The title of this post would be "Mainlining" if I knew how to title my posts ;)

Life has been insanely busy lately.

Yesterday we went to New York, Maryland, Florida, then back to New Jersey. We did 8.0 flight time, a figure I haven't matched for a few years since I flew the sick and elderly from small towns to big towns with accompanying sweet, sweet chemical release. I have grown fat and weak flying corporate, so 8 hours in the air really kicked my ass; fortunately the last 3 hours back to Teterboro was an empty leg so I sat in the back and ate teriyaki salad and napped while my fellow pilot (who was on oxygen, as per CAR regs) aimed us in the general direction of the east coast. Apparently my snores are poundin' like a freight train soundin', but clearly that's false as snoring is a working-class habit and I'm a classy biatch.

But life is good; the purpose behind our flight yesterday was to check out a new plane. A new plane, you say? Yeah, a new plane; a fairly bad-ass corporate jet. More details to follow, assuming everything works out the way I hope.

So here's my current life dilemna - corporate is really interesting to me at the moment, and I see no reason for that to let up. I honestly enjoy the challenge of making the trip work, and making our pax happy no matter the circumstance, like if they show up early or they suddenly decide they want an exotic foodstuff, or they call to tell me they are 2 hours away, then call back 10 minutes later to say they are 5 minutes out (it happened to me last week). Or if they decide they need to make a meeting in a city that's being disassembled by tornadoes. Or whatever.

To be honest, I love it. I love the challenge and I love knowing that I am up to it. Between myself and the little man in my head, we get the job done, and I get immense satisfaction from the feeling of accomplishment that results. It's not just stupid passenger demands, it can be things like scheduling multiple concurrent trips in the most efficient manner while still turning a profit (or at least not a loss) for my parent company, or making it so we still maintain our (currently) hectic flying schedule and find the time to pay our bills, or move to our new location (we are moving to Pearson airport as soon as I find a free day to drag all our stuff from our world HQ to the north end) or planning for a new addition to our aircraft family. Or 2 additions.

That's not the dilemna part though, that's like the job satisfaction part. This is the dilemna: What do I do if Air Canada says they want me to fly for them? The difficulty of this question is that I want you to answer in a certain way; I want you to tell me it's okay to decline AC and stick with corporate because I find it more stimulating. I want to hear that following the path that challenges me is better than the path that will eventually be worth more money, assuming AC still exists in a decade.

Do me a favor and say that it's okay to decline the airlines, even if you don't believe it. Because I think I do.