Jobs, dreams, and dream jobs….

my new office

The blackhawk course has officially started.  This should be the "home stretch" but the first weeks of the course are already proving to be as challenging as advertised.  My "stick buddy" talks about finding a job when he gets back home.  We're both guardsmen, so, we won't be full-time pilots when we get back home.  Hard to imagine we spend nearly two years here at Fort Rucker learning how to fly only to return home and go back to (or in some cases find) a job completely unrelated to what we do in the Army.  For me, I'll most likely return home and re-employ with JP Morgan Chase as a business banker.  It's a good job and I'm grateful I have something to return to.  I imagine the adjustment from wearing a flight suit to a business suit will be interesting, but I've done it before and I'm sure I can do it again.

This kind of brings me to the whole point of this blog entry.  Jobs, dreams, and dream jobs.  The bank is a job.  It's a good one, and it actually pays better than my job as a pilot in the Army.  I can remember as a kid I would dream about flying and being a pilot.  Being a pilot is definitely a dream job.  I say this all the time and it's very surreal but being a pilot in the military is a dream job.  I can't believe we get paid to do this.  Next week, I'll get into a blackhawk and get to fly it for the first time.  I've been in the Army for over 3 years and I have never flown in a blackhawk period.  I'm about to get paid to fly one now.  Crazy!  There is no way I would ever be able to afford to fly this aircraft on my own unless I won a serious powerball lottery simultaneously in several states…. and even then, I still probably wouldn't want  to pay to fly one.  So I guess being a helicopter pilot qualifies as a dream job.  It's just as surreal today as it was the first time I took the controls.