141 killed my passion for aviation

141 was a total ripoff for me. It was way too expensive and time-consuming. I went back to my first instructor at a podunk country airport where I had started flying and finished with him. That would have been the quickest and cheapest route from the get-go with more money for time building leftover. I don't think anyone cares which flight training route you took after you have your ratings. The ratings are all issued by the FAA and are all the same whether you train at some big name 141 flight school or the old guy with the ball cap and rag in the back pocket at some rural strip. I found those later guys to be much better instructors than the 300-hour time building kid at a 141 school. I never did regain my passion for flying. Went all the way through CR,IR, ME, CFI, and quit. No fun. No money. Nasty sleazy people permeate aviation. Complete lack of professionalism. Only connected people getting students, good jobs, fair pay. The rest of us were all getting screwed. Badly. I worked at it for years, spending time and money I didn't have just to walk away from it. I would be better off now if I spent the time and money on just about anything else. It definitely ruined my love of flying and my childhood dreams. For a while, I could hardly even ride on an airliner as a passenger. I'm over that now. It's been 23 years since I quit flying. I went to visit the podunk airport I started flying at, now heavily devoloped, two days ago for nostalgia. I had a hard time finding it amid the business park that cropped up around it. Apparently, it's quite busy, supports a lot of business jets, and has occasional airline service. There wasn't any nostalgia. It seemed very foreign to me even though the FBO looks much the same. And the young people working on their licenses and ratings there were so convinced they were getting into a lucrative airline career. They sounded like me when I started. I just wished them luck.