New habit I have, coming out of the need to be in the office at 7am. For not so subtle reasons (which are here and here), the spirit of some long-ago dead race car driver takes control of my mind and turns me into a speed junkie whenever I listen to Lenny Kravitz’s Are You Gonna Go My Way and The Cardigans’ My Favorite Game.
It’s a little uncanny when I think about it. But then, music has always dictated my mood since long ago. And pretty much my ambitions. Time was when I aspired to perform in a concert. But that dream has already dissipated, helped in no small way by me actually performing in a concert. Good experience, all things considered. And it taught me that I should be thankful I’m not in a line of work where I do have to do concerts and tours at least twice a year (concerts are damn exhausting).
Well, at least that was one aspiration I could finally put to bed.  But thinking about it during the drive to Don Antonio to pick up my wife from her badminton game made me realize those other things that I maybe should have gotten into, instead of I.T. Now don’t laugh because some of these can be outright ludicrous.
Lawyer - Whenever I practice my reasoning skills, my wife always tells me that I should have been a lawyer (it’s her way of saying “All right, you win.” 
 ). Well, I do seem to enjoy crushing other people’s arguments to the ground, especially those who have the audacity to get into debates without bothering to fact-check.  The problem with this profession is sometimes you really have to compromise your integrity. And that’s something I’d want to avoid if I could.
Police officer/detective – Never mind the whys, I just wanted to be a cop. Maybe this stemmed from all those cop series prevalent on TV during the late 70s to the early 80s that kind of influenced my formative years. Problem: being a cop in the Philippines is worse than being a lawyer, for the very same reason.
Novelist – I’m a late bloomer when it comes to this, having found out that I could write when I was already 29 years old. And I do fancy creative/fiction writing (as evidenced by this 56-chapter fan fiction that I started six years ago and have yet to finish). Maybe someday I could publish something that’ll put me in the New York times bestseller map, but trying to accomplsh that would require a lot of sacrifice. Graham Taylor, author of Shadowmancer (the Christian alternative to Harry Potter?) sold his motorcycle just to get his book published.
Race car driver – And no, this is not a Gran Turismo influence. In the first place, I dig Gran Turismo because I’m a car nut and a racing freak.
Fighter pilot – Probably the one item in this list that I will never, ever attain (which relegates me to mere dreams of flying a Joint Strike Fighter). But then, this is where knowing how to write comes in to help reduce the impact of unrealization. Like:
Edge: “Blaze, what are you doing? The enemy has a missile lock on you and you’re still not engaging.”
Blaze: “Heh. He could missile-lock me all he wants, but his missile firing mechanism is fritzed and his guns are out of ammo. All bark and no bite, so to speak.”
Edge: “So he’s just trying to piss you off.”
Blaze: “That’s an affirmative, Razgriz two.”
(excerpt from Great Heroes in the Sky, an Ace Combat 5 novelization)
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Aahhh, we could always dream… 
