For what it's worth, here's the bullet points for my story:
- Dropped out of high school 6 weeks before end of Year 12 (to play in a band);
- Got married at 22 (wife was 19);
- Had our first child two years after we got married (now have three in total);
- Decided that playing music wasn't my future, anymore than the succession of dead-end day jobs to fund it (not to mention regular periods of unemployment in between);
- Started taking flying lessons at age 24, & obtained my CPL at 28;
- Decided that I would never put the family through the trauma of living in the backseat of a car whilst I drove around the Top End in search of a crappy job flying single-engine VFR for peanuts, so decided to stay in the Big Smoke & do an instructor rating;
- Spent the next 10 years climbing the greasy pole as an instructor, clocking up multi-hours teaching IFR, & getting the odd charter & airwork gig here & there;
- Stumbled into a job as an A330 (sim) instructor with a major airline at age 38;
- Scored a B737 gig with a major airline at 39 (that was five years ago), & have been flying A330's for the last year.
So... From a dumb-ass high school dropout who got married too young, got his CPL ten years too late, who never did the "rite of passage" up north - & still managed to end up flying widebodies with a major airline in spite of it all - it can be done. All it takes is an incredibly supportive wife & kids, years of hard slog, & a bit of divine intervention.
