STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. – Something has changed.

I live on the North Shore and have never had a problem parking in my neighborhood.

Oh, there have been times when somebody else has been parked in that precious spot directly in front of my door.

And we’ve had our share of parked cars on the block that haven’t moved for days, weeks or months, which always causes tsuris.

But the parking situation overall has been pretty good for the nearly 30 years that I’ve been in the neighborhood.

Until the last few months that is.

Lately there have been plenty of times where I’ve counted myself lucky to get a spot near my house any time after 6 p.m.

There have been days and nights where I’ve come home and cars have been parked bumper-to-bumper on both sides of the street, with no spots available at all.

In the interest of full disclosure, I do have a garage around the block from my home, which has room for two cars if we squeeze in.

So, yeah, I have a spot. But it’s not like I want to carry several bags of groceries or my guitar and amp around the block to my house. Or want to walk through the rain or snow.

Making this situation worse is the fact that there is row of attached houses down the block from me where there have never been spaces in front of the homes, just curb cuts for driveways.

Maybe this lack of parking on the block is a temporary situation, but it’s been going on for a while now. And I can’t figure out where all the new cars have come from. That’s what’s really bothering me, every time I drive in or out of the neighborhood. How did this change so suddenly?

There’s an apartment building nearby and I noticed that the parking lot behind it has been blocked off for a while now. So maybe that accounts for it. I don’t know anybody who lives there so I haven’t asked about it.

All I know is that the dwindling number of parking spots on my block has gotten into my head. It’s like I don’t want to leave the house after a certain hour because I don’t want to lose a good parking spot if I have it. Which is ridiculous, I know.

I get it. Parking here isn’t like parking in Manhattan or Brooklyn, where you’re lucky to get a parking spot that’s not a subway ride away from where you live. And we don’t have to worry about street cleaning or alternate side parking rules here. At least not yet.

And I do have my garage. And the streets back there are generally not too crowded. So I have options.

And, yes, this is a classic “first world” problem: you have to walk a minute or two from your parked car to your house? Poor baby!

But you know how it is. People are territorial about parking on their street, including parking in front of their own homes. It’s one of the reasons why people move to Staten Island in the first place: you can have a car here without too much hassle.

Nonetheless, I made a vow to myself that I wouldn’t let the possibility of losing my parking space affect how I lived my life. And that I wouldn’t let the parking situation on my block become an unhealthy obsession.

It’s not easy.