What were your career goals as a young pilot   

My original intention was to go fixed wing and Part 121. Instead, I got married, started a family and left aviation for a stable... stable? relative to aviation, I guess 10 years is "stable".

Flying airplanes is boring, never pursued the airport to airport living out of a bag, so after 12 years doing everything but flying and out of a 'real job', I got helicopter-current and went to the Gulf of Mexico. I would still be there, retired, except I married again and started another family and stayed home to raise our son while she completed her education.

I returned to flying for a local HEMS slot and retired from there 6 years ago. My opinion is that HEMS is the perfect job for somebody with thousands of hours and decades of experience- home every night. And you work in a positive environment, you don't watch your students go on to varied, interesting work and you don't haul 300 pound 'critters', who treat your helicopter like a tractor, and their hundreds of pounds of tools from one work site to another