text: [Places and Companies are fictional] It was just like any other day. I had my morning coffee at 6:30 before heading off for work. I do IT for a regional company called ExpressPark. They build parking meters for cities all across the Midwest. I live in Zionsville, Indiana. It’s a small suburb north of Indianapolis. Nothing ever happens there. It’s a grey smattering of office buildings and chain restaurants. It is just a reflection of my personality, an uneventful state of apathy. Is it ironic or sad that I am indifferent about that? Work is work. Again, just like Zionsville, there is no variety in day to day activities. I am doomed to an unending cycle of computer problems and printer malfunctions. I’m just the IT geek to everyone. No one gives it a second thought. Not that I mind. I would rather eat lunch alone than talk sports with the former high school quarterback still stuck in his glory days. Still, although I am content with my life, I feel like it lacks something. I ponder this thought on the way home. As I stop at a red light, I look out and see two twenty-somethings smoking cigarettes in front of a drug store and listening to music on a boom box. Their heads are banging up and down to the heavy guitar, their long hair whipping back and forth. They didn’t care about the damages to their lungs that the cigarettes would cause or the fact that a boom box is comically outdated in 2014. I wished I could let go like that. Listen to music from a boom box. Headbang. Smoke. Quit my job. Drop all of my dress clothes off at Goodwill and get some wax black skinny jeans, and a leather jacket. Meet up with these two and rock out in front of the drug store. It could break me out of the constant indifference that haunts me. I could feel alive. It’s been so long since I’ve felt true happiness, or had fun. There’s so much I’ve never done. There’s so much I’ll never do, if I continue to live this way. I’ve never been to a crazy party, been drunk and in love, kissed someone in the rain, smoked pot, or pulled an all-nighter with a friend. Do I even have friends? I take a long look at the headbangers. Something holds me back. Something tells me not to do this. My job is safe. There is no risk in keeping it. Just keep saving money. I can use it later in life. I can retire, have some good years at a beach house in Florida before I die. That sounds good, right? Before I can answer my own question, the light turns green and I drive off, always left to wonder what might have been.