Training Meltdown

I have always wanted this blog to basically be a living journal of my adventure to flight, so I am including this post which is basically a cc of an email I just sent to my instructor which outlines where I am at right now in my training – probably in a meltdown that’s been about a week coming…

Hey Logan, I wanted to let you know I won’t be able to fly tomorrow… I am sure you have noticed but I haven’t really been “there” the last few flights and ground sessions. My head and life have pretty much exploded right now and I am probably on the verge of a breakdown, if it hasn’t already started.

In short, I have really found myself flying “scared” the last few flights and I need desperately to get a confidence in my abilities. Even in preflight I have been making mistakes (today I am pretty sure I left the pitot heat on or turned it on at some point without knowing – maybe leading to the vsi failure). These are errors I never used to make and I can only believe that’s stress related brain farts. The last few days even driving to the airport I have been dreading the upcoming flight worrying about it and failures I’ll make. Contrary to all my dreams where flying was supposed to be fun.

I need to be honest and tell you that as a result of the above I have also even been seriously considering pulling the plug on my training. I am hoping that this is just part of this partial meltdown I am finding myself in the midst of, but I can’t say for certain. The constant struggles I am having with maneuvers, landings and the ground knowledge is really exhausting and frustrating and I have started to wonder what I am doing it all if this is just the tip of the iceberg of a multi year struggle to make a much lower salary and put my wife and kids in dire straights in the process.

Today’s flight, with the instrument failure, was a big eye opener for me that I need to get my head screwed on straight ASAP and I probably need a few days to do that. Since my checkride isn’t for over a week anyway hopefully this won’t be an issue if I can come back stronger Monday and if we book a confidence building flight (even if I have to pay extra) to nail down some basics before we try the full mock check-ride again.