Yes, I'm on an urban landscapes bender again. There's a certain atmosphere to railway stations that this time of the morning. There are few people, mostly solitary ones like the one crossing the bridge above, often but not always in less desirable jobs, scurrying to get into position for the working day so that they can be at their posts for when the much larger tide of people starts heading off in 2 or 3 hours from now. It's either quiet and peaceful or it's lonely and isolated, depending on a person's frame of mind, I suppose. I generally tend to lean toward the former interpretation, though occasionally other thoughts cross my mind.

As you can tell from the timestamp there are days when I start work ridiculously early. I try to avoid leaving ridiculously late, though, but it's still a long day. (Especially for a job that's winding down year the next year or so.)

I did see a post in an on line forum today which discussed the rates that contractors with my skill sets could be paid. If it was even mostly correct, I could be working 100 days per year and still be earning the same amount. Of course... you have to find that hundred days first. But still... that would leave 265 to travel around to new places like, oh, say, Canada.

And on such occasions, and in such places, the thought does cross my mind of whether this is really what I want to be doing with my life; being on almost deserted railway platforms in the pre-dawn hours.

But then, a bit of reflection can be a good thing, now and then.