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Emo life story post in reply.
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I originally had in mind to go to University and do psychology with a criminology/forensic bent that would eventually lead to a job in the police with a view to detective work (lots of family are cops) but I found that the University I applied to had a psychology course that was much more rigidly academic and theoretical than I was interested in (plus, my knowledge of psychology was subpar I realised). So I made a snap decision, I changed my degree to Maths/Stats because that's where my natural aptitude lay. I'm great at maths and stats, but I don't like it - I find it fucking boring. So I went ahead and did a four year Masters. I came out and tried to do a PhD because all the stats-jobs were the pits. PhD didn't work out due to bastard supervisor and I quit. Ended up going to Oxford and working there for a year in a stats only role. Great life experience, shit job and shit work experience there, so I came back home (Scotland) and did another Masters in an applied branch of statistics called Management Consultancy. Came out of that having enjoyed the experience (mainly because inside the consultancy process there is lots of non-math-analytics called "soft operational research methodologies" that require nonlinear thinking and creative application of management principles) and realised that being a management consultant was one of two options:
1. Working my ass off for a corporate entity whereby after many years of dicksucking, ladder climbing and 12 hour days, I'd get very well paid.
2. Going it alone, fraught with peril, financially stressful, a lot hinges on your self motivation and drive, which for stats was minimal.
So yeah, that was a good choice, it made me extremely employable but only in areas that are still kind of boring to work in without really risking too much on any one side of things - as I said, not exactly a "career" kind of guy and am not willing to lose myself to an office job. Anyway, I get to Australia, get offered the first job I do an interview for in an Insurance Company and quite enjoy it at first. The office environment is great, the work is varied and so on. The honeymoon period lasts about 9 months before I realise that after I complete a big project that I am now beginning (to restructure their entire reporting/analytics system) I will essentially be back in that same horrible rut that most stats jobs are - which is doing the same function, day in and day out, pushing buttons and staring at a screen.
So, I've never been happy doing what I'm doing, except for brief periods where the pressure was so intense that I wasn't think about what I was doing and then all I did was escapism through my hobbies (gaming, reading, writing, movies and lately, cooking) which all have a common thread of creativity. When I was in the thick of university doing my first degree, I wrote dozens of short stories and a novel, it made me genuinely happy. When I was at Oxford and doing my second degree, my love of films and games totally consumed me, I was just a complete media-whore, spending all my time absorbing film and game and becoming intensely critical of all of it, writing a lot about what makes movies and games compelling to me. Over the past year though, my interests have waned, I've stopped nearly all of my hobbies bar one.
Cooking.
I never really cooked up until 2 years ago when we came to Australia and my wife was pregnant, I started taking care of dinner as she got too heavily pregnant to do it and post-birth I was keen to help her deal with things by prepping and making dinner. At first it was all simple stuff and had no real frills to it, then I started to get a bit more adventurous and started making more complicated dishes. After a while, I was going to restaurants (a lot) and trying the food and immediately thinking of how I could make it and/or improve upon it. I started thinking about food and eating out so much that I contemplated starting a food review site (in part inspired by action roomate's dining on dallas) but got put off when I realised that there was a "fine dining in Brisbane" book being released and I was seeking to capitalise on the fact that there were no real reviews going on out there.
Anyway, the past six months I've been thinking about food and cooking more and more, my main aim for Christmas was to get a cast-iron skillet and I got one. And immediately after that, I wanted to get more kitchen stuff and despite not "needing to know" anything much to cook good food to eat at home, I constantly want to learn more. I don't need to know how to make consommes, jus, souffles, and so on, but I desperately feel like I want to learn.
So, next week, I'm doing a stage at a local brisbane restaurant (which happens to be one of the most prestigious and critically acclaimed restaurants in all of Queensland) and can't wait... I'm wondering if perhaps I had fallen into a career of analytics purely through aptitude but without any interest, motivation or... passion. It sounds ridiculous but watching Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares over the past two weeks has helped cement in my mind that passion in life is so important and it keeps you healthy, sane and full of zest for life. I think I was slowly losing all my passion for life because I wasn't doing anything that personally motivated me, yet when I thought about it, the only thing that I really loved doing, was cooking dinner every single night and getting lost in this zen place while prepping and cooking for hours on end.
This could be it for me. If I do this stage and find that I want to repeat the same opportunity, then I'm going to do it as much as I can. For the security of my family and safety of my life at the moment, I'm not going to do anything crazy... if this pans out and I love the idea of working in a professional kitchen, I'm still going to have to learn so maybe night classes in a culinary school or maybe if I offer my free services in the kitchen at the same restaurant a couple of nights a week, I can cut my teeth in there. Anyway, it's been a rather relevatatory couple of days and suddenly I'm excited about the wealth of opportunities I might be opening myself to.
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