Find Me Another Job...

Find me another job in which you have to do nothing more the previous evening than make lunch and check that you have in your tote bag the book(s) you want to bring with you for before your shift starts and lunchtime.

Find me another job in which the beginning of the work day starts with such overwhelming peace at 9:30, a little over an hour before the real supervision begins.

Find me another job in which you can walk the empty grounds, making sure everything's ok, while thinking about the purpose and the structure of the book you want to write.

Find me another job in which it's at times cold enough (right now) that there's an office for people of your position that you can sit in, rest for a bit, and, yes, read, finishing the novel you so love during the penultimate class period of the day. (That was The Last Chinese Chef by Nicole Mones, which has inspired me to seek out more about the history of Chinese cuisine and to read loads of Chinese literature and poetry, and about Chinese history.)

Find me another job in which it can be so quiet during the day that you only pick up one call, from the gym to the office, for someone to be picked up to go home.

Find me another job in which it's cold enough and windy enough that you don't feel like walking to the gym, and so you drive the golf cart there and to the office. And you get paid for it.

Find me another job in which you watch a trickle of humanity rush past the open gates to leave the campus after the bell rings, followed by large crowds that walk around people standing around, like water trying to get around a clog, before those twos-and-threes-and-foursomes walk away and the crowd continues its departure more forcefully.

Find me another job in which the crowd has left, some standing near the curb, some sitting on a wall overlooking the parking lot, waiting to be picked up, and you stand there, amazed yet again that it all builds to a crescendo and fades just as quickly.

Find me another job in which the last minutes of your workday pass so quietly that you wonder how you could have even thought about working in journalism or at an airport years ago.

You can't. I can't. That's why I'm a substitute campus supervisor at La Mesa Junior High and proud of it. I love it so dearly that it's what I hope to do, full time, after I become a resident of Henderson, Nevada. This is the ideal job for me, and I do it well. But most importantly, I'm happy with it. What better reason to have a job?