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Changing career at the age of 48 is not easy. Especially not when its direction is 180 degree the other way than what your resume tells you. For years and years I have been indecisive and therefore not been able to make choices for both the short and the long run. There are so many things to consider and yet it's all so simple. The only thing I need to do is to listen to what my gut tells me and work with my mind to make it happen.

So what am I talking about. Of course I'm talking about my dream of becoming a chef and owner of a small resort with restaurant in Portugal at the beachside. While currently I am a office employee living in a small appartment. I want to make the move but how? What I don't want is to be a chef while my daughter is still young, because I want to be there for her when she comes home from school. On the other hand, I want to become a chef as fast as possible, because working in the kitchen is what I like most.

The first possible strategy is to keep working in the office untill my daughter is old enough to leave the house, which is say 5 - 10 years from now. During these years she will live with a father who's always complaining about his current job. Also she's living with a father who does not have the balls to live his dream, something he does advocate and tells his daughter to do. But children don't listen, they copy behaviour from others, including my behaviour!

The second possible strategy is to apply at a restaurant and/or become a freelance chef. This is the risky strategy, in which I most likely will not be able to make enough money to get by in the first few years. I need a certain minimum income to take care of myself and of my daughter. Probably only after 2 years of work experience in a good restaurant I will be making the same amount of money I make now with my current job.

But there is a third way! The third way is to save enough money to overcome the first 2 years in the kitchen financially and then make the jump! Crazy that I didn't think of this strategy before! It will take some hard work, but with some freelance cooking on the side this should work!