Exit, Stage Left

Jean-Paul Sartre said that hell is other people.
I have come to agree, but with a caveat: hell is blitheringly stupid, eternally prattling, farting-in-church-during-a-funeral loud, mouth-breathingly ignorant people.
If we are now going by that modified definition of "hell", then I have been in hell for a decade.

You know what? No more hell for me, thanks.

After precisely ten years and one month, I am leaving my job at "the Hospital" AKA Terence Cardinal Cooke Health Care Center.

There are exactly two negative aspects to this decision: the first is that I lose the best insurance coverage in the country, and, the second, is that I will no longer receive a bi-weekly paycheck to read comics, browse the internet, create artwork, devise questions and line up guests for my podcast, author this fuckrant page and a few other things that I'm actually not supposed to do while at work.

The positive aspects? Honestly, I seem to discover a new one every few hours, just popping into my mind like tiny, delectable marshmallows rising to the surface of a delicious mug of hot chocolate.

Let's list a few off the top of my head, shall we?

• Suddenly, I will have a social life, as I will no longer be working from 3 pm to 11 pm Monday through Friday.
• I will have fifteen more hours a week to audition for and book gigs, since the majority of auditions are held from 9 am to 5 pm, Monday through Friday, and, because of this job, I have been missing those taking place between 2 pm and 5 pm...for ten years.
• I get to see my wife for more than two hours a week.
• I will never...ever be exposed to this brain dead bunch of yammering stool samples...ever...again. Just...imagine that for a second...if the most annoying people in your world...people you had to spend eight hours a day with for a large section of your life...just...disappeared... That's happening for me.
•  No more seeing my bus (a bus that comes every fifteen to twenty minutes after ten o'clock at night) just as it's pulling away as I round the corner, leaving me to stand, alone in the dark, wondering why...the fuck..was I still doing this fucking job.
• No more working under administrators that could easily be replaced by an old pair of shoes. Full of poop. One of the worst things in (office) life is to have a supervisor that is dumb. Aside from the silent suffering one must undergo, one must constantly struggle with the fact that somehow...somehow this person ended up in charge of you. The mind...boggles... 
• No more shitty lunches at the spatter of shitty restaurants up around here.*
• Although it's been common knowledge for the Department of Health, the FDNY, and the entire administrative department for years before I joined the ranks of these slack-jawed, shuffling corpses, the fire system here does not work. Now, I'm not saying it does not work correctly, I'm saying that it does not work. As in, if there is a fire, it will not tell us there is a fire. Although, I will give it props for going off, full bore, when it's raining outside or it's humid in the building or that, in general, everything's okay. Another way to put this is that I am at less risk of burning to death in a fire if I am not here anymore.
• I will no longer experience the spiritual torpor that engulfs me wholly when I think of the people who have been here longer than I have and who seem content...like a Bichon seems content...with it's glassy, depthless, unfeeling, unthinking eyes...
• But, perhaps the aspect I am most excited about (and that's saying something as I am fucking thrilled about ALL these other aspects) is that I will now have forty more hours a week to pursue each and every creative whim that dances its glimmering way through my sparking, little mind. So, if anyone out there wants to collaborate on anything, fucking call me; I have nothing but time and boundless, exuberant, soaring ebullience at this gift I have given myself.

Oh, and, one more thing: there's going to be a party.
I'll keep you updated.




* One exception is 3 Guys diner; it is rock solid diner food. God help you if you order anything more complicated than a tuna melt, but, as long as you keep it simple...and stay on the path...and stand...and be true...what the fuck was I talking about?
El Paso Taqueria is pretty awesome too.