phrits

I've always enjoyed cooking, and my IT career pretty much fizzled out when the banks collapsed. I was laid off in November 2009 and found myself in a downward spiral: 18 month contract, 6 months or more of unemployment, then another contract for less than the one before.

With my experience, and even with my age (46) working against me, there may be a good IT fit for me out there somewhere. Finding it, however, conjures visions of Fermi's Paradox. I'd rather be moving up from the bottom than falling down from above.

Edit: Fixed backward bracket. Thanks, Flammy.

When you leave after a hard day in IT, you usually have loose ends to tie up, reports to write, managers to mollify, and far too often the same bad day causes await your return. At the end of a hard day in the kitchen, your next shift doesn't usually have anything to do with your previous one.

Worth it financially? Not even close, at least not yet. But I've never really had any problems that couldn't be solved with money, so that wasn't much of a decision input.

It has definitely been worth it in every other regard. My back no longer hurts, I've gone from slightly overweight (maybe a 28 or 29 BMI) to barely overweight (not quite 26), and I absolutely love being pretty good at and continually becoming better at my job. I'm learning every day and working shoulder-to-shoulder with many kindred spirits. Life is good.

No regrets, nor do I find myself really missing anything. I do keep seeing things I could help with, though. I work for a small company with only a handful of restaurants, and I can tell they really want to grow their business properly. There's a company-wide cookbook I could improve in all sorts of ways, for example, and they really have no idea how much good I could do as they begin to formalize and document their processes.

Aww, shucks, now you went and made me blush. I wish I could take full credit for big brass ones, but there's a lot of "freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose" in there too.