Paul
Thanks for posting. I look at my aviation life as a journey. In 2010 a guy with 20k+ hours augered his plane in. I looked up to this god and when he died I quit for about a year.
I went to an AZ flight training school and within 4 months we had five fatalities in that time. The first ever for that school which had two campuses in the US at that time. I almost quit then.
I’d been flying since until about a year ago when I started reading all the Kathryn’s and Blancolirio stuff and some AvWeb. The one accident that really had me wigged out is the one recently where a guy came screaming in and mowed over a student and instructor who were doing everything right in the pattern. No radio calls just a straight in at a ridiculous speed. No matter how careful those pilots were it didn’t matter…Constantly seeing these accident reports has kept me out of it temporarily. But renewing my FIRC this month rekindled it.
I listen to McSpaddens podcast and I see them as valuable: the tagline is something akin to “learning how pilots flew out of those situations”. That is both positive and empowering. He does a great job of breaking it down and you always learn something new. Or something gets reinforced. For example just declare an emergency already if you need any sort of help. And partial power is not necessarily a good thing.
I would say that to make any decision re flying you just need to admit that there is risk and reward with it. You decide if the trade off is worth it for you.