sleepyrascal,
Echoing the comments of hollingworthp - I love my job. It has its good and bad points, every career does, but on the whole I have absolutely no regrets. That's not to say I can say hand-on-heart that I won't have a thirst to try something different flying-wise in years to come but the day job for me, at the moment, is pretty sweet.
I'm a similar age to yourself and have been flying twinjets for a well-known charter airline for about 2 years now. I too worked quite a few different jobs before coming in to flying and spent a few years at uni too. It took me 2 years to pay for a PPL alongside working as wages were a pittance before training for the professional licence full-time.
It's the winter season now so I'm pretty quiet - maybe a ski flight (back home by lunch time!) and a medium haul to the Canaries. No more than 2-3 days work a week. The summer's pretty hectic and can be quite knackering but it all balances out. I get the occasional stop over for a night or two in Egypt or west Africa to keep it interesting too. The pay's great and there's opportunity for extra work (I made the equivalent of about 70k gross as a low-time FO last year!). The T&Cs vary greatly between companies and I'm not blind to the fact that the industry has changed quite a bit, even since I entered it only 2 years ago, but there are decent companies out there - yes, management can sometimes be a chore and T&Cs sometimes have to be fought for but that only makes the airline industry very similar to any other.
I'm not naive or oblivious to the downsides - like hollingworthp I have the benefit of having done other things before flying, giving me a much greater appreciation of the good, the bad and the same.
Things I love - still, on a crisp winter morning, sometimes getting a little thrill as I walk around the huge machine I'm about to fly, the view out of the window can sometimes be pretty amazing (it's always changing), I fly with some great guys (good banter!), I get to get off at the other end sometimes and lounge by the pool, do some snorkelling, quaff some beer, banter with the crew, etc. I love the responsibility and get a huge satisfaction from a job well done. I'm a bit of a geek so enjoy the technical nature of the job too. There are loads more...
Things which can be a chore - sometimes there are anti-social hours and the inability to make certain dates (birthdays, weekend nights out, etc.) can be annoying. Fatigue can be an issue. But I knew all of this when I signed up so I can't really complain.
If you keep being niggled by the feeling that it's something you want to do, then you probably have your answer as to whether to crack on!
Good luck,
B&S
Last edited by bucket_and_spade; 24th Jan 2010 at 14:53.