Hi
My name is Ed and I’m a second-generation Filipino-Canadian that got fed up with the ordinary. My goal is to break the cycle in my own way and document my journey.
Maybe this will inspire you to do the same.
Maybe it won’t.
Maybe I’ll achieve my goals this time.
Or maybe I’ll fail miserably (again).
Like most things in life, the answers are most likely somewhere in between. This realization is what Fifty Percent Awesome means to me. Even though you may not be the absolute best at something (and probably never will be), you can still strive to be awesome. Even though you might fail, you can never achieve awesome without trying.
“Believe you can and you’re halfway there.”
– Theodore Roosevelt
I choose to believe that I can. In doing so and documenting my progress, I hope to show that you can too. “Can what?” you might ask — well, that part is up to you.
These are my goals:
- Learn a bunch of different skills that I always wanted to, but never made the time for. These can be trivial (e.g. learning to whistle), or significant (e.g. learning a new language)
- Flex my creative muscles a bit more. What else am I gonna do with all those tools I bought at the height of the pandemic (e.g. power tools, 3D printer, Cricut)?
- Get back into shape
- Work on some side-hustles with the longshot goal of side-hustles becoming main-hustles
- Inspire others to get out of their funks and be the best Fifty Percenters they can be
At this point I just feel like an average guy that just happens to be lacking a bunch of knowledge and skills. I spent a lot of time either focused on school or on getting and maintaining a secure, well-paying 9 to 5 job. After getting through all that and securing a job as a Financial Analyst, I was content. I saw it all as a privilege because really, it was.
After a while though, I knew that something was missing.
It felt like I was taking the path of least resistance, even though I knew deep down it’s not what I really wanted. It began taking a toll on me mentally as well as physically to the point where I knew I had to do something about it.
Growing up I had always enjoyed “inventing” creative solutions for problems, and was all about the hustle. This is the side of me that I had neglected for far too long in focusing on school and in working as a Financial Analyst. In business school, the entrepreneurial stories were always the ones that really got my attention — the ironic thing is that a lot of those stories were about people that didn’t go to post-secondary, but I digress.
Every time I tried change things up however, there would be something to stop me. Sometimes it would be my own thoughts, sometimes it would be something petty or “logical”, sometimes it would be something tragic.
There will always be an excuse, some more valid than others. I’ve decided that it’s time to face things as they are and believe in the change I want to make.
