living the dream

Living the dream, or should I say 'living a dream' is surprisingly hard work.

I was driving home from the gym tonight, shoulders aching like hell after once again doing too much, partially drifting away into my own little world hidden behind the pools of light in front of the car when a thought struck me - this is what living a dream is really like.

The past few weeks have been hard. Very hard. Each day I get up and have to force myself to do something. Who knows, in a few weeks I may well be back working and the stress and shame of being completely broke will be gone, but for now it hurts. I couldn't even afford to pay my aircraft insurance renewal last week, I had to beg help. This is definitely a low point.

The dream isn't glamorous. It's just plain hard work. The flying part of being a display pilot is only a tiny fraction of what it actually takes, especially when you're breaking into the airshow world. The glamour just doesn't exist - I spend my time playing with websites, gathering contact details, writing and sending hundreds of emails, drawing up flyers and logos and graphics, battling to just keep some semblance of sanity. All this time I've not even had the sanity check of flying my little beast - the process of modifying an aeroplane is a very long winded one, involving much heartache, huge amounts of expense and some very frustrating periods of waiting, and waiting and waiting some more - all whilst the powers that be try to make a decision over whether or not you should actually be allowed your modification.

To those of you that fly but have never owned an aeroplane, you may think you have an idea what it must be like but trust me, the frustrations of waiting on paperwork and engineers is barely bearable at times. I should just take the opportunity to say thanks to my friends for at least allowing me to get airborne, the sky really is a beautiful place to be, whatever craft you happen to be in.

I guess every dream has its own nightmare that has to go along with it - something about being no light without darkness. I know, I'm prattling, but in all honesty if anyone decides to try to live their dream and doesn't reckon with having to cope with a whole heap of hardship, effort and tears along the way then they're going to have a rude awakening. Just as light needs darkness, endeavours need to be difficult in order to really be worth while - why bother throwing everything you have into something if it's not going to be a challenge? Maybe it's just me, but victories are much sweeter when they're hard won.

How many other people actually do this, I mean really do this. How many choose to make a dream reality, despite huge odds stacked against them? To all of you doers and dreamers out there, I'm with you.