The first symptom of the process of our killing our dreams is the lack of time. The busiest people I have known in my life always have time enough to do everything. Those who do nothing are always tired and pay no attention to the little amount of work they are required to do. They complain constantly that the day is too short. The truth is, they are afraid to fight the Good Fight.

The second symptom of the death of our dreams lies in our certainties. Because we don’t want to see life as a grand adventure, we begin to think of ourselves as wise and fair and correct in asking so little of life. We look beyond the walls of our day-to-day existence, and we hear the sound of lances breaking, we smell the dust and the sweat, and we see the great defeats and the fire in the eyes of the warriors. But we never see the delight, the immense delight in the hearts of those who are engaged in the battle. For them, neither victory nor defeat is important; what’s important is only that they are fighting the Good Fight.

And, finally, the third symptom of the passing of our dreams is peace. Life becomes a Sunday afternoon; we ask for nothing grand, and we cease to demand anything more than we are willing to give. In that state, we think of ourselves as being mature; we put aside the fantasies of our youth, and we seek personal and professional achievement. We are surprised when people our age say that they still want this or that out of life. But really, deep in our hearts, we know that what has happened is that we have renounced the battle for our dreams – we have refused to fight the Good Fight.

When we renounce our dreams and find peace, we go through a short period of tranquility. But the dead dreams begin to rot within us and to infect our entire being.

We become cruel to those around us, and then we begin to direct this cruelty against ourselves. That’s when illnesses and psychoses arise. What we sought to avoid in combat – disappointment and defeat – come upon us because of our cowardice.

And one day, the dead, spoiled dreams make it difficult to breathe, and we actually seek death. It’s death that frees us from our certainties, from our work, and from that terrible peace of our Sunday afternoons.

If you’re waiting for a boss or an editor or a college to tell you that you do good work, you’re handing over too much power to someone who doesn’t care nearly as much as you do.

We spend a lot of time organizing and then waiting for the system to pick us, approve of us and give us permission to do our work.

Feedback is important, selling is important, getting the market to recognize your offering and make a sale–all important. But there’s a difference between achieving your goals and realizing your work matters.

If you have a book to write, write it. If you want to record an album, record it. No need to wait for someone in a cubicle halfway across the country to decide if you’re worthy.

I’m going in search of the adventure of being alive.

And it’s complicated: why am I not looking for happiness when everyone has taught me that happiness is the only goal worth pursuing?

Why am I going to risk taking a path that no one else is taking? After all, what is happiness?

Love, they tell me. But love doesn’t bring and never has brought happiness.

On the contrary, its a constant state of anxiety, a battlefield; its sleepless nights, asking ourselves all the time if we’re doing the right thing. Real love is composed of ecstasy and agony. All right then, peace.

Peace? If we look at the Mother, she’s never at peace. The winter does battle with the summer, the sun and the moon never meet, the tiger chases the man, who’s afraid of the dog, who chases the cat, who chases the mouse, who frightens the man.

Money brings happiness. Fine. In that case, everyone who earns enough to have a high standard of living would be able to stop work. But then they’re more troubled than ever, as if they were afraid of losing everything. Money attracts money, that’s true. Poverty might bring unhappiness, but money wont necessarily bring happiness. I spent a lot of my life looking for happiness, now what I want is joy.

Joy is like sex – it begins and ends. I want pleasure. I want to be contended, but happiness? I no longer fall into that trap.

There are many things in our lives that are not as we would wish. Sometimes they are neither rational nor fair. We may lack the strength to change them, but we can change our own feelings and attitude. Looking at things in this way, we can say that people see whatever is in their heart.

Each moment of your life is a dream, dreamt by the ‘other’ you, the Observer. We ‘think’ we live this life, yet, for our souls it is just a dream. A dream within a dream.

I wonder if you’ve missed me as I’ve missed you. Possibly not.

The last few weeks have been for cocooning, resting, thinking, working. For listening and watching and reading and making notes and thinking some more.

For putting stuff in, so that I can bring stuff out.

This past year was a quite an emotional year for me. I struggled through most of it; badly. I never imagined it to end this way. But it did. Get over it Ganz, you stupid fuck.

Now we enter 2010. Twenty-ten. Wow. We’ll all start by looking back and inside. Then looking forward and out.

Then we’ll see what happens. Are we ‘under the dome?’ Not literally but figuratively. We are all on this planet and, at least for now, it is self contained, much like a tank of sea monkeys. I never really knew what the fuck those things were anyway.

No help is available from outside. It’s sink or swim, up to those of us who live here on the fragile surface of this tiny ball spinning fast through the cold and black and utterly unknown.

Another year and countless opportunities to see people exhibiting an astounding misapplication of judgment.

Love as usual eluded me. This time quite utterly.

I wished my life was a movie. At least you can fast forward to the end and see how it all went. Unfortunately I have to live every second of it and have no idea how things will end. Well it ends with my death but it would be nice to know before hand if you got married, made friends, had children, saw the world, help change the world a little and perhaps most importantly were you worth a damn to anyone else.

Dear God I find your humor in all this most disturbing.

There was a time I worked for ACP Computer near Raffles Boulevard.

It was terrible.

The people there just seemed zoned out.

Passion was asleep.

All the women and sissy men ever did was gossip.

And gossip they did about every little thing.

The biggest mistake I made was to listen to my father.

I started work as soon as I finished my national service.

I remember the times I just sat behind the office building and looked at the ocean.

Sometimes I cried out of my frustration, being boxed in, adhering to rules, and living a meaningless existence.

I devised a plan to get myself out of the company.

Looking back I’m glad I did because now I am king.

I get to be the master of my own destiny.

There are many philosophies in life that you can subscribe to.

I like to think that all of them are wrong.

The only one that truly matters to me is my own.

No one is right when everyone is wrong.

Besides no one here can really judge us.

Sure society does, but it only does so because it feels threatened by our eccentricities and potential.

All my life, I have heard the right way to live. Study hard, be the best , stay faithful, don’t go against God, pray, defend the nation, protect capitalism, don’t test water, don’t be a hero, stay safe, get a safe job, marry and have children.

I really don’t know what I want out of life.

But I know what I do not want out of life.

Life can be as easy or hard as you want it to be.

There is no grace in death.

We all die like cats and dogs.

Might as well make our lives interesting for we will never get this chance ever again.

Once in my naivety I requested a testimonial from a previous employer.

She told me she won’t write one because I had only worked there for six months and didn’t make any significant contribution to their organization.

If you really think about, the time she took to write this deliberate reply she could have instead used to write a short testimonial.

Nothing much, just a short generic testimonial.

It all comes down to your own willingness.

Nuff said.

Don’t you ever wake up and realize that you being alive is perhaps the greatest miracle in the Universe. I mean every individual particle that makes you who you are in its self has no consciousness or even the inert capacity to know what is going on around it. But here we all are the only sentient beings in the known Universe and if you really think about it, every problem you ever faced, or will face stands in pale comparison next to your potential as a human being so long you can free yourself from inhibitors placed upon you by society, state, religion, family and even by yourself.

Our whole culture is moving for some time now with a tortured tension that is growing from decade to decade, as toward a catastrophe: restlessly, violently, headlong, like a river that wants to reach the end, that no longer reflects, that is afraid to reflect.