Flying for a living is just another job, all be it a good one, if you're not happy flying a TP then maybe you won't be happy flying a jet either.
Some of the happiest and most content pilots I have met have never stepped out of Ag or Rotary or Floaty's or Bush Flying or any of the multitude of specialist flying vocations that exist. Find a reasonable paying flying job in a place where you can be happy and enjoy your life, buy a motorcycle, go fishing, restore an old car, or whatever.
All the glamour flying is now with remote location bush flying not with airlines.
With the deepest of respect this warrants, your comments seem to be made with the pithy abandon of someone whose never experienced those wonderful, 'glamorous' opportunities. Bush flying is romantic only so far as there are moments you're flying along at sunset, or dawn, and it's absolutely stunning. 99% of the time you're cramming a legal years worth of hours into a tourist season, working with no FTLs, in aircraft that are beaten up and need to work, humping bags, smiling, and getting bitten by tetse flies whilst trying to keep track of your last crumpled box of Coartem and not piss off some officious paper stamper, who's determined to make you regret historic colonialism. Occasionally you have a sun downer in the vicinity of some exotic wildlife, but you're more concerned about trying to charm some suitable entertainment for the evening.
Try running a car on $850 a month before you've paid rent, let alone restoring one. What did you have in mind, by the way? No doubt some soft top run around from the sixties, to go with those sunsets. If I had a dollar for every time some BA pilot was a passenger, asked to sit up front and then told me how he'd trade jobs with me in an instant, I'd no doubt be round yours borrowing your tools to restore my own money pit of a midlife crisis sportscar. People tend to think the brief snapshot they see is idyllic without considering basic things like, 'what's it like living for years on a substance wage constantly worried about whether you'll ever have a career?'
I don't think the OP resents the TP work, rather rues the distinct lack of opportunities available to experienced pilots to progress their careers and increase that dirty word, their money. Your condescension, I suspect, will not make that frustration less. Stiff upper lip or not. Most small TP jobs don't leave much left each month for the basics, let alone restoring sports cars. Perhaps the OP should try a motorbike. Ahh, but that requires disposable income too.
To the OP, network like crazy for corporate gigs. Most CPs I've met value PIC time, decision making skills, etc... Good luck; it can happen.
