Sorry Horton. I thought you said the outcome was in your hands, not that your career was in your hands.

I'll agree the input is in your hands, and you can keep inputting until the day you die (and so should a man), but unless you are in ultimate control, someone else's hands may change the "outcome".

If you mean one can control all outcomes, then I must disagree with you.

Mr. Burke, you are quite a salesman for gumption, and I think that is honorable. To continue despite fierce resistance and failure toward a worthy goal is probably the best path to happiness. It's good advice, and you provide it often in this "leaving the career" forum.

If people leave aviation, let them. There are other worthy career goals in life, and many of those who leave realize that they were chasing the wrong goal, or at least the wrong goal for them. There are a number of difficult paths to develop one's self:

"‘How to face difficulties?' he declared again. 'In the realm of the unknown, difficulties must be viewed as a hidden treasure: Usually, the more difficult, the better! It's not as valuable if your difficulties stem from your own inner struggle. But when difficulties arise out of increasing objective resistance, that's marvelous!
Failures must be considered the cue for further application of effort and concentration of will power. And if substantial efforts have already been made, the failures are all the more joyous. It means that our crowbar has struck the iron box containing the treasure.
Overcoming the increased difficulties is all the more valuable because in failure the growth of the person performing the task takes place in proportion to the difficulty encountered.'"
-- Sologdin, speaking to Nerzhin in Alexander Solzhenitsyn's "The First Circle"