Pilot or Dentist...

Recently, I talked to one of my old high school friends. After college, he went into the Navy and did secret squirrel special ops stuff and travelled all around the world. I went into the Air Force and did the fighter pilot thing. Everyone talked about how much we had our sh-t together and were the smart ones after college. We did have a lot of fun.

Now he's out of the Navy and got a fancy MBA and works as a consultant. I got out of the AF and work as an airline pilot. We both now constantly worry about paying the bills and whether we'll have a job next month. And frankly, we're both a little bored.

Another one of our friends went to dental school. We used to make fun of him because teeth were so much less cool than what we were doing. Now, he owns his own business, works with hot dental hygenists every day, lives in a $800,000 house, gets paid junkets to Cost Rica and Palm Springs all the time to go to conferences on fillings or whatever, works 35 hours a week, swims in cash, and spends an awful lot more time with his wife and kids than I do. AND...like others have mentioned, he has the coin to fund his own flying...the "just for fun" kind of flying that I used to know how to do.

Dentistry may not be the most exotic job in the world, but it's awfully stable and it sure looks like a nice life, at least from the outside.