Hello. Make yourself comfortable. Can I offer you a drink?

Tomorrow I begin culinary school. In about 9 months, I will graduate with a diploma. How did I arrive at this point?

Over the past year, I have been consulting with a nutritionist about my blood pressure, which has been nudging upwards over the years. At the age of 36, I found myself on meds that lowered my blood pressure but wrecked me with side effects. When I asked the doc what my options were, he said: "Well, you can control it through diet -- cut your salt and lose weight."

Cut salt, lose weight. Very easy to say, not so easy to do.

So I took up the hobby of cooking for myself and my new wife; kept track of everything I ate; and kept a food blog for my nutritionist. I discovered that I didn't really need to eat sweets three times a day, and that simple home-cooked food made with good ingredients were more satisfying than prepared and/or restaurant foods. During that time I also took a cooking-basics class here, a knife-skills class there, and wrote about it all the while.

My parents influenced my decision to attend culinary school. My father was an excellent cook but due to having a full time career as a college professor, rarely was in the kitchen. The gender roles of his generation and the general abandonment of the importance of kitchen skills since the 1950s didn't help his hobby along. My mother was a horrible cook and disdained having to toil in the kitchen. When she did cook, the food was putrid. She too had a career of great importance, being an executive director at a community center in Brooklyn for a good deal of her work life. They passed away within a year of one another between 2005-06. My food memories from my childhood are bittersweet thus.

The other important force that has led me here is my own career. Out of college, I helped run an indie music label until the wheels fell off. Using the rudimentary graphics skills I taught myself during that time, I eventually landed a staff position at a law firm as a graphic designer until my mom got sick. She was alone, so I moved in with her to help with day-to-day needs 'til the end, about 6 months later. Feeling completely blown out, I left the firm and freelanced for a while, then attempted a cross-country bicycle ride from San Francisco which ended in Illinois. Back in New York, I freelanced, then came on as staff at a television network as a design project manager. Huge layoffs at the beginning of '08 found myself freelancing again -- but not as enthusiastically as I once had been.

Music was a hobby since I was 13, then became a profession. Graphics was a hobby until my late 20s, then became a profession. Cycling was also a hobby that began in adulthood, but my physical type and natural limitations has kept it a hobby. Now, as I read more foodie books, eat new and stranger things, cook more and more...my mind wanders: What can I do that's not boring? Can I make a go of this hobby? No time like the present to find out. Tomorrow I step out of the nest for a 9 month free-fall to the earth to see if I can fly.

School is 8am to noon five days a week. I'll be picking up freelance work around that schedule to keep my wife B in bon-bons and fine French perfumes. She's going to hem the pants of my chef's uniform tonight and tomorrow it begins.