I love airplanes, aviation, and travel, but I cannot fucking stand "aviation people". I grew up around them. My father worked in airport management. I used to wander around the hangers and admire the beautiful planes. I don't think that would be possible anymore with security but those were different times. When I was too young to know better I was friendly with the pilots and ground crew. My father warned me about airplane people especially the pilots, and said most of them were broken men with damaged marriages and no well adjusted person gets into flying, but I thought he was just being harsh. Little did I know. When I grew up my first job (in a different city) was with a fairly well known air transport company and that's when I first started to get a clue. Again, I told myself it was just the area I was in. Then aviation communities appeared online and I joined them. Again I told myself the weirdos were just a few too-online people.

But over time I started to realize something about airplanes attracted fucked up people. Maybe I'm one of them? Are they trying to fly away from their problems? Are "we" trying to fly away from our problems? Regardless I don't want to be around them. So I switched careers and I'm much happier with my coworkers. I just do flight sims now and it's so much better.

tl;dr if you're a youngster and you're thinking about it, just don't. It's much easier to like when appreciated from a distance.