School starts next week

School starts next week. This usually concerns only two– albeit large– groups: young people, because they will be spending the better part of their days there, and their parents, tied to the rhythms of the academic year by their children.

I’m 48. It’s been a long time since I’ve been in school myself; our children have left the nest; I don’t sell school supplies or children’s clothing, or work for a textbook publisher or in the educational system. For me, as for most people who have arrived at this situation in life, the idea of schools has become rather remote, receding into memory and the abstraction of public policy. Yet this year it is different. I am going back to school.

This year I wrapped up and set aside my full-time, twenty-plus year I.T. career and enrolled in a culinary arts program. Why? That’s a good question. What will I do when I’ve completed the program? Also a good question. What do I expect to learn? I’m not sure, but I have some ideas. Am I nuts? Next question.

This would obviously make a pretty poor business plan, but then, life should be more than a business plan. This is something I love and am excited about. I don’t know how much, and I don’t know the answers. But I’ll find out.