In last week’s post I ended with an upbeat note to the theme of “I’d rather try and go down in flames than never try.” Not written, but definitely something that went through my head, was that in the short time between when the left wing collapsed and the aircraft impacted the ground, the pilot was probably making a futile attempt to fight what was happening and counter the sudden change in trajectory.
Read enough aviation fiction, and you’ll find a specific trope of the pilot (or pilots) fighting a doomed aircraft all the way to the ground. Most of the time it’s true in the real world too. Black box recoveries from airline crashes usually show pilots doing everything they can, right up until the end. Some of that is training (fly the plane until you can’t anymore), some of it is simple self preservation. Sometimes it work out to be a negative, for pilots flying aircraft with ejection seats who don’t use them because they think they’re just about to save the aircraft.
Career-wise, I seem to fall into the latter category. On the same day that last week’s post went live, I was waking up without a job. I’d put everything I had into trying to save a decaying situation, but in the end, it was all for naught. At least I woke up and live to fight another day.
It’s not the first time, either. It seems like every time I end up on the wrong side of a layoff, one of my first questions is “Do you want me to finish checking in my work?” As much as I aspire to at least pull the handles at the last second, it seems that I usually end up making a hole in the ground, and having to get up, dust myself off, see what lessons are to be learned, and make an effort to be better on the next one.
This won’t be the end of my software engineering career. On the plus side, I ought to have some additional time to start putting the blog content buffer back in order. On the downside, blogger pay isn’t exactly going to have me eating lobster pizza any time soon.
No way to go but forward.