what surrounds you becomes what you want

I’ve wanted to become a pilot for the longest time. Plane-spotting, sim-flying, geeking out on the FCOMs for I don’t even know what, the whole deal. I think I’d set my eyes on aviation as a career back in the eight grade.

But is that what I really want to do? I’m… not really sure, because I ran a study - on myself.

To put into context, there were few things I had to focus on when I was in school. I played cricket, studied, and in my free time, played flight-sim games. Now like any other Indian boy, I really wanted to become a cricketer too. This was when I was playing tournaments with the school team and grinding my ass off every morning at training. When the focus sorta shifted towards getting better grades and preparing for those ‘board’ exams, cricket sorta died down, which meant I had more time at home, more breaks between studying, and more time to play those sim-games. This is precisely the period where my ‘I want to be a pilot’ curve started to rise.

Fast forward to grade 11. COVID. There was even more time for me to follow hobbies. I remember playing plane-spotting videos on the telly because I wasn’t allowed to leave the house.

First year of college. My college was situated right next to an air force base - this only made me regret my decision of picking up engineering instead of flying school. Now obviously I would’ve had to sell a shit ton of stuff to be able to afford flying school, but bear with me, that’s not what I’m getting at.

As college progressed, I started meeting more people. I never knew there were any interesting applications of math. Every time the college had a guest lecture, it kinda opened my eyes for a bit, I started wondering what a career in xyz could look like.

This was also interestingly, the time I was most invested in building my app - the one that helped students know when they could skip classes at college.

College was done and I began working at a finance firm. 6 months in and there’s nothing more in the world right now that has my attention than the world of quantitative finance. Woah, hold on now., where the f&ck did that even come from. I was figuring out ways to skip class and now I want to pursue a valedictorian-ass career?

This was what I was getting at.

Every time an environment changes, your (or at least my) brain starts getting more invested in it and figures out a goal to achieve in it and that becomes what you (or I) want to do for the time that I spend in that area.

Obviously, it kinda sucks to question yourself if your childhood dream was ever really THE dream, but at least it helps in giving you that clarity on not to get stuck on the next best thing in life?

I’m only 22 so I’m not going to consider this a conclusion that flying isn’t my end goal. In fact I’m hell bent on proving myself wrong here. We’ll see how it goes.