opening day

so today is the first day of the academic year, and i just finished teaching my first round of research writing; another round is scheduled for 1pm. it was fun. it was also business as usual. odd that sometimes those two things are the same thing.

it's funny: as a kid i used to dream about what it would be like to be a touring musician. how great it would be to wake up, day after day, and realize that all you had to do to make a living was write songs and play guitar. of course it isn't really that simple, but at that age, in my brain, it was. i remember being aghast the first time that i read an interview in which a rock star complained that they were tired of playing shows and needed a break (i don't remember the particular rock star). it seemed egregiously arrogant to me that somehow being a rock star wasn't enough for this guy, that somehow he was so ungrateful that he was unable to be completely happy all the time.

then i grew up, and i realized (as i've often stated before) that jobs are like relationships. even if you have the best relationship in the world, sometimes you need to sit in a room by yourself all night, eating ice cream and watching TV and being unkempt and dirty and basking in the fact that you don't have to talk to anyone for a few hours. or sometimes you need to complain to your friend about how your significant other has this one personality trait that just ENRAGES you, ignoring for a moment the fact that you're happy 98 percent of the time with said person. it's just human nature.

so, way back in 2002 i passed on a potentially lucrative computer science career and instead chose almost a decade more of school and the attendant poverty, constant total lack of job security, and the total absence of a chance to do Something Important with my life to get some English degrees and teach writing. this gamble worked out well; i like my job. i like it enough to offset all of the horrible things about it (i.e. i'll be below the poverty line forever, i'll probably not be able to get a job right after finishing my ph.d and have to revert to doing something menial for possibly years, etc.). but because of some of the sacrifices i've made to get to where i am, there are times that i have to remind myself that i don't need to jump out of bed every day, blabbering with joy because i get to teach writing. i made a good choice, but it doesn't have to have been (great tense use) the perfect choice.

like today, for example. realizing that summer was over and that i had to go back to work literally made me want to murder myself and everyone else on the planet. but put into perspective, yes, teaching 20 hours a week during the summer and then doing what you want is of course more fun than teaching 20 hours a week during the fall on top of doing classwork for 60-80 hours. of course i'd rather work a little than a lot. i mean, i like having a job for the structure it provides, but i could "work" 20 hours a week and be happy, because there's always 800 other things that i want to do on my own that are constructive (i.e. not watching TV and playing video games) and i'd love to have time for them. but...being depressed because i have to work a lot and hating my job are two different things. sometimes i have to remind myself of that.

presuming that i have to do something to feed myself, this is definitely the best something. well other than being a rock star.