I had a nice little meeting with a couple of senior people at work yesterday, just to touch base and see how I was feeling about things. My progress, development and basic fitting in with my watch.

I have to say it was all quite positive, and even after my little wobbles on the previous workday, I feel like I am achieving what I need to to be taken seriously and trusted to work solo some time soon.

My senior manager is off this week, so solo flying can’t be signed off just yet as that is his call to make. However the signs are promising.  Having had feedback from multiple experienced people on the watch now, it all seems to be pointing in the right direction, which is a relief I must say.

I was keen to make clear that while I am building confidence in what I am doing, I am in no way over confident, and don’t for one second think I am ready for anything now, as that is NOT the case whatsoever. I do however feel like I have built a good working relationship with my team, and am starting to better understand processes and procedures within the organisation and within the watch itself.

I am just getting my head in the game for my night shift now. I had a nice lay in, but have not had any sleep this afternoon, so hopefully I am prepared for the night ahead. I have tried various methods over the past few weeks, from sleeping during the day, to just taking it easy and saving energy, and relying on the breaks at work to get me through the night. Not always the best idea as we are always one big incident away from having reduced breaks.

In the meantime I have applied to do the Mental Health First Aider course at work, and have some provisional dates offered to me. We also have the Xmas do coming up, and I discovered yesterday I have a LOT of leave to take, so need to start planning to do something about that soon. But I am going to hold off on booking any time off until I have been set free to fly solo, and done a couple of tours sitting alone before I get confident enough to take extra time away from the desk.

At the moment, three days rest between tours feels like I have forgotten everything by the time I sit back down at a desk to start the next one. So to take a single tour off, would result in me being off for 9 days straight, two tours would be 15 days off, so I want to be sure I am ready to take at least 9 days off before I book anything.

Then of course, overtime starts to become available soon, which some people are keen on doing, however right now I am taking things easy, and not rushing into anything. The money would be nice of course, especially with some things I have in the pipeline, but I am taking things one step at a time for now.

Right, I guess I better go get my new slippers and put them in the car for later.

Thanks for reading, and here’s to flying solo soon.