Here and Today

Sometimes I feel satisfied with my placement in life. I am happily married, have a stable job in IT and have a roof over my head.
This should be enough.
Shouldn't it?
There are times though, I wish my life had taken a different route and wonder what avenues I could have taken instead.
If only there was a way to peer into another plane of existence, another timeline where I exist as well.
*On First Street I am a writer living in Queens, NY.
*On Second Street I am a director living in Pasadena, CA.
*On Third Street I am a architect living in Auckland, New Zealand.
*On Fourth Street I peer around the corner and wonder where time has gone.

Post Grad Life Pt. 2

*Fifteen month long I.T. contract job carries over as we move from Manchester, NH to a third floor apartment in Derry, NH. It's a much nicer, two bedroom apartment for $960 a month rent.

*Purchased a newer used car (2003 Mitsubishi Eclipse) right after the Accord's untimely demise. The cost was a little over $8500 for a car with half as many miles almost twice the horsepower and a much larger engine.

*Purchased a truck (1993 S-10 Blazer Tahoe) for winter purposes for $800. Insured, registered and brought down to RI to have it worked on by friends. Gas line and brake line replaced. Put about $1000 of work into truck, still running well for the exception of a few electrical and button-related hiccups.

*Longest contract job ends, followed by over two months of unemployment and unemployment checks.

*Contract Agency connects me with my first full time job in the I.T career back in Nashua less than a mile down the road from my last workplace.

*After a year of owning the Eclipse it has cost over $1400 in repairs and maintenance and soon another $1400 if it isn't sold before the work needs to be done (i.e. new brakes, new tires and cable-shifter issues). The car also is experiencing paint-delamination, which would cost up to $1000 to re-paint and fix.

Death of a Four-Wheeled Turtle

As one car passes another takes its place.

And it only seems like yesterday that I was so excited to pick up my first car with money I had earned and saved over four years. And it was only last week when that first car, which I had put so much time, money and effort into died a quiet death in the town it had gotten so used to inhabiting. With a full tank of gas it sputters its last gulp and ceases to drive.

Now, with my second car I hope to not make the same mistake again. But sometimes I think about my first, like a person's first love, wondering if it's in a better place - its remnants now spread thin among many being useful to others where it just wasn't to be for me.

For me cars are like dogs, they are companions that you can't quite talk to you, but you have a mutual understanding however frustrating the relationship can be. And for now I am learning the language of a new companion.

9-5

I am a dead man on the run
falling like the chips at a casino,
for I am one of many.