Having a professional career plan and DOING something to move that football down the field are so important to a person’s everyday mood and demeanor – at least it is with mine.

When I left the airline business in mid December of 2008, I knew that at that moment, I was burnt out from flying for a living. As a guy who loves flying to a seemingly endless degree, the airline journey was one that I had to take at the time. I certainly had hopes that it would work out long term, that the upgrade time would be as brief as advertised, and that I could settle into (or perhaps become merely numb to) the fairly difficult lifestyle on the road. Sitting in that jet cockpit for the first several months was a dream come true – someone had actually hired little ole’ me as a crew member in piloting this 48,000+lb turbine aircraft around the country with 53 lives aboard. However, as with many things in life, I came to the realization that, “Yeah, OK, I am here and can do this. I finally get what its like to be an airline pilot.” Beyond that realization, it became a job – not a bad one – but just a job with little glory.

Fast forward several months and irregardless of my personal desires to continue or pull out, the company started downsizing and laying folks off and displacing pilots to different bases. Long story short, I tallied up the score and made the decision to resign in late December (would have been furloughed anyway the following March) so that I could hit the timing right for the Spring 2009 semester back at school. The planets had aligned for me to finally bust out my CPA license on a full time basis, dedicate an entire year to it, and give my all to make it count.

I resigned from the airline Dec 15, 2008, enjoyed the holiday season, then began the CPA journey on Jan 5th, 2009. I studied hard, worked hard, and prioritized it all out – fast forward to 2/16/2010, I took the very last section of the CPA exam (the AUD section), effectively wrapping up the journey. But, the fat lady doesn’t sing until she sings, so I had to wait about five weeks for the official final grade to come in. On about 3/24/2010, the official grade came in, slamming this chapter of my life closed. It was now time to roll up my sleeves and get back to work one way or another.

I sent in my application to the state and much to my chagrin, it bounced back as incomplete. Turns out that my previous 18 months of public accounting experience do not count towards the apprenticeship requirement for licensure due to the fact that said experience occurred before I became eligible to sit for the CPA exam. Had I applied to take the exam 6 months earlier, I’d have been a CPA right now. So, the final prize that I had worked so hard to achieve, was now a minimum of another 12 months way. Effectively, I would need to work a “new” 12 months of experience to meet the requirement. So any allusion to getting the CPA, then going back to the airlines was shelved – effectively forcing me into a decision to stick with accounting – at least for the short term so that I could finally finish this pursuit. One doesn’t pass the CPA exam and let it expire.

So, I began flooding the market with resumes…….*crickets*.

I flooded more……*crickets*

You get the point.

Fast forward five months and I am still basically unemployed. The economy is in a slump and jobs are tough to come by – its just the way it is right now. I try not to take it personally. However, I’ve been VERY fortunate to have had fairly steady work in the flight instructing business. I have been making some money, staying busy, etc and that has been a great thing. However, my current student load is slated to come to end during the next month. In other words, I don’t really have any other students on the docket starting mid Sept and beyond. I was going to have to draw a line in the sand at that point and come up with another plan so as not to waste my life away.

Well, last week, on 8/19, I finally get contacted by not one, but TWO, companies within about 15 minutes of each other. I am not going to go into details at this time, but I did a phone interview with company #1 on Friday and it seemed to go well. The HR rep told me in no uncertain terms that I could expect a call for an interview early the following week. I have an interview hard scheduled with company #2 for this Thursday at 2:00pm. Therefore, if company #1 actually calls me for an in person interview and the interview with company #2 remains unchanged, I’ll have 2 interviews this week.

Now, I HATE interviews. The newness of the whole thing, the “be on your best behavior” aspect of it, the uncertainly of the formality of the event, etc, all lead to nervousness. But, as with anything else in life, the only way through is through. That said, I am going to have to endure the nerves and suck it up this week as I trudge through these interviews.

Both companies seem promising and would satisfy my experience needs. One company is slightly more in line with what I thought I’d be doing, while the other is slightly different – but perhaps a great experience unto itself. Best case scenario, I am faced with two job offers. Based on my experience in the interviews, I’ll need to make the best decision from there. Second best is that I get an offer from just one of the companies, in which case, I’ll go there. Worse case scenario, I don’t get an offer from either. You just never know – I have no idea what competition I am up against – it could very well go this way. If this happens, I won’t lie – I’ll be pretty disappointed. However, compared to the status quo, I really have nothing to lose. Life will go on and the next opportunity will come along in due time.

I’ll post something on here towards the end of the week giving a synopsis of how the week went down and what sort of options came out of it. I’m not looking forward to working 40+ hours a week. I’ve been sort of spoiled – though it hasn’t been without its costs – with the comparatively laid back life style I’ve lived over the last many many months. However, I’ve got some fairly strong pent up desires to get back on a professional track, make money again, fix up my house, vacation overseas, and fulfill my lifelong desire to buy my very own aircraft. As nice as the day to day is right now, it has always been unsustainable in the long term. Supposing one of these jobs comes to fruition, I am VERY ready to accept the reduction in free time in order to start working on reaching my long term goals again.

I’ll keep you in the loop. Wish me luck.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 23rd, 2010 at 8:19 am and is filed under Day to Day Stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.