The 10 Steps to Becoming Independently Wealthy by Your 40th Birthday

The 10 Steps to Becoming Independently Wealthy by Your 40th Birthday (1st draft on 9/6/23 in my notebook)

There is no end to feeling sorry for myself.
Every morning is a chance to hear,

Boo hoo, you lost your mother.

Boo hoo, you lost your father.

Neither of which are true (mostly).

There is no limit to my lameness.

I've been writing the great American novel

called, The Path to Unhappiness and Indebtedness

and it's all based on personal experience. 

I've also been working on, How Not to Make Money

or How I Learned to Love Having a Job that Doesn't Help my Family.

If life was dependent on a series of career choices

I would be the monkey with its hand stuck in the jar

or the helpless mouse swimming at the bottom of the barrel.

So I spend most my days trying not to think about telling myself 

You loser. You trainwreck of a father. You idiot.

Regrets

Regrets (1st draft 9/05/23)

I never wrote to Tony Hoagland

about his poems or his essay in The Sun.
Then the pancreatic cancer devoured

what was left of him, but not his words.

I never went to the Coast Guard Academy.

I would be retiring in two years

with a full retirement plan

but what would be left of me?

I spent only a modicum of time 

to look at Maine. I was too busy

tackling, sprinting, leaping, and falling apart.

I never called Ray Dube, Al Freniere, Sharron Sutton,

Mrs. Espisito, Mrs. Munson, or Mrs. Wiseman to say thank you.

I never told Mrs. Rogers that I was sorry.

I went to College to study Theatre and Dance.

I paid over $120,000 to do so.

My family and I teeter on the poverty line.