How having dreams can pave your way in life.

I just watched La La Land, and am now pounding on my keyboards like how Ryan Gosling passionately plays his piano in wonderful jazz pieces.

I felt that I wanna capture this before it fades from my mind.

The movie was about 2 people chasing their dreams — the struggles and compromises they have to make and the sacrifices they made to get to where they wanna be.

Days later, the movie (and the tunes) still rung loud in my head.

Earlier, while walking to buy some teh at the coffee shop downstairs, I remembered the dreams I had at different phases of my life:

In primary school — I started to love the stage. Went up on stage for recitals of poetry, story telling, acting. I wanted to be an actor. I was also in the band and loved playing the trumpet. The dream to be in an orchestra shared the top spot as being an actor.

Onward to Secondary School — being in the school band sucks, so I left. But the love of making music remains and lingers. I picked up drawing and other creative pursuits in the areas of writing and drama — being in the Drama & Debating Club as my ECA.

On to JC — had my first tastes in sports. Loved it, but it was just fun. I continued to play around on stagecrafts and in arts I’ve never dealt with before, e.g. dikir barat. More drama work in JC — I even had a chance to dabble with directing a play.

Then I failed JC promos… twice.

So my poly days were mostly serious (sort of). I took up no CCAs, nor any official school activities. I did hang out with a bunch of designers though… you know, the creative type. Somehow the passion in film making began to bloom. I saw the studio space that my ‘designer’ friends had. And I questioned why I was in engineering.

Outside of school, I toyed with video editing, making short films (just one or two actually) and being the official unofficial video guy for any gathering among friends.

At this phase of boredom, various other artistic pursuits took place… to the point where I lost focus of what I wanna be doing in future and just tried to play with all of them.

There was comic making, video editing, story writing, music making, guitar playing, trumpet playing, web design and graphic design. I realised by now that I had left behind acting, or anything stage-related.

Today, the interests in web and graphic design has materialised and taken the form of Neu Entity. But with it, comes an element of corporate branding and just boring business dealings.

But what about… film making?

What about drawing comics? I’ve toyed with doing children’s books on less busy days… but haven’t made a comic strip for ages.

Music — I’ll keep that in my hobby list. My guitar strings are rusty and my calluses have healed completely.

I’m blessed with a family of my own now, so that takes up priority and huge part of my time and life. No complains here.

So ends a post that captures my thoughts and reflections on dreams and how life has a way of channeling you to a singular path… leaving you wondering how it could’ve been if you had taken another.

Good night.

1.25 am.