Just wanted to chime in with a slightly different perspective.
I'm a career changer, currently moving from IT to professional cooking.
There are a lot of parallels between cooking and flying: low pay, long, long hours, lack of a life, etc.
Just like pilots cooks are working when everyone else is having fun.
One quote of your's got me thinking:
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I went from enjoying life with my girl, spending time on the water fishing and taking day trips, driving a nice truck and having a good time - to - miserably broke, home sick for the love of my life and scrapping pennies off the floor to maybe get to eat three meals a day. My only joy is when we're off the ground flying.
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Re-read this comment. It kind of contradicts itself.
Is your ONLY joy flying? Or do you get joy out of fishing, taking day trips, and being around home?
No one here is going to lie to you: flying for a living, especially for an airline, keeps you away from home, and cuts into your free time, and it will do that for a long, long time.
For me, I found cooking, but I hate cooking at home. What I love about restaurant cooking is the chaos and the lack of downtime. My current job...I sit for 8 f'ing hours a day. It kills me.
Anyhow, passion is a great thing. Passion can carry your through a lot of tough times. Passion, however, will not make something that you are just not suited for work out for you. I have a passion for IT. I love technology. I, however, just cannot do math. I can't sit for 8 hours a day typing on a keyboard. I don't deal well with meetings, etc. So while I may have passion for IT...I just cannot be happy doing it....weird? Yeah, but it's the truth. Computers and technology are my hobbies, but cannot be my job.
You may be happy taking flight training, but then again you may not be happy in the actual job.
You have to decide that for yourself.
In the end, all situations get better. You either find your joy or you decide that it just isn't worth sacrificing good things in your life for a job.
That's not quitting. That's being realistic. That's realizing that life is too short to be spent unhappy in a job.
I always use this equation:
1 day = 24 hours = 8 hours of sleep + 8 hours of work + 8 hours of freetime.
Being unhappy at work can make you unhappy during your freetime or require you to spend part of your freetime recharging emotionally, which means you might be unhappy for the 8 hours at work, and then 4 hours of your freetime, which means you're spending 12 hours or half your life unhappy, or at least not doing what you want to be doing.
Life is just too short for that, and any misery in our lives can make us miserable people. People that our loved ones might not want to be around. You can only spend so much time around someone who is a downer, before you become down yourself.
The point I'm trying to make is consider not just your job, but your lifestyle. How do you want to live your life? What kind of person do you want to be?
Sometimes, the things we do that we believe are noble really aren't. There is a fine line between doing something hard, and just torturing yourself.
Hope things get better for you. I wish you luck and happiness, in whatever you do.
Oh one more thing...
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Worth more then my fiance?
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Never. No job, no amount of money, is ever worth a person. We were not put on this Earth to be airline pilots, cooks, bus drivers, or plumbers. If we were we'd see cave paintings of 747's and Greyhounds. We were put on this Earth to be with other people. Friends, lovers, husbands, wives, just people. We learn so much for other people, and gain so much more from them than any job.
It always gets me how people treat other people like they are disposable, and to get on a soapbox for a second: a person who has been divorced multiple times, cheated on his wives, neglects his partner, or even abuses them has no RIGHT to tell anyone about the sanctity of marriage.
Also flying is the only profession I've come across that actually labels pilots who get divorced as having A.I.D.S or Aviation Induced Divorce Syndrome.
I do wish you happiness and luck, and as I said, ever dark period is balanced out by a light one. It's just the way of the world. Even manic depressives get happy at some point...even if it is just for a short time.
Naunga