What Being in a High School Rock Band Taught Me About Taking Chances

And how it made me realize that perfectionism could deny us from having incredible life experiences

Perfectionism paralyzes people.

As a creator, I’ve had bouts of it, and it’s never pretty. As a perfectionist, you become your biggest enemy. You shoot yourself down before you can even get started.

I’m thankful that I overcame this problem. Since I started my journey in 2022, I’ve published hundreds of content on the internet. I credit that accomplishment to not being consumed by a perfectionist mindset.

As I reflected on how I did it, the answer took me back to my high school days.

Let’s Turn Back Time

In my senior year, I was in a rock band.

There were five of us. Five Filipino teenage kids from an all-boys Catholic school united by a love for mic-swinging, scaffold-climbing American rock bands.

We started our group during one of our lunch breaks. We had our instruments that day because we had an exam for our music class.

Our singer, hugging his guitar, started playing Great Romances of the 20th Century from Taking Back Sunday out of nowhere.

With drumsticks in hand, I laid down some beats on my electronic drumset to accompany my friend’s guitar-playing. Another classmate joined in soon after, playing the lead guitar riffs.

By the end of that song, we stared at each other. We said nothing for a good minute or so.

But I knew we all felt it — the electricity in the air.

“That was awesome, bro,” our singer said.

And it was.

Not because we played so well. We may have mangled our rendition of one of our most beloved teenage anthems.

But we knew there was chemistry between us, and that was all we needed to get started.

The Rest Was History

Soon after that first jam session, Daimos Killed Betty Boop was born.

In case you’re wondering, our band name was a random idea from another classmate. There wasn’t any deep meaning to it. Initially, at least.

Only a bit later, when our singer started our webpage on the now-defunct music streaming site, Purevolume, did he come up with a sappy (but pretty morbid) story behind our name:

Betty Boop loved breaking mechanical hearts. Daimos was in love with Betty Boop. Betty Boop broke Daimos’ heart. Daimos killed Betty Boop.

A few days after my two friends and I had our first jam session, we recruited a classmate to play bass. Shortly after that, another one joined in on drums. I joined my other friend on the guitars while the vocalist focused solely on singing. And that was the official start of our five-piece rock outfit.

It took us a few weeks to find venues to let us play. And to be honest, I didn’t think we’d land any gigs.

We weren’t exactly virtuosos. I barely learned what power chords were a few weeks prior. There were students at our school who’d been musicians for years.

But lo and behold, we got a gig. It was an event at the school where my ex-GF studied.

Soon afterward, we landed another gig. And another. The next thing we knew, we landed gigs at school fairs around Metro Manila. We’ve even opened for several upcoming indie bands on at least two occasions. Fun times.

Our joyride through the Manila rock and roll scene lasted a few months. But it felt like a lifetime.

This adventure was sadly cut short when I migrated to the United States. A month after I left, the other guitarist moved to New York. The band dissolved.

The Power of Taking Chances

I’m 34 now, twice my age since I last played onstage.

I doubt I’ll soon be strutting a guitar in front of a crowd. I’ve outgrown my fantasy of being an indie rock star.

But something profound happened as I lived through that dreamlike period. Being in that band planted the idea in my head that beautiful things happen when you take chances in life.

We could have kept our little jamming session in the classroom. We could have found 10,000 reasons to avoid putting ourselves in front of crowds.

But frankly, we didn’t even think about it. It wasn’t like we sat at a round table one day and did a cost-benefit analysis of being onstage performers.

We just thought it’d be cool to play for crowds. Crowds that sometimes included girls we wanted to take to the prom.

By the time we started the band, we all knew it was only a few months before I moved to the US.

We knew we were on borrowed time. There was no time to get polished.

We just had to get started or miss out for the rest of our lives.

And I’m glad we took our chances.

Because as devastated as I was when I left the band, I wouldn’t trade my high school experience for anything.

What Grown-ups Can Learn From Young People

Youngsters often get a lot of flak from grown-ups for being carefree. And maybe that’s what my bandmates and I were —carefree.

Is being carefree as bad as we think, though?

As grown-ups, we pride ourselves as rational and calculating beings. We tell ourselves that to make it in the world, we must think everything through. That we’re better off waiting for the “perfect timing” to jump into things.

Where has our sense of adventure gone? When did we stop getting excited about a bit of unpredictability?

My band didn’t always finish with a perfect performance.

Usually, there’d be some little screw-up. A busted speaker. A popped string in the middle of a set. A messed-up chord progression. A broken drumstick. Absent band members. Whatever.

But no matter what happened onstage, we enjoyed playing every gig. Our mishaps were always an afterthought.

And even though we never became the best musicians in town, we got pretty decent. We improved our craft through iteration–by constantly putting ourselves shamelessly in public.

As we grow older, we sometimes forget how awesome it can be to relinquish some control. Some of us spend countless hours crafting “fool-proof plans” to ensure things go as perfectly as possible.

In reality, we’re just afraid to be disappointed. We’re just scared to fail.

But while we allow this fear of failure to get the best of us, we forget the opportunity costs of trying to be perfect.

Perfectionism is why some businesses don’t ever get started.

Perfectionism is why some pitches never reach the clients they’re supposed to reach.

Perfectionism is why some articles and book drafts never see the light of day.

What we subject ourselves to is incredible when we let perfectionism overcome us.

But as my 17-year-old self can teach us, some of the best experiences aren’t a result of perfect planning.

Sometimes, life throws random things at us — ideas, moments, subtle opportunities, etc.

The choice is ours, whether to make the most of them or overthink the life out of them.

If you liked this story, consider signing up for my newsletter, The Creator Headspace.