I’ve been remarkably busy, but after updating my logbook today I decided to take a little time and get some thoughts down. After today’s flight, my total time is now just over 300 hours (250 flights, 733 landings)... it’s surprising how long reaching that point took. I wasn’t originally planning to make it a career, but that changed a little over two years ago. Fortunately, flying is not something I get bored of – the tightly scheduled (and somewhat stress-tastic) program applies a lot of pressure, but it’s never monotonous. The flying turns the mediocre professors and the shitty subzero weather and the featureless terrain into background noise.

I love the flying; it’s what I’m here for. Everything else is secondary. Aviation has always been in my life; my dad’s been an instrument-rated private pilot for decades, and I grew up with flying. We never took road trips – if it was further than three or four hours, we’d just fly. It didn’t take any prodding for me to start work on my certificate; now, six and a half years later, I’ve been a pilot for nearly a third of my life. I don’t really think about it much, but I suppose if you’d grown up around rally racing, hunting, or anything that’s a family pastime it’s probably the same sort of natural feeling.

Anyway, what it really comes down to is passion. If flying has been a background interest for years, bring it to the foreground. Save some money for a demonstration flight, or look into some of the training programs in your area; you’d probably be surprised at how many student pilots have waited twenty or thirty years to get started. Give that third dimension a shot, and see if it’s something you love.