I used to think that if I wasn’t going to do something perfectly, I shouldn’t do it at all. That mindset held me back for years. I’d look at people who seemed effortlessly successful and think, “I’ll start when I know I can do it right.” But here’s the thing—most of them weren’t as effortless as they seemed. They had failed, stumbled, and started over more times than I could count. I just didn’t see it.

For a long time, I was caught in a strange illusion. It’s easy to look good when you do nothing. No mistakes, no failures, no embarrassing moments—just a clean, untouched potential. But that’s all it was: potential. And potential that sits unused isn’t worth much.

I remember the first time I seriously decided to take action on something outside my comfort zone. I was working on a project that I had been thinking about for years. At first, I tried to make everything perfect. I would tweak and tweak, never really finishing anything because I was afraid of putting out something that wasn’t flawless. But eventually, I realized that perfection was just an excuse to avoid failure. So, I took a deep breath and released something that was just good enough.

And guess what? It wasn’t perfect. People had feedback. Some things worked, others didn’t. But the most important thing was that it existed. I could improve it. I could refine it. I could take what I learned and make it better.

That’s when it hit me—doing something, even if it’s flawed, is always better than doing nothing. Because when you do nothing, you never get the chance to improve. You never get to see what works and what doesn’t. You never get the opportunity to build momentum.

Failing is not the opposite of success. It’s a necessary step toward it. The people who succeed aren’t the ones who got everything right the first time. They’re the ones who kept going after they got it wrong.

Looking back, I realize how much time I wasted trying to look good by avoiding failure. The irony is that the people I admire the most aren’t the ones who never failed—they’re the ones who failed, learned, and kept moving forward. They’re the ones who took risks, made mistakes, and refused to let those mistakes define them.

So, if you’re hesitating to start something because you’re afraid it won’t be perfect, I’ll tell you what I wish someone had told me sooner: Do it anyway. Do it badly if you have to. Let it be messy, let it be awkward, let it be far from what you envisioned. But do it. Because the sooner you start, the sooner you can learn, improve, and grow.

And one day, you’ll look back and realize that all those failures weren’t roadblocks. They were stepping stones.

This is the first of a series of old consoles modding posts, some to add functionality and some purely cosmetic. I will start with the simplest of them all, changing the power LED of a Nintendo Entertainment System.

When the NES came out in 1985, electronic power LEDs used colors that were available at the time, red or green ones. Blue LEDs were not around at the time. They were invented relatively recent and they gave their inventors Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano and Shuji Nakamura, the Nobel prize in 2014.

Changing the NES power LED to blue, in my opinion gives the 80s device a more 21st century feel and it’s super easy to do. All you have to do is unscrew the NES, remove the mainboard and get to the POWER and RESET board on the left. Use a soldering iron to remove the existing LED, while bending it a bit to the back to remove it from the plastic clear channel.

At this point you are ready to put the new LED in. Just be careful with polarity. LEDs, as the D in their name suggests are diodes, which means there is a correct way and a wrong way to put them in the circuit.

The LED symbol shows you the way. The Anode is where you need to use the long leg of the LED (positive) and the Cathode where you use the short one (negative). If you mess it up, it doesn’t hurt anything, but it will not light up, which is the whole point of a LED.

Solder the two legs at the bottom and bend the LED back in the clear channel.

If you get everything correctly and try to power up the NES, you will be greeted with a beautiful LED light. Put back everything and you should be done. Enjoy the 21st century light show!