Where are we running?

Self-doubt can build you up one day and be self-destructive the next.

I'm reading about an impending strike at an airline company that I'm very likely to work for straight out of college. They fly 50-70-100 seat jets for bigger airlines like the big U and big D. This company, like many national contract carriers that are stepping stones to the big airlines for aspiring pilots like myself, has a poor morale, a corrupt union, and shitty pay rates. I hear making a whopping $37,000 when you're a year under thirty is really attractive.

Their new pilots have a choice between a rock and a hard place. If these one-year "probationary" pilots don't show up for work during the strike, aka, go on strike, they will be fired.

If they work through the strike, to keep their jobs, a paycheck or just out of principle, they will become a scab.

Being fired from a pilot job may mean that you will have an extremely difficult job trying to find a company that will hire you. Certainly it won't be anything on a level like the job you got fired from. At interviews, when you get asked if you have ever been fired, you have to say yes. You are fucked.

Being a scab is an equally undesirable existence. Your name and picture will appear on a national list of scab pilots that everyone, even WikiLeaks readers, will be able to see. You will have extreme difficulty getting along with any pilot you work with, because you are a scab. You will get no respect. You likely won't be able to find a job because anybody that does as much as google your name will find out that you are a scab. You worked through a strike. You stepped on the backs of fellow striking brethren and took what you could for yourself. You are fucked.

Reading about this, this possibility that could face me one day, of course made me wonder what the fuck I am doing with my life. I have a couple more months to choose to do something different. But I have already let flying become a part of my life, and I won't think any further about doing anything else.