Everybody Wants to Do It!

This week and last, friends and colleagues have been responding to the official notice of my "career change". Phil, one of my clients, acknowledged how challenging the last year has been: "Now you'll have a chance to think about us when you're whacking off chicken heads." Phil and a cleaver - connected in my mind now, and for all time. I don't know if there are chicken heads in the curriculum, but there's definitely a session on butchery.

Michael left a long voice mail, saying, "I like cooking as a HOBBY, not serious like you. I hope you like it and can make a living at it. I guess that's the point." Tessie said, "I've always wanted to go to cooking school. But it's so... much... WORK!" But the thing is, making a living, the work - those don't feel like obstacles to me.

Greg was envious: "I would love to talk to you about career changes. Between you and me, high tech is burning me out." Julianne (always with the hip handbag, and little kitten heels even with jeans) told me that she'd spent the past weekend watching two years' worth of Project Runway episodes, and the part that she found most compelling: "They all spend their days working with such creative people! I work with engineers all day."

And that's exactly the frame of mind that I'm in: I would rather do virtually anything related to cooking, including peeling potatoes, and deveining shrimp, and washing pots, than what I do most of the time, during most work days.