In just the last hour and a half two people at my current job have told me how great it is that I am following my dreams and trying to start my own business.
One is a 50-something (60-something?) Payroll Clerk who told me that she went to art school to be a commercial artist and got her first job at age 20 doing catalogue layout for Sears. The guy she worked for wasn’t doing that well, so she got laid off and she decided she had better get a “real” job. So now here she is, 30-ish years later at a desk job that she doesn’t love (I can tell by her phone conversations and her conversations over the cube wall to her fellow Payroll-Clerk neighbor) and having never really pursued her art as a career. She told me that she regrets not having pushed harder to keep at the art.
Then another guy told me that he regrets not allowing his youngest son to pursue his dream of being a pro golfer when he was younger. He made him go to college first. Then as an adult, his wife supported him through two years of golf-school. Now he is a semi-pro golfer. Who knows what would have happened if he had pursued it earlier?
At this point in my life I don’t have a lot of career regrets. Sure, I wish I had figured out what I wanted to do a little earlier on in my life. But, my food-world was so small when I was younger – I had no idea how much I liked to cook. I made fruit pizza for family gatherings and made cookies and applesauce when I was babysitting and made dinner for my family once in a while. But we at the same things over and over and over at home – a steady rotation of sloppy joes, goulash, fish sticks, and breakfast-for-dinner supplemented by coleslaw and steamed vegetables. I knew what I liked, but I didn’t understand the breadth of the food world. I had never heard of risotto or sushi or baklava or hummous or falafel or bi bim bop or shwarma. I remember eating a crepe for the first time at Epcot Center as a teenager. I remember seeing my first bulb of garlic when I was about 20 years old.
The advent of the Food Network and celebrity chefs have brought good food much more to the mainstream than it was 10 or 15 years ago. I am fortunate that this is the case and people are more apt to want good quality food every day. That has established a market for my services that may not have been there 15 years ago. And living in one of the top two food cities in the country doesn’t hurt either!
So, while I am stressing out about not making money and about my first clients and what-the-hell-am-I-going-to-make-for-them, what-if-they-don’t-pay-me, how-do-I-make-a-website, I have to remember that I am following my dream so that 30 years from now I don’t have the regrets that so many people have about not having followed their true passion.
