I had made while learning to fly and building flight time as a flight instructor had moved on to airline and corporate pilot jobs, while I went nowhere.  

It's a hard thing to go through when that gold ring never seems to get any closer, but if I may I'd like to give a little insight gained after coming out the other side of that period of my life;  Flying is simply great.  Superb.  Incredible.  It is a job where the office has the best view in the world, where you see things most people can never even imagine, where you go to work every day knowing that you will be challenged, possibly to your limits, and where people put their lives in your hands.  It is a great job.  BUT, it is still just a job.

It's hard not to put it ahead of everything else, since it is such a graet job, but remember this-no pilot lies on his deathbed wishing for another hour of flight time in his logbook.  

The important thing is your wife.  If she is still around after what you have gone through, then she is a far more important part of your life than flying should ever be, and fixing things with her will have a greater impact on your life than flying ever could.

No matter how great flying seems right now, there will come a day when you are fed up with it.  There will be days when you just want to go home, but cant because a scheduler just called you and added two trips to your line.  You will miss birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, and milestones in your kids' lives.  While they take their first steps you will drag your tired donkey into another cookie-cutter hotel room for a few hours of rest before you have to go spend another day dealing with severe weather, maintenance issues, irate passengers, and pissed off coworkers.  If you go the corporate or charter route you will hate the fact that you are a highly skilled, highly trained individual who is expected to walk the boss's wife's chihuahua and pick up its crap on the ramp while your peers watch from the FBO and laugh.  You will hate being treated like a slave, and you will hate always being tired.  No matter how great the good times on the job are, eventually it will all come down to getting home to the wife and family.  

My old roommate from my flight instructor days (when I worked 60 hour weeks for less than $1000/month!) got an airline job ahead of me, and hated it after a year.  He hated it so much that he quit and went to work at a chemical company.  He loves it and has never looked back.  I never thought he would stop flying, and it shocked everyone who knows him, but he is happy.

Another friend didnt even begin flying until he was 30.  By 38 he was flying for a large low-cost airline, and now at age 44 he has been a captain for 3 years.  I was offered a job at the same airline at the same time and turned it down-If I had taken it I would now be making roughly $135,000/year.  This is a LOT (and I mean a hell of a lot) more than I make now, so I understand how it can be hard to look back on choices made in the past, but you know what? When I talk to him all I hear is how he wishes he had more time with his kids.

I guess what I would most try to get across to you is that at 25, your life has not turned out any way yet.  You may finish your commercial license, instruct for a year, get an airline or charter job, work your way up to a decent salary flying nice equipment then change careers before you hit 35.  Or it may not work out for you, and you wont end up flying-you may find some other calling and love it.  Or maybe you will end up as one of the many successful pilots who do it as a second career.  Either way, if you have a wife who is willing to stick through the rough times, SHE is better for you than any airplane or flight could ever be.

I remember how hard it is at 25 to feel like you have failed at everything when your dream isnt comoing true fast enough, but please Damian, stap back and look at the big picture.  Flying is great, but on the day you die you should be wishing for another day with those you love, not another hour in the cockpit.

You have drive and ambition and family who are supporting you.  With those ingredients and a bare minimum of intelligence and coordination you can have a great career as a pilot.  Just always keep it in the back of your mind that one day when you are a pilot in your 30s, 40s or 50s you will look back and wish that you had taken a path that provided more job security and a better family life.  

Good luck and hang in there!

now go finish that freaking Hawk!

[Damian2]

Hey guys...

Thank-you, really, thank-you for the kind words. This board is my extended friend line and I look up to a lot of you.

A.P.D what can I say? Your advice is of the best quality! My wife and I are "healing" our relationship and so far the last 2 moths have been the best in the last 2 years of married life (weird way that number keeps cropping up huh?). Through out this I've come to appreciate the bonds of family. My wife has been the best, her's was the shoulder I cried on. It really knocks the old pride down a few notches when its your wife cradling you and not the other way around but this is the 21st century so oh well.

The hardest part in all of this has been my pride. I really was too proud to admit that I had a problem and that it was causing a lot of damage. The process is by no means done and there is a lot of work to do ahead before I'll say that our relationship is solid but it's a start. From my side there is love there where for awhile there was nothing. =

I have to keep telling myself that every journey begins with that first step...


AS for the Hawk: I've got to fix the flpa hinges in place, figure out how to mount it in-flight and finally I've got to make up my mind what I'm going to hang off her. For weapons I think I'm going for Hellfire/Brimstone and rocket pods....

[Brian da Basher]

Best of luck, D2! That wife of yours sounds like a real gem!

Remember, I'm pullin' for ya, we're all in this together.

Brian da Basher

[Shasper]

D 2,

You're not alone. If its kooth, I'll share my story of somesort:

This last few months its been a rough ride (CAT  aint got nuthin on this), ever since Aug I've been going from one thing to the next up till now. And thru out this whole time I've been thinking about giving up on flying and doing something else. First a bit of background info:

2 years ago Sept. I did a 9 month ministry internship (where I met Tasha), and I came up with an idea of sorts to start my own fractional ownership company (like Netjets ect.). Fast forward to Aug of this year, I just busted my first stage check, went home to study the PP oral book & stuff, me & Tasha have been on the rocks for awhile and I find out she's been seeing other guys. We "broke up" (out of respect for the forum rules I wont said what it really was), and I didnt handle it well. I spent the next month or so doing everything legal & morally sane to get away from it all, but I couldnt give up the flying, no matter how much I tried. I came back to school and started picking up pieces, aced my 2nd try at the stage check and started getting everything set for my FAA checkride. In the mist of all this me & Tasha started talking again (she finally relised what she really wanted I guess), aced the FAA Oral but had to reschedual the flight. Finally took the flight & F'd everything up from the word go. I left the airport mad as hell, I told my mom I was switching majors, when I talked to my dad I said that I would just save everyone alot of $$ and time by just dropping out completely and I told Tash that I'd never set foot in a cockpit ever again (understand that it's taken me almost 4 years now to get to this point).

Well my mom told me I was just mad (gee, what ever gave you that idea ), dad talked me into not dropping out, and Tasha just kindly reminded me of what I thought up a few yrs ago. Common sense won out at the end and I told God & everyone that I was gonna go for it again.

Would I call this a breakdown, maybe what happened in Aug. All I know is I havent, and will not give up on flying. Thats been in me since i was a wee vesparian and it's the only thing that really makes me happy occupation wise.


D2, hang in there mate, the end of the tunnel is near.

Shas B)

BTW Nick, superb advice, I'll keep it in mind    

[SimonR]

I can't add much to APD's excellent post other than to say... "Aviation: great job, sh!t career!"

I wouldn't worry too much about the Mrs., I was divorced 18 months into my commercial aviation career!    

[Hatchet]

Dammit D why the hell didn't you say anything?!
I would have listened mate, who knows, it might even have helped (longshot, but hey ).

Anytime you feel the need, look me up - if I'm not on, I probably will be

See you my friend!

[Rafael]

Hola, mi joven amigo (Hi, my young friend) as i read your lines i cannot stop to think how impossibly young you are and that sometime way back, i too had you age. It is unfair for any person, young or old to judge how his "life has turned out", because that ordinarily entails social conventions that don't have to do anythig with who we are. What amazes me the most is the inmense fortune you have at home, in your marriage with that marvelous young lady (who, i hope "turns out " as good or better than my wife Genny, my soulmate, for 17 years). Turns Out that companionship of that kind is the only thing to hold on to in desperate times, the glue that avoid your coming unglued, and the cement of that brick house we call marriage. I really hope and wish that you find your way in life (your way, so be prepared to pay the price, you are whealthy enogh by now). I too had paid the price, and sometimes more than i had. I've been through the loss of 3 successful companies, lost clients, lost projects, and even lost weight!!! (fortunately, my hair is still on).What i never lost is the magic "Baby, i'm home!!!" moment, the place and the arms to run to, the soulder to cry on (yes, grown, macho latino men cry too). At 42, without money, without a stable job, since i opted for a mid-life-chenge-of-carrer, and an upstarting enterprise, some friends of mine would be terrorized, but i'm not. As Aeroplane Driver stated: "it's only a job", well i only have to add You are not what you do, remember that and be happy livin every day as if there will be no tomorrow, and do everythin for you and your sweetie, babe, mamita, or whatever you call her in the intimacy of you home. Bad times are always ahead, but good times too.

Best regards,
Rafa

[Shasper]

OK has a point, keep yer yap movin!

It works for me, especially if I talk with Tasha.



Shas B)

[Damian2]

Again thanks for all the support!! I am trully moved by the outporing of this community and reminds me why this is the first page I load up

[The Cat a.k.a Meowbag]

I don't normally reply to serious threads on forums, but I just gotta say -

Been in a very similar situation, and been helped out of it in a very similar way. Even down to being exactly the same age. Good luck, man, just remember - if everything's coming your way, you're in the wrong lane