just ranting

so, I'm at work right now. The tail end of a three-year stint working as a custodial artist for the city of Piedmont. All in all, I set up tables and chairs and have a big key ring. It's a lot of sitting around watching sports on a grainy 12-inch black and white television or doing my school work/grading papers (I teach English and am a graduate student).
All in all, it's been a fantastic job because:
--I've time and space set aside most weeks to do my shit. I'm a terrible procrastinator, so to be held captive at work has been a real blessing and forced me to get stuff done.
--I end up getting paid to study or grade papers or watch my teams play...and lose (more on that later, perhaps tomorrow. The niners suck, but that's okay because I got TWENTY great seasons and five friggin' superbowls)
--I think it helps me truly appreciate every time I go to campus to teach or take classes. In three years, I've never really gotten sucked into the vortex, that bitchfest zone of joint commiseration that's in every working environment (boofuckinghoo) but seems especially exacerbated when in an English department. My theory is that because I have other blue collar commitments, I am fortunate enough to have a certain perspective on teaching and being a student that helps me see how fucking lucky we all are. Yes, teaching is hard, perhaps the most challenging, draining (and stimulating, interesting, rewarding) work I've ever done. But it's not a job. No, no, no, a job, my friends, is plunging corn-studded shit out of a toilet or washing vomit out of a urinal, busting ass lifting and carrying and sweating...Ain't no callouses on my hands from photocopying and stapling.
Besides being a heterosexual male English teacher is similar to being a heterosexual male dancer. I always thought it would be great to be a dancer because it's all women and gay men. Hey fantastic. Easy pickings. Well, being a part of an English department is basically the same (except English teachers aren't NEARLY as hot or nimble as dancers. The jury is still out on which group is more emotionally fragile. I think English teachers have lower self-esteem than dancers). I call it the "in the land of the blind..." syndrome. And it's good to be king.