60 hours 5 days.

Due to unforeseen circumstances 2 chefs sent out 237 covers on Tuesday lunch ! tired, sick, sense of achievement all confusing terms that make you come back the next day.

The dessert order spike ! The person on pastry is the last one home ! Tonight its me !

I changed careers 7 or 8 years ago because I was sick of living out of a bag as a photographer and wanted a more boring 9-5 existence. Do not get me wrong my life as a photographer totally enriched my life from the people I met to the places I visited but for some reason a deep subconscious seed had been planted in my head which I can only presume came from watching the first episodes of Ready Steady Cook when I was young and at 34 the seed had grown enough for me to go on a journey of learning to cook and become a good chef.

When I was thinking of changing careers Rick Stein in Cornwall was a great inspiration through watching his Taste of the Sea and Seafood Lovers guide while eating bacon sandwiches and browsing the papers on  lazy sunday mornings. 

The thought of meeting the fishing boats as they dropped their wonderful cargo of fish on the quayside and then taking it into the kitchen to produce great tasting food in Cornwall was something I thought I could do in Northumberland. So I plotted my escape back to Northumberland with NO real planning or sense of reality immediately. Like everyone in this world we are all searching for our Nirvana !
The reality is different and I am only talking about this because we have had a really nice lad at 30 years old start working in the kitchen I am assigned to at the moment. His attitude is spot on but his basic food knowledge is poor so he is having a very hard time at the moment and after 2 days he has already rang in sick which meant my 4.00pm finish on Friday ended up being 10.00pm and it could have been longer if Head Chef Kelvin had not let me go.
My heart went out to the lad as it reminded me on how hard it was to completely change careers. You start at the bottom so you will not be earning as much as your previous career. You run around like a headless chicken because you are having to learn a new way of working and you will find most people behind your back saying " He will not last " In that darkness you do find the odd golden nugget who spots your potential and encourages you so thanks Peter, Mary, John, Rus, Diane and Lynn and Mark S.
So change careers if you really want to. My advice especially in cooking is to go and work somewhere for two weeks and see what its like and then after that period if the fire still burns then go for it but as they say the grass is always greener...!
So after 8 years is it worth it ? Yes I am a freelance Chef and glad to be one and I am loving working in my current kitchen even though I am finding it hard but it has to be my love of food and cooking that makes me keep going back..