Now You Know

I wanted to update everyone on what is REALLY happening with me (Warren) currently.  As most know, I was in Oklahoma City, OK since July 12th doing initial air traffic controller training.  This was a pretty interesting, tedious, and stressful 3 1/2 months.  About a month into my training, I got an email one day from North American Weather Consultants (NAWC) in Sandy, UT curious of my interest in the position they had open.  I was of course interested, as my college degree is Meteorology, and entry level jobs in that field are tough tough to come by.  I entertained it while still continuing my training.  Couple more months went by, and as I got deeper and deeper into the training, and down to the radar labs, I became more and more stressed out.  A few things contributed to this-Being away from Taisley and the boys, threats of continued employment with the FAA (they do it to everyone, hard to explain), old and retired controllers that serve as instructors yelling things like, "You should know this, How do you not see that?" or other things that likely would not be tolerated in normal work environments, but which I understand come with the nature of separating airplanes.  So, I kept training, kept missing my Taisley and boys, and kept living in Oklahoma.  Over the weekend of October 11th, I interviewed with NAWC just to get a feel for them and meet them, ya know, see what they were about.  Cloud seeding, monitoring storms, being payed to look at weather?  Hmmmmmm.  Now, back in Oklahoma was preparation for my upcoming PV (Performance Verification) where the FAA people come into the room, watch you run a radar problem, and decide if they want to send you home to the facility to continue training.  This whole idea was very stressful to me(and all involved).  I saw a few people not make it, and a couple that really surprised me by not making it-they were fired on the spot.  This brings us to 2 weeks ago.  I was feeling particularly nervous and ran down, had ran some bad problems in the labs, and I'm pretty tough on myself.  I got a call from Taisley informing me of Everett's mishap and stitches.  This tore me up-anyone 1300 miles away during a family emergency event would understand.  2 of my 3 class instructors quit 8 days before our PV, and I could not get that other job out of my head.  I began feeling very anxious, restless, and nervous.  I did not sleep more than 2 hours a night for 2 straight nights, I did not eat but one meal a day because my stomach felt sick, and I had one thought:GET HOME!  I didn't think I could do it, but after staying up all night, and  praying and talking with Taisley, she told me to just finish the training, it was only a week.  This made sense, but I could not even sleep that night.  I just laid awake, restless again, and feel like I had some sort of a breakdown of sorts.  This had never happened to me, and I can take ALOT-I really can!  The next morning, I went in and quit training, and drove home.  It was so hard.  I cried, I worried about what could I do now, what was wrong with me?  The silver lining is that NAWC had called me and offered me a position 3 days prior with nearly the same pay that ATC would have paid me initially, so at least I have something to come back to.  I was and am still plagued with guilt for making Taisley go through all that and I still feel horrible.  Hopefully something works out.  The weather job will be a blast, and I am really excited for it, but it may only be temporary through April or May.  In the meantime, I better job-hunt.  I just want to provide for my beautiful family and get in position to buy a home.  From the get-go, I was worried about the hours, stress, and impact that this job would have on my family(ATC).  Many people make it work and enjoy it despite working holidays, weekends, and wacko hours!  It may not be for me.  I am just thankful to Taisley most of all, and pray that she will be blessed for her patience with me and I swear to make it up to her someday.  I love that girl and I am so lucky to have her.  Please pray for us that we will find something that works well for our family and that we can move on from these bad few months!