I really like this band, The Naked and Famous. I’m feeling the lyrics.
They’ll get through.
They’ll get you.
In the place that you feel it the most.
When you’re cornered.
When it’s forming.
In the place that you wish was a ghost.
For many of us, dreams and goals make life exciting. I enjoy coming up with ideas, expanding my skill-sets, and building relationships. However, sometimes in the midst of our hustle to do well in our lives, we forget the importance of having gratitude for what we have now and accomplished thus far. We get too fixated on what we want and get frustrated when all our efforts are not taking us there. We all love success, but with every dream and goal we pursue, there will be challenges and even failure. Some statistics say 8 out of 10 businesses started will fail. Many have pursued the path to become a U.S. Senator or President of the United States and have fallen short. Others have attempted to reach the highest levels in their field of work but have failed to attain that level. Failure is only failure if we don’t appreciate what we currently have and what we have gained. Shoot to be number one in the world, but number 50 is still pretty darn good. We can make peace with our mind knowing that we did our best, and won’t have the pain of wondering “What if I had given my idea a shot?” Through failure, we gain knowledge in areas we may have not been familiar with; build new relationships; and even come up with more ideas to pursue. With failure, we change and evolve, often leading us to worlds we’ve never experienced. When we embrace failure as part of success, we can keep moving higher to a level where we can keep failing until we succeed, and keep succeeding until we fail.
Here’s a great interview of Elizabeth Gilbert by Marie Forleo in regards to unleashing your creative self. Ms. Gilbert is an entrepreneur, author, and motivational speaker. Below the video are my notes from this amazing interview. It’s sure to lift your spirit and keep you motivated as you pursue your creativity.
Jon’s Notes on Marie Forleo’s interview of Elizabeth Gilbert – Author
Latest Book: “Big Magic”
Nugget’s Wisdom: The real reason we don’t move creatively ahead is always and only fear.
Afraid they don’t have talent; afraid of rejection; afraid of criticism.
Nugget’s Wisdom: I have no desire to become a fearless person.
Only people who are fearless are psychopaths and toddlers.
Fear is a necessary companion.
Fear is the reason why we’re alive today. Fear protects us.
Nugget’s Wisdom: Creativity will always provoke your fear.
Acknowledge the importance of fear and invite it along. I’m just writing a poem. It’s not life or death.
Nugget’s Wisdom: You can’t let fear have control over your creative choices.
Fear can shut your creative choices one by one. No don’t do that – No, too risky.
Nugget’s Wisdom: Guaranteed it’s already been done, but it’s not yet been done by you.
40,000 years of the art and pretty much it’s been done before.
Shakespeare borrowed stories and told them in a way that’s never been told before.
Artists have always been responding to stuff but you can add to the pile.
What moves me is the humanity in the authentic piece of creation. My heart and mind has changed. The world looks different.
“All love eventually becomes help.” Inspired by Paul Tillich.
You will radiate a thing that people wants to be near.
Every pursuit comes with a shit sandwich. What do you love but willing to eat the shit sandwich?
7 years of rejection letters. Are you willing to still eat the shit sandwich?
Even when you succeed, your shit sandwich will be media criticism, people criticism, etc.
Is this still better than nothing doing it? If yes, then you’re on the right path.
Nuggets of Wisdom: People murder their creativity by insisting they’re not truly creative unless their creativity pays the bills.
Jump and the net might catch you. What would do even if failure wasn’t a word you’re thinking of.
You may or not get everything you want.
Don’t be fixated on how much money your creativity makes. You work on your creativity because you love to work on it.
Don’t get so battered that you lose your house, family, etc. that you shut down and never want to work on your creativity.
Be child-like, not childish. Don’t be childish – I want it and I should get it. People get rage, resentment etc. for failure. Do be child-like and be open to creativity like a child.
I wish there was a shortcut for personal and spiritual growth, relationships, health, but there’s not. It takes a lot of work.
Nuggets of Wisdom: Perfectionism is a serial killer.
I don’t want to be perfect, I want it to be finished.
There’s a lot of good unfinished work.
If your standards are so high, you’ll never finish you work.
The contract I made was to be a writer, not a good writer.
I promised the universe that I would be a writer, not a good writer.
I don’t want to go to my grave with 50 pages of an unfinished novel.
If you don’t like it, go write your own fucking book. And you know what, you won’t.
Nuggets of Wisdom: What will make you finish it is not discipline, but self-forgiveness.
Forgive yourself for not doing well.
I’m not Hemingway, but I’ll keep trying.
Nuggets of Wisdom: There’s no better thing to spend your life doing that saying yes to that invitation.
When did inspiration promise you anything – other than the amazing experience you have dancing with it for some time? Inspiration will watch you fall off the cliff and smile and ask you, “Do you want to do it again?”
Find ways to cushion the fall. Despite the pain, one of these days, you will say yes to inspiration again.
You will create something that you love and then you may hate it later. You love it and you dismiss it. It’s okay.
It’s not a baby. It’s just a thing I made. People will criticize it, attack it, hate it.
It’s independent of you. Your creativity was making you as you were developing it. When you finish it, forget about it.
Nuggets of Wisdom: There are two kinds of creators in the world: the martyrs, and the tricksters.
Reject the martyr way. I will do this even if it kills me.
Trickster: I didn’t come here to get hurt.
Tricksters do things in a transgressive way. They play with things, turn things upside down. Down have to treat things as a holy way.
Trickster trusts the universe. Put it out there and see what happens. Don’t be so heavy. There’s no one way.
We live in a take, take world. When our energy is drained to the point where our health begins to fade, it’s time to pause to review our life and then make the changes necessary to recover.
To combat this, we have to focus on those who fill us with positive energy and who truly care for who we are. We also need to work on what we’re passionate about and provide value that helps others. Somehow, when we do this, good things come back to us.
Today April 23, 2016, I finished my 15th draft of my Writing Project #1, a fictional story that I created back when I couldn’t sleep on October 11 to 12, 2006. In the story, the young male protagonist Ken whose health is ailing meets a girl named Kaylee in his dreams who suffers from memory loss, regret, and deep sorrow. As his relationship develops with her, he realizes that his strange dreams are much deeper than ordinary dreams. While in the dream world, he discovers a powerful secret about energy that can not only help Kaylee with her memory loss and sorrow, but save his life and bring balance between good and evil. However, by helping Kaylee attain happiness, Ken realizes that he would lose her forever.
The love between Kaylee and Ken will empower us to play a role in making our universe more positive. I dedicate “Us” by Kaskade & CID to all of you.
A couple of days ago, while taking a break from my work, I watched the ending part of the movie “Serendipity,” which I haven’t seen in awhile. Here’s the song “When You Know” by Shawn Colvin with clips of the movie in the video.
After 32 days of non-stop work on a development project in Kona, Hawaii and an EB-5 Regional Center based in Hawaii, I’m typing my 15th draft of my first novel that I started in October 2006 that currently consists of nearly 80,000 words, a love story between a young male protagonist and a dead girl that brings forward our fears of being alone, not finding true love in our lifetime, losing the battle against negative people, and dying without resolving the pain resulting from heartbreak and broken families. This weekend, I’m also going to continue working on my novel based in Iraq during the U.S. occupation – a love story that is sure to draw controversy because it is surrounded by violence, something you may either understand or disagree with, depending on where you stand on certain political issues. Nonetheless, the bottom line is that love can guide us through anger, death, and our darkest moments. I began writing my second story in May 2013 and it has just under 44,973 words.
The song “Unconditionally” by Katy Perry describes the emotional depth that the characters in my novels have with with each other despite their flaws and all the craziness around them. Even if the world is burning around them and their fate seems doomed, you yearn for their love to succeed. This music video has a ballroom scene. Likewise, my first story has a climax chapter with a ballroom scene. Such a powerful song.
Today, I just listened to the song below “Graduate” by Handsome Ghost and I immediately liked it. The song connects to my stories because the characters in my novels have enormous obstacles that’s preventing them from being together.
“Swept Away” by Christoper Cross is one of my all-time favorite love songs ever, so much so that I wrote it into my first novel. Every time I listen to it, it brings out this warm feeling in my chest, and when I’m alone or writing a love story, it bring so much emotions out of me.
“Seeing for the First Time” by Britt Nicole is another song that represents the love that the characters in my novels have for one another.
With innovation, hard work, relationship-building, and a relentless pursuit of success, comes a higher level of jealousy, envy, and scrutiny. It doesn’t matter how good our intentions are. We are often told that we knew what we were getting into. The message is clear: If we wanted to avoid such negativity, we should’ve settled with an average life. But that message goes against everything that our parents and teachers taught us – that we can go as far as we want to go.
I believe that we should continue to pursue our dreams and develop friendships that last a lifetime. We must keep working hard to create products and services through our ideas. If others want to judge us by extraordinary standards, then we just have to live super extraordinary lives.
Though I’m no longer serving in the public sector, I will do my best to help Hawaii and America’s economy through the companies that I’m a partner of. In the spirit of the music events business that I’m involved with, here is an uplifting song “We Don’t Stop” by Kaskade that encourages us to keep doing the best we can in our pursuit of happiness.
At times, our greatest enemy is ourselves. Our negative thoughts push aside our positive ones, which in turn, affects our actions and everything around us. We get hard on ourselves for our failures when there was so much that we gained from taking that journey. We dwell on the past and what we don’t have, when the future is so bright with endless possibilities. We mourn the dead even though they never did leave us. Meanwhile, there are so many people who love us, and many more who are cheering us on to make our next move. So why stay still and let the darkness consume us? We have to make our move, and then another, and then many, many more. The future is relying on what we do now. To maximize what’s ahead of us, we need to be alive in the here and now. By practicing gratitude and compassion, we can transcend past our fears and into the light of happiness.
Below is a song called “Spirits” by the Strumbellas that reflect my feelings in my journal entry above.
I’ll write millions of words until my story is no longer mine, as I wish it will touch your heart and somehow give you hope, if not in this world, then in the next.
“Time is what we make of it. Fill it with everything that lifts our soul: Loved ones, projects of our greatest passion, and dreams that make the world stop for a moment.” – Jon Riki Karamatsu, December 28, 2015.
The tone of this song describes the sentiment I’m feeling.
When we fall in love, we present the best of ourselves. In time, our faults are revealed. Sometimes, these faults cause a separation. However, if we have an open heart, we will always see the good in those we loved, and even remain friends with them. Every so often, when we close our eyes and go back in time, the good times play back, and we can’t help but miss them.
The song “City of Dreams” by Dirty South & Alesso featuring Ruben Haze below represents the feelings I wrote in this post. When you watch it, you can appreciate the hard work that EDM DJs/Producers put into their songs and that’s why my business partners and I enjoy showcasing them at our events.
Put on your best headsets. This is “Shots” by Imagine Dragons. Girls have gone in and out of my life, and as for my career, well I’ve had my ups and downs. We go through challenges but keep striving as hard as we can for the world that we’ve imagined until our time is up.
JON RIKI KARAMATSU 