Everyone has their failed attempts at something throughout their life, whether it's something big or something little, it happens to everyone. A lot of people wonder why they can't achieve something they believe they truly want (or even if they truly want it), and most of the time people give up. I know I've been there before, and I'm sure there will be a point in time when I'll be staring failure right in the face and asking all those familiar questions. Why do we fail? If you believe in God, one might think that it's God's all powerful plan to help build us character and will lead us to our chosen paths. Now I won't get into the whole God argument, nor will I shed my thoughts and ideaologies on that subject, but instead I will talk about why we fail.

Failure comes at us in 2 angles - the first being that we know we must strive harder to reach our goal, and the next is because we're too lazy to keep pushing on to get to where we want. So what's the reason why we all fail? We fail because that's how we learn. Yes, we can pick up a book and learn from what any text says, but in order to learn what is written, some had to fail in order to have something to write about. There isn't a single person in the world who has led the perfect life and always achieved what they wanted on their first try.

In the last few years of my teenage years and up until today, there are people who always tell me "I can't understand how you can walk up to someone, say 90% of what you do, and it always ends in laughter." I usually shrug it off and tell them it's a skill I've learned throughout my life. Being personable and learning how to read someone elses body language is a skill that anyone can learn if they really want to. It's not about trying to impress people or think of things that might appear funny to get a laugh, it's about understanding the audience. So how did I learn how get this amazing talent? By failing.

Back when I was younger, my older brother was a pretty funny fella, as were most of his friends and most of mine. I was stuck trying to compete for comic attention between my peers and friends and family, but would always make myself look like an ass. Things I would say would come out wrong or my words became a big jumbled mess and everything that shot out from my lips made me look...well...retarded. I remember sitting in my neighbors room with a few friends, playing some video games and laughing and having a good time. They were all making jokes to the movies we were watching and the games we were playing, and I couldn't figure out how to join in with anything remotely funny. I would attempt a joke, and it usually ended with a remote being thrown at my head. I tried various approaches to gain some comic relief to people, and for the longest time it usually ended with people rolling their eyes and looking away. I've also learned that people didn't like a know-it-all, and that you can get your ass kicked for being that guy.

Eventually I realized that I was putting too much pressure on myself to fit in, and I started just saying and doing things that just came to me naturally. I'm now known as the guy who will make you piss your pants any chance he can get. No, I haven't made anyone piss their pants, at least that I know of, but it is a goal of mine.

A few people recently have asked me what made me start writing and what my goals with writing are. I couldn't really give an answer to the questions aside from "I just like to write", but that sounds so cliche and boring. I took some time to think about it, and I realized where it all came from. I'm a failed musician. Yes, it does bother me to some degree that I am a failed musician, but I know that it helped me understand myself a little more and opened up my eyes to different avenues than I thought I would ever walk down.

Back in 2004 going into 2005, I was in a band who still to this day is better than 75% of the local bands I've ever heard. We played a few shows and ended up getting signed to an independent label that had major distribution (for those of you who don't really know what that is, it's a label that isn't big, but can distribute your media to major outlets). We were well on our way to making it big. We opened up for quite a few major bands, headlined a few local shows, and did a small tour up the east coast. Awesome, so what happenens next Adam? Well, the drummer and singer ended up spending all of the bands money and left us practically broke. We didn't have enough money to finish up the album (which was released anyways), to finish the music video, or to continue going on tour. On top of that, there was a lot of drama in the band which caused a lot of static between members; it was awful. I spoke to the label and was released of all obligations. (The entire story of this will eventually come).

So what, you failed in a band because of issues, so now you write? Yes, but it's not quite that simple. I had written a lot of lyrics and music over the years, but none of what I wrote ever felt real, or complete, or good enough to really let someone else take a look and hope they feel anywhere close to what I did when I wrote it. I didn't know how to capture the feeling, or a moment or anything relevent to what I had felt. It bothered me and the more I struggled with it, the more I loathed what I wrote. It wasn't until I was in the aforementioned band that I realized that I did have it in me to write something that people would fall in love with. Sure, I didn't compose every single note and instrument of the song or every little lyric, but it was me who wrote the foundation, the rhythm, and the structures.

After I left the band I ended up moving back home, and my friend C-Loz had me audition for the band he was in. If you think Playboy has a lot of issues (magazine wise), this band had more (problem wise). You had someone who was stuck in the nu-metal/thrash metal genre, someone who was stuck in early 80's rock, one person who just followed whoever seemed to have the best point, one person who was all about blues, and one person who was all about progressive rock/metal, and when put together in one room, you have a catasphrophe. Nobody could agree on anything except that we all had musical differences and couldn't work together. When that band fell apart, the drummer and I started fresh and new, except it was now all on me to write the music and the lyrics. Eventually the drummer left for a lot of reasons (more to follow in the failed musician story), but with the replacement, nothing changed.

It was then that I realized that I had been writing lyrics and music that a lot of people enjoyed. It was also at that point that I realized I was a poor candidate to be a leader of a group of musicians. Everyone looked at me for cues and notes, and how something should sound, what lyrics should be said where, and what kind of snare hit should be done at what measure. It was overwhelming to me, and it eventually led me to just move on from music. Now, don't go thinking that I'm some amazing musician, because I'm not. I'm pretty damn good, don't get me wrong, but there are millions of people who are much better than me; more talented and skillful than I'll ever be because they want that and have the drive and ambition to go out and do something with it.

It around the time the first band I had mentioned was at the cusp of making it big when I had my first idea for a story. I wasn't sure of the direction I wanted to go with the story, or if it were to be a short tale or a novel of some sort. It took 3 years to finally realize that I wanted to write, because it's what I was the best at. I had 2 people willing to be my editor, and a lot of people interested in reading what I had to write. I began writing and didn't stop. About a month later, I had 120 pages of the full story and I wasn't happy with it. The editor made a lot of corrections, some I wasn't happy with while others I was, but I still wasn't satisfied with the whole outcome of it. It wasn't nearly as long as I wanted it to be, it didn't seem to have the kind of emotions I wanted it to have, and I was very nervous of letting people read it. My editor said it was an intriguing story, so I decided to get 5 copies printed up to pass out to my friends and have them give me their honest opinions. I got "there's too much descriptions on certain things and not enough elsewhere", "it kept me interested the entire time, and that's hard to do", "it sucks", "it's good", and "I know you can do better". I was told once that every author throws their first story away, and sometimes even uses ideas from it to help with their next one. That's pretty much what I did - tossed it away. I still have the file, but it's buried in a folder on a flash drive somewhere.

That's when my last singer told me "Dude, you should start a site and just write about your stories and whatever else you can think of that would be interesting and entertaining." So, that's how I really got into writing, because I failed as a musician.

You could argue that I didn't fail as a musician and that I used it as a stepping stone to get to this point with my hobbies, however I did fail as a musician. I had dreams of being on the same stages as my idols and even to this day I still think about it. I know better these days. The point is, I failed at my dreams. Not because I didn't put enough effort into them, but because I had to learn more about myself and what the world (and myself) has to offer.

While people see failure as a bad thing, keep in mind that it's the exact opposite. Without failures we would never evolve and learn. If everyone was perfect then we'd never know what it's like to have that amazing feeling of achievement we get when we finally do succeed in what we want. If nobody failed, we'd never had a reason to wake up in the morning to pursue our dreams and desires in hopes to provide a better future for us, or our children, or our friends and family.

Failure is the key to success.