Why I Quit A Dream Job
Sure, some people might think I’m crazy for giving up the opportunity to “do cool shit,” but leaving the Navy’s flight school program was probably one of the best decisions of my life. It was the start of my transformation to a life of deliberate living.
It wasn’t an easy decision to make, but it was necessary.
How many times have you tried to force yourself to love something (or someone) to find out you never actually did at all? It’s hard, especially when it comes to your job, but I think it’s essential to start asking yourself the hard questions about whether you’re really in something for the right reasons otherwise, you risk sacrificing your sanity or, worse, your time.
On my first flight ever, I remember lifting off the ground and being amazed I was at the controls of that Cessna 172 (with my instructor backing me up of course). It was an average northwest Florida bright shining day at the beach, but this time I was taking it all in from a perspective high enough to avoid seagull droppings and the crazy spring break rush. I was electrified, nauseous, dazed, and petrified all in one flight. During the debrief my instructor even made fun of my “death grip” on the yoke. (Hi Brandon, I use my death grip in jiu-jitsu now.)
After a few months of flights, tests, survival classes, underwater training evolutions, and simulator events I thought I’d feel more excited once I got into the T-6B, but I didn’t. Why wasn’t I as happy as everyone else in flight school? I envied their excitement to finish the third phase of the program within 23-27 weeks. Don’t get me wrong, cruising a turboprop aircraft at 200 KIAS and spinning towards the surface of the earth from 16,500 feet was exhilarating, but it didn’t give me the same feeling of fulfillment the way sharing information to help improve lifestyles and increase longevity did (and still does).
At one point, my unhappiness morphed into shame. I was ashamed I wasn’t in love with being a pilot. I was ashamed to tell my parents I didn’t want to be in flight school and I didn’t see myself doing this for the next 12-20 years. Imposter syndrome took over and it showed during my 8th flight (my worst flight ever, I’m pretty sure my instructor pity passed me).
After some serious deliberation to leave the flight program, Josh and I went to the local river to mull it over. It was a beautifully gleaming 79-degree day. I remember looking back at Josh with a fat smile on my face like a kid who’d just been given an overflowing bucket of coins to play arcade games for 8 hours. It was the perfect environment free of any reminders or reasons that previously bid me to leave or stay. I just wanted to sit with myself and understand why I felt so conflicted. I needed to get to the core of the problem and ask myself why I was going through this program in the first place.
I sat and sunbathed as I thought a few things through.
Warning: you’re about to read a woman’s recount of an internal conversation she had with herself on the bank of a river in a forest.
“Why am I so unhappy? — I’m going to be a pilot in the Navy, but that doesn’t make me feel fulfilled. Why don’t I feel fulfilled? I’m not as good at being a pilot as I’d like to be and don’t feel like I’m really helping anyone by being a half-hearted pilot. Why am I not as good as I’d like to be? —I don’t eat, sleep, and breathe aviation. Why don’t I eat, sleep, and breathe aviation? —It’s not what I’d like to spend my life doing. So why don’t you quit? — I guess one thing I’m afraid of is what my parents and family will say, they’ll probably worry — But they’ll love you and be proud of you no matter what you do. Maybe I’m afraid of what other people will say?— Why should that even matter, it’s your life to live, not theirs.
Let go of the idea of what and who you should be and just be who you are.
So, there I was trying to get deeper and deeper to the source of my unhappiness when I decided to take a breather and jump into the water.
I was wading in the river, feeling the small pebbles pass between my toes when I decided to walk towards the other end of the bank. There were a few mangrove trees just along the shore, covering the edge of the bank to about five to six feet inward with this gloomy shadow. As I walked closer to this cooled twilight section of the river, I felt an uneasiness to step further. My cheerful demeanor waned. I felt my heartbeat begin to race; my breath begin to quicken. I turned my attention to these physical responses for a moment. “Why am I so anxious right now? What am I so afraid of?”
And then it hit me…
This was the exact response that came up every time I contemplated the idea of leaving the flight program. I was fearful to step further along the bank because I didn’t know what was there hiding in the darkness. I was fearful to leave the program, even though I knew I didn’t want to be a pilot for the rest of my life because I didn’t know what would be next. I’d always known, or at least had an idea of what was coming. After high school, it was college, after college, it was flight school, after flight school, it was flying for the Navy for the next 12 years. And I’d have 12 years in the Navy to figure out what would come after that.
By leaving the flight program I’d have to figure it out way sooner, and I wasn’t prepared for that. But I felt like if I didn’t quit this and figure out what I was actually supposed to do in this world, I was going to set my life on the wrong course and I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to quit and set it right. I had a feeling that I wasn’t supposed to fly for the Navy, but no answer of what I was supposed to do next; no clear direction. I knew something was wrong, but I was staring out into an open field of uncertainty and it was hard because as human beings we like control, plans, and knowing what’s to come.
Well, I chose to be a pilot, so why not just live out the product of my choice? Much like the river I was wading in, our likes, values, and beliefs are fluid. “We are each a river,” said poet and philosopher David Whyte,
“with a particular abiding character, but we show radically different aspects of our self according to the territory through which we travel.”
At that point in my life, this new territory I came flowing in, I no longer saw my service as a Navy pilot as the service I could best provide to other human beings.
Finally, I recalled my strengths, admitted to my weaknesses and came to the conclusion that the best service I could do to help others and feel fulfilled was to share knowledge and motivate them with my passions and strengths.
A few months after my epiphany on the river, 3 days after my solo in the T-6, I lost my maternal grandmother. It was a sudden death that nobody in my family saw coming. During that time of grieving with my family in the Philippines, I finally came to terms with my decision. I flew my first and last out-and-in (a set of flights to an outlying field and back to base), embraced my certainty in uncertainty and dropped the program.
Life is just too short to be absent from the things we love, particularly doing shit we don’t want to do to acquire shit we don’t really need.
The intention to live deliberately, (and immediately —thank you, Seneca) was born. (I later stumbled upon the quote by Thoreau when looking up a domain name to purchase for the blog and saw he “went into the woods to live deliberately,” which made me think I was Thoreau reincarnated for a moment, but I digress…)
This isn’t so much an explanation post for others who keep asking why I dropped the program, but encouragement for those of you who are second guessing taking control of your life and instead allowing circumstances to dictate the course of it. I’m also not telling everyone to drop out of what they’ve invested tons of time and money in (I’m lucky enough to be able to do so being debt-free with enough savings in the bank to hold me over should I be unemployed and a family that is able to help).
But I really, truly hope you take the time to ask yourself the hard questions and be brutally honest with yourself, especially if your work takes the precious commodity we call time away from you and hinders self-reflection. I know how cliche it is to say “follow your passion,” but seriously, even if you have the most kick-ass profession in the world, if you aren’t bright-eyed and jumping out of bed to do it almost, if not, every day, is it even worth it? What’s stopping you from going after it? Self-doubt, the fear of failure, or fear of judgment? Lao Tzu once said,
“Care about what people think and you will always be their prisoner.”
Please, don’t allow the fear of what others will say to stifle you from cultivating your genius, recognizing your own depth, and finding your bliss.
The late Joseph Campbell, writer and mythologist, offered some advice in an interview in 1988 that gave me great hope and will hopefully do the same for you,
“If you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you see that, you begin to meet people who are in the field of your bliss, and they open the doors to you. I say follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be.”
Wish me luck,
Roselle
ps… I didn’t think this would be seen by half as many people that have in the past two days but I just want to say thank you to all the absolutely phenomenal and amazing friends I’ve made in my flight school journey. I couldn’t have gotten as far as I did without you all. I’m a better person because of each and every one of you.
(from the Heal Deliberately Wellness Blog archives - May 9, 2017)