Blog more in 2011

Daily Motivational…

2010 was a hammer year for this blog. It exceeded my anticipated/ aimed for readership which I expected to hail in at around 10.000 visitors, by roughly 6.000! This was possible because interesting things kept happening and people kept reading and subscribed to my pages. While the subject of this blog could be considered a tiny niche, there are simply not enough things happening in the world of seaplanes, and getting others to write is still harder than convincing a mouse to go capture a cat! Sharing FAA News is good, especially when it helps with making fellow aviatrixes and aviators aware of regulatory downfalls. However, controversial and political subjects are touchy items, which can greatly affect a writers status in terms of being employable. Especially when focused on such a small, everyone-knows-everyone industry, affected and often driven by so much opinion there is great risk. Oftentimes emotions and feelings affect what we write and that’s not a simple trap to avoid completely.I’ve seen twitter accounts with legal disclaimers, instructing the reader that “tweets do not reflect my employers opinion”…

We all know people who are great writers, always tactful, always politically correct, always steady and always in tune with the world even if their words are lies, and their smiles are fake. I am not one of them, sorry. So far, however, I must have managed to keep a somewhat healthy balance, reaching the right people, except for this one aviation firm that thinks I could make a good pilot/ or other addition to their team. Am I to vocal? To opinionated? To set in my ways? Is it the hours missing from my logbook, or is it just the wrong flight time? Ah! Not enough time in type! Wrong place, wrong time…  maybe it’s the weather!?

Whatever it is, this blog has helped me to keep a fire burning, which may have been killed a long time ago, when I first realized that a strong passion for aviation and flying alone would not swing it. When I realized that being employed as a flight instructor would turn into a long-lasting goal, interrupted by stretches of being  financially stressed. My CFI check- ride with the FAA had been scheduled for December of 2010, and at that time I had already lost several important pieces of my personal life to this  aviation thing. Converting an incredibly well paid career with Jeppesen in Europe into the “American Dream” could be perceived as one hell of a dumb move. But, we do what we do for a reason, there’s a silver lining on the horizon, a light at the end of the tunnel. I don’t know if it’s another freight train or real light.  Aviation captured my attention when I was just a child. I happen to remember times, when pilots wore their uniform proudly, and were not working for Starbucks on the side just to make ends meet. It has become a funky industry.

Still, with all the losses counted, starting with truckloads of money, jobs in the automotive industry quit, just to hunt another remote shot at an aviation opportunity, a destroyed marriage, lost friends and acquaintances to terrible accidents in airplanes and yes, even lost to political correctness, I cannot stop trying. What good would it do to turn around and walk away from your whole life? What would all these losses be good for?

Finding some sort of flying opportunity in 2011 is one of my new years resolutions. It has been since 2004. So far I have had a closed mind to expat jobs, but the older I get, the more I realize that dropping the United States may become necessary, to keep flying. Reaching out to more people who care, and less to those who just won’t ,may help. Providing the playground for one of the most amazing things I’ve started in a long time, the seaplaneforum.com site has been a roller coaster. It sometimes feels as if I am trying to push a train, uphill, in a strong headwind… And suddenly I can feel it moving! When I turn around, I see others who are helping me to move it.

With that, I’ll set off into a new year of this blog, hopefully well-mannered and somewhat on target. It would be easy to change its long name to something more fancy, but others have their own personal blogs showing their name too. I hope I’ll get to see some comments from pilot people and enthusiasts, even if they disagree! After all, I am not covering Tom Cruise, or Anna Nicole Smith (oh, wait, isn’t she dead?) or any of the other short-term starlets of late. Justin Bieber ain’t reading this either… so I depend on you to do it. Please find the subscribe button, and if you have a blog and write regularly or link to this blog, make sure you send me a link to your blog/ site, for my blog roll.

Fly Safe!