Down the Rabbit Hole

Push

I'm overtaxed today and I'm actually stealing time now to write this blog but I feel like if I don't take these ten minutes to download, my head will explode. I think a lot about my job, my ability to do my job, my future as it relates to my job...the main thing is I love the work, but its thankless and for the last several years, completely devoid of incentives. I've been building a career in a deficit now and trying to tell myself its a worthy cause. Here's the reality, I think my instincts are excellent. I think I'm about as good at my job as my top peers in the industry, most of which are more than twice my age and men. I also think that I am so highly specialized that those fined tuned skills have basically zero transferability outside the aviation industry. I've got a salary cap facing me in a few years and virtually no place to turn unless it was to a competitor and that move would most definitely mean a relocation, likely one that would take me to the west coast. Lately its been a series of disappointments and industry driven bombshells, margin-challenged deals and brain-numbing, complicated transactions that have left me feeling spent-up and deflated. I'd returned from my honeymoon with focused energy and renewed vigor only to have the rug torn repeated from under my feet. I feel more tired and frustrated than I have in a very long time. He calls me and asks how I'm feeling, and I fight to sound positive but I know my efforts are flat. I don't know what to tell him, I don't know how to articulate the heaviness in my heart or the reality that I'm turning 34 in August and already feeling washed up. I'm looking at twelve years here now, the last four of which have been particularily tough, tooth and nail tough, and I look around and feel like I've got next to nothing to show for that effort.