when in doubt, wear red.

does that mean i'm all too sure of myself? hahaa.

it's currently almost 5 am. got up to pee and now i can't seem to get back to sleep, damn it. of course, now that i'm online, only means i have trilions of things to entertain me. but oh, if i could just get back to that dream i was having..

dreams. we all had some of those didn't we? i vaguely remember wanting desperately to be the next britney spears (without the scandals, of course. and with full intention of keeping my underwear on at all times.), stacy wanted to be an astronaut, sheri wanted and probably still does want to be a bloody vampire or something.. holly golightly wanted to find her tiffany's.

i think it's pretty safe to say that there comes a time for most of us when we decide to wake up. wake up and don suits to go to work, give allowance to the wife, feed the kids and pay the mortgage. most of us forget those dreams that we spent a lifetime in our childhood chasing. before we learnt to tell time and time gave us a awift kick in the ass.

my entire life, i've been telling myself to wake up and smell the coffee. that i have to

A) stop being a dreamer
B) stop procrastinating and get a real life where a decent job and family fit & basically
C) stop being irresponsible by running down an imaginary path

and all of a sudden, now, at 5 fucking am no less, an epiphany.

i don't want to go through life souless and wondering what could have been. i DON'T want to give up my dreams.

i mean, imagine if van gogh, marco polo or the beatles had given up! oh, life would be meaningless then.. and the world would be crammed with huts and two story houses if the egyptians told themselves building the pyramids was an impossible feat! and what if spiderman stuck to taking his photos instead of saving the world! why, he would never have swept mary jane watson off her feet!

but i digress.

refer to the title of the previous post. the story is simple and short.

picture, if you will, yourself waking up and going through your routine. mummy yelling at you to get out of bed and go to work. five minutes later the alarm goes off and you know you can't put off rolling out from under the cover anymore.

you get up, brush your teeth, a quick cold shower you hope will save you from wandering out on the streets asleep. you grab a coffee on your way out, and give your mom a dry peck on the cheek and mutter some incoherent promise to be home by 8 for dinner.

you're off to work. you go to the same job you've been at the last decade or so. with the at thought, you heave a heavy sigh and step out the front door.

neighbour in the lift. a mrs tay, or tan or teo or something. you give a polite nod but exchange no words whatsoever. she probably doesn't know who you are in any case.you're more interested in fiddling with your i pod, and she's preoccupied with her cat.

traffic is light, you notice, as you wait for the lights to change so you can cross the street. lights change, but before you get the chance to make it across the road..

a goddamn rouge ice cream truck slams into you and crushes every bone and organ in your body against some tree. and you die. (obviously.)

now, what does through your mind that nano second between the time when you get hit and the time you die?

assuming the time stretches out and everything happens in slow-mo like they do it in books and movies, i would like to think of happy things, great things that i've done with the people i love and care about. i don't want to regret my life, or wonder about how different i could have ended up as an artist instead of a constructer. me? i want to die knowing that i grabbed life by the balls.

sure, life in it's infinite irony ends in death. as many a cynic would say, we eventually all end up in the same place anyway. what difference does it really make? a painter, an engineer, or a scientist? but as somesone great once said, isn't it all about the journey, not the destination?

here's the lesson of today folks (and i'm only saying it now, because my fingers are cramping already!), what i want, essentially, is to announce at the top of my lungs that i'm not going to be afraid anymore. i'm done holding myself back from being the success i know i can be. inspirational this may not seem to you, but hell, it feels good to let it out. i'm going to follow my dreams. like mulan and pocahontas.

as the pirates say(according to pirates of the caribbean),

take all you can and give nothing back.