The title is a bit of a double entendre. Not only am I not done with this blog, I’m also not done with flying. And because I’m not done flying I have had no time to focus on this blog. In short, I won’t be posting as often as I would like. Still, I do intend to continue posting.

As I have said before, the word vocation and vocal come from the same latin word, voice, or “to call“. Given my steadfast love of aviation from an early age I have always believed that aviation is a calling in my life. In short, I believe I was born to fly airplanes. It also means that I consider it a blessing from God to be able to continue in that calling beyond the one-size-fits-all laws that made it illegal for me to continue in my former job.

On December 10th, the day after my last post, I was offered a job at Baker Aviation. The offer immediately transformed my disposition from what I can only describe as depression to an incredible joy. The next day, on the 11th, I searched and found the systems manual to the aircraft I would be flying and thus I began my new job by studying. My official start date was on February 3rd, 2026, but by the time that date had arrived I had already created hundreds of flash cards and felt as if I was already familiar with the new aircraft.

As I write, December 11th was a little over five months ago. I would learn in this new job that the similarities between being an airline pilot and an on-demand charter pilot were limited to the basics of flying an airplane. The demands of the new job beyond that one skill were manifold.

The challenge for me was two fold. I had to unlearn all muscle memory actions I had come to depend on in the last decade and a half and at the same time develop an entirely new set. Muscle memory is your friend only as long as you’re working with the same machine. Change machines and it becomes your enemy. This was a challenge to say the least.

But while it was a difficult, with the certainty of success always a question that hung over my head, I loved it. I loved it because it tested me like I haven’t been tested in a very long time. It tested me in a season of life when I thought I was beyond such tests. It kept we awake at night, steeped in worry that at times I could argue bordered on an inner terror. But I still loved it. Why?

As men our inner man doesn’t want things given to us. Such things have no value. There is an inward satisfaction that men know when they have succeeded in crossing that chasm that has no bottom in sight, a crossing the outcome of which is never at all certain, where they at times feel as though they’re hanging by a thread. And yet they keep fighting. And while falling into that chasm is necessarily a bad thing, it is infinitely worse to fall when it wasn’t in spite of everything that could have been done to prevail. The more difficult the challenge, the more rewarding the success, and the more rounded and confident the man who succeeds.