The Dream VS The Reality
I have read and re-read PPRUNE for months. I have read "So you want to be a helicopter pilot" and the various links. I have considered every other possible career under the sun but still I come back to wanting to be a helicopter pilot.
I know that it won't be as glamourous as I'd like to imagine but I post here in the hope that somebody might be able to give me a slice of reality and maybe a slice of hope.
I graduated a few years ago with an engineering degree and have worked in various offices for a bit but the experience continually leaves me feeling utterly despondent. I have considered banking, doing a law conversion degree, joining the foreign office, getting into journalism and broadcasting but none grab me like flying.
I just returned home from a year spent cycling from London to China so I have travelled a lot and would like to live abroad and have a fairly nomadic lifestyle. I long for an exciting lifestyle, different from the mundanity of suburban Britain!
I will work for a few years to save some of the money and then I have this dream of qualifying as a helicopter pilot, instructing to get my hours up, working in the north sea or other offshore to clear the debt as soon as possible and then being able to live and work abroad, 2 weeks on 2 weeks off, doing a wide variety of all of the different types of helicopter work there are all over the world, from logging in Canada, to fire fighting in Greek forests, to heli skiing in the Alps, to learning Portuguese and flying the heli taxis of Sao Paolo and anything else that I would find exciting.
So am I being completely far fetched with my dream? Can it be like this? Or is this a career that is nothing like as exciting as it seems? Do you still get that kick after 40 years? does it remove you from the hectic lifestyle of the 9 to 5 rat race? do you feel jaded? do you make a good living?
...Is it the best job in the world??? I just dont want to live a boring life!