Our mini-album release performance in February 2010.

In my last two posts, I wrote about taking the driver’s seat and grasping control of my career and artistic direction. It is has been an amazing ride in the recent four to six months for my bandmates and me (and it’s just starting ).

In my last post on November 25, 2009, I wrote the following goals for our band:

1. Break the 1,000 fans mark on our Facebook page.
2. Hit the radio airwaves.
3. Release our own album next year.

Well, guess what?  No. 2 and no.3 are done.  We released our first mini-album on February 10, 2010 and as a result, we’ve been featured on two major radio interview shows. Check and check.  Goal no. 1 is in the process of being completed (I forecast completion in two days max); at the time of this writing, we are looking at 947 fans (and that number shot up from 774 fans within 48 hours due to a TV show appearance we did two days ago).

On national TV earlier this month.

The fact that I am mentioning all these figures and accolades are not for showing off or asking you to bow down to us. :p  Not at all!  I just feel compelled to write this post today simply to tell you that if you: 1. make goals and commit to them, 2. take action on your passionate ideas, and 3. stay consistently fervent on achieving what you set out to achieve, … you’re going to see some pretty phenomenal results.  I kid you not.

Since October of last year, our band has achieved many of the landmarks that a ’signed-and-backed-by-a-huge-label-band’ achieves with only the smarts, courage, and passion of a few stubbornly hopeful individuals.

Some crowning achievements:

1. Getting radio airplay
2. Going on a major TV show
3. Winning a nationwide songwriting contest
4. Releasing an album
5. Getting accepted to perform at the Woodstock 2010 of Taiwan (Spring Scream)

What’s even more inspiring is that we’re actually making profit from our ventures because we are literally our own bosses (i.e. no big brother entertainment agency snatching a huge chunk of our income).  One thing that I’ve learned more than anything is the importance of a strong movement.  And by that I mean the friends and family that help build the fundamental roots to uplift a product (in this case, our band Cool Silly).  We have such amazing support from our close friends and it is truly indescribably touching just knowing that they are there for us. So, special thanks to all of you guys and gals!!!

And as usual, some upcoming goals for the band to be completed within the next 6 months:

1. Sell 500 mini-albums (on our way)
2. Shoot a music video
3. Surpass the 2,000 fans mark on our Facebook page
4. Perform in China (in the works)

If you’ve read this far in to the entry, I read somewhere once that goals are dreams with deadlines and that a goal without a deadline is just a wish. Bottom line: Take action on your passionate ideas!   Set goals with deadlines and stay committed!  If you come up with cool ideas and halfass execute them, you are simply wasting your time.  Go full throttle!!!  You will be on your way to awesomeness in no time!  I leave you with a nice quote:

A deadline is negative inspiration. Still, it’s better than no inspiration at all.

Now GO!

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that don’t work.”
- Thomas Edison

One of my favorite quotes.

Earlier tonight, I was looking through some old files on my hard drive. Listening to some music that I wrote a long time ago and watching some videos of early dance performances. I’m not gonna lie. When I watch those dance moves, I can’t help but cringe (not to mention goosebumps). Or listening to earlier tunes when I was screwing around and didn’t really know how to write a decent song. Perhaps you’ve had a similar feeling looking through old photos of yourself… During those moments of reminiscence, it’s actually a pretty nasty feeling and your only impulse is to press ’stop’ or close the file altogether. You think to yourself… ‘WTF was I thinking???’

But before I closed the file and shoot myself, I realized something…

I gave it a shot. I went for it. Sure, it may have been sub-par, but I did it. Yea! That’s more than most people can say really. It’s true, if I had never written those tunes or performed in those videos, then basically I have nothing to ever regret and life is good. Stable life, no crappy history. But that’s pretty boring. I feel. As long as I tried my very best in my previous works, no regrets and no hard feelings when reminiscing or hearing negative feedback from others. In fact, the very fact that viewing previous works gives me a cringe effect is proof that I’ve improved. If I didn’t improve, those works would seem awesome to me right now. Ya dig?

I’m still on my life’s journey of finding 10,000 ways that don’t work. If I have a question and it sounds stupid or the answer is obvious, I’m still gonna ask it. Eventually, things will fall into place and success will be achieved.

For your enjoyment, here are some photos from my journey thus far of finding 10,000 ways that work AND don’t work – I hope you get a good laugh from these:

“An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made, in a very narrow field.”–Niels Bohr (1885-1962)

Yep, Bohr as in the bohr model. This quote reminds me of my earlier days at Cisco. I worked in the engineering tech support labs and performed customer recreates for Cisco clients like AOL, AT&T, etc. When I first began, it was a really tough road learning all the software, hardware, and protocols. But about six months later, I started getting really good at troubleshooting problems — mostly because I had encountered them before already. Nine months later, I was really sharp and sometimes a go-to guy. A year later, I was traning people.

Just earlier tonight, I finally completed my programming assignment for class, meaning the chip hardware was doing what it’s supposed to do. This was after a total of about 5 hours of troubleshooting. Those 5 hours were frustrating and sucky. But now I feel awesome. I’m one more tiny step closer to expert status…

I think this quote by Bohr is very true. Find your niche passion or skill. Finesse it. Make mistakes. Learn everything. Become the best.

Your task for today (and everyday): Ask a question. Make a mistake. Don’t be afraid to ask that potentially ‘dumb’ question. So you get laughed at, who cares? You gained something. You learned!