Saving Big on My College Education

May 6, 2015May 6, 2015 - Colin Ashby Leave a comment

College is expensive.

Most people know that but it bears repeating due to the constant horror stories about student loans, underemployment, parents getting their paychecks seized for parent plus loans and so forth.

I always knew college was going to be a huge financial burden for me. Mainly because I fell into the turmoil many middle-class families with college-bound kids experience. I was too poor for college but too rich for FAFSA. They paid for a fraction of what my college education cost.

Back track to spring of 2010 when I was 15 years old and a high school sophomore. While in web design class one day, my teacher presented the class with brochures about the early college start (ESC) program the high school had in partnership with Austin Community College.

The program let students who have completed sophomore year/declared a junior, take two college classes per semester free of charge. The student just had to pay for the class textbooks and any necessary supplies.

FREE college classes? Heck yes.

I signed up for the info session, took the ASSET test, and signed up for two college classes to begin at the start of the summer after completing sophomore year. Determined to save as much as possible, I keep signing up semester after semester. By the time I graduated high school, I had accumulated 44 college credit hours and had completed most of my basic required courses.

Since graduating with my bachelor’s degree in December 2014, I’ve been wondering how much I saved by doing so many free college classes while in high school.

If I had gone to community college for 1.5 years after high school:

I say 1.5 years instead of the usual 2 years because I completed 44 ECS hours rather than the 60 that would be common with doing 2 years full time.

Cost for one credit hour course with ACC was about $83 in 2012 (when I graduated high school). Considering the cost, this is how much I saved:

$83 x 44 credit hours=$3,642
$30 for three semesters of parking permit

So I saved $3,672 dollars in tuition by taking 44 credit hours while in high school rather than waiting to take them at community college after I graduated high school. The amount does not include textbooks and any class supply fees as I still had to pay those even when I was in early college start.

If I had gone to a university state college for 1.5 years after high school:

After I graduated from high school with the early college start credits, I enrolled at Texas State University. I went to a university straight out of high school because as I had mentioned before, most of my basic requirement classes (classes you usually take at CC) were already completed and to stay on track to graduate, I needed to go to university right away to begin taking upper level courses that went towards my major.

Cost for one credit hour with Texas State University was about $300 in 2012. Considering the cost, this is how much I saved by taking the ECS classes instead of spending the additional 1.5 years at university:

$300 x 44 credit hours=$13,200

Room & Board costs:

Dorm room: $7,200 for three semesters in a traditional dorm room at Texas State
Meal Plan: $3,600 for three semesters of the 250 meals per semester meal plan at Texas State.
Cost of required green resident parking permit: $285–$105 of commuter permit I bought=$180

$24,180, that’s what I saved by taking 44 ECS credit hours in high school versus not doing ECS and spending the extra 1.5 years at university.

Wow. The community college number is a good chunk of change but the university one is a BIG chunk of change I saved. It makes me think about all of the high school students who, despite knowing how crazy expensive college is, still decide to go straight to university after high school instead of doing two years at a community college.

If students stayed at home and did community college, instead of heading off to university, they could save a lot of money. So why aren’t more students doing this?

There’s a stigma.

Community college is seen as something less than ideal and not able to provide “the full college experience”. I experienced backlash myself for deciding to do early college start. While in high school, so many of my fellow students (and even some teachers!) would say that I should how I should just focus on full time on getting a “well rounded” high school experience to look good on college applications and get into university.

Students would turn up their nose and say that I was studying too much and “not enjoying my teen years” while in high school (never mind the fact that I was president of my theatre troupe, part of student council, several clubs, and held a part-time job in addition to my seven high school classes and two college classes).

Most of all, their was a badge of honor people got to wear when they told people they had gotten accepted and were going to attend a university. There was excitement and celebration when finding out you got into university. The students that chose the community college route were often dismissed with a simple “Oh, that’s good”.

I didn’t mind.

I graduated college in December 2014, with a bachelor’s degree in Public Relations-Mass Communication, having completed my degree in just 2.5 years at the age of 20 years old.

I still have a good amount of student loans to pay off but not as much as what I hear a lot of other people have. I’m glad of my choices.

What did you do to manage student debt while in college? How much did you graduate with and how are you managing it? Let me know!

Image credit: Unsplash (Joshua Earle)

The Icky Nature of Self-Promotion as an Author

April 21, 2015April 21, 2015 - Colin Ashby Leave a comment

People like other people who are genuine. People like being told a story. People like to feel part of something and be wow’ed. You know what they don’t like? They don’t like it when they follow someone on Twitter and then instantly get an auto direct message telling them to visit the person’s website and/or buy their product. *clicks unfollow*

Self-promotion, marketing, it’s a tricky business. You want to get coverage for your book, you want more people to come to your site, but you’re just not sure how to break through the noise.

I kind of dislike the indie author community sometimes. Here’s why: A lot of people don’t know the intricate and diverse nature of marketing and promotion and since they don’t, they start to result to spammy tactics in hopes of selling their book.

Here’s some things that have been irking me as well as other writers and readers:

1. Auto DM’s on Twitter

I’m on Twitter posting something or commenting on something and then start to interact with some other authors. They post an interesting tweet, link to a great article, talk with me and may follow me. So I follow back. Almost instantly I get a buzz notification to my phone. Direct Message. I open it.

Hey! Do you like #paranormal #romance with a twist of #suspense! My new #novel out now on Amazon! $2.99 or free with #kindleunlimited!

I don’t buy the book, click unfollow, and go about my day. The direct message was impersonal and I barely even know you, so why the heck would I #buyyourbook? Auto-DM’s need to stop.

2. Giveaways usually don’t work

I see so many people do giveaways. To be honest, I’m not really sure on the effectiveness of them. Yeah you get a lot of exposure and people to sign up but many only sign up cause they want a free book. I get tired of constantly seeing authors tweet out multiple times a day saying Have you entered my giveaway for my #newbook about #scifi #romance?

3. Cool it with the #hashtags

Let me ask you something. Have you ever actually looked up a #romance #bookboost #thriller #indieauthor #whatever hashtag, looked at the tweet and bought the book? I haven’t and I don’t know anyone that has.

Look below at this image from a Buffer article detailing the scientific guide to hashtags. Two hashtags, that’s the most you should use. Incorporating the hashtags into the tweet (rather than having them at the end) is also better in boosting engagement. Lesson: Use hashtags sparingly and effectively. Narrow it down and use more niche hashtags. Rather than saying #writer, try putting #fantasywriter and so on. Use your best judgment.

4. Spamming on Instagram

Don’t be that person that comments on someone’s photo saying #buymybook my new #contemporary #newadult #novel is now on sale for only $0.99 cents.

5. Opt-in’s

Do you ever go to a site and before you can even read much, a pop-up comes up asking you to enter your name and email and subscribe. Pushy much? It doesn’t even let a reader see your site and find out more about you. It also is really hard for a reader to close out of when they are on mobile.

Aggresive opt-in’s: don’t do them. Have one on the sidebar or on the top of the page and leave it at that.

This post was inspired by a blog post I read on Delilah Dawson’s site discussing how self-promotion as an author doesn’t work (and a follow up post about some self-promotion things that do work).

A few things to add to Delilah’s posts. First and foremost, make it easy for people to discover who you are, what you write and how you are as a person. Spruce up your website’s about page, make it more than just a stale block of text. Put images of places you’ve travelled, fill out and have a consistent bio across all social media platforms. Know how to introduce yourself in a tweet, 70 words, 150 words, and so forth.

Interact with other writers and readers and ask about what they’re working on, how they’re doing, and so forth. Give, give, give. Once you do that, people will start to give back and be more open to helping promote you and buy your stuff.

Be a human, be personal, doing that is what leads to better engagement

Image credit

Why I want to build a Tiny House

April 6, 2015May 30, 2015 - Colin Ashby 2 Comments

Being in the midst of job hunting, I’ve had a good deal of time on my hands, even outside of doing applications and interviews (they weren’t lying when they said finding a job is a full time job). For the past few months I’ve been thinking about what I’ve really wanted in life, not just in career, but in life in general.

Like most college students, I graduated from university with student loan debt. Recently I’ve been seeing a lot of college graduates/young professionals buying lots of things once they get a full-time job and have a steady paycheck. Even though they have student loans and a million other bills to pay, they choose to add more debt to the equation by getting a new car, overspending on clothes, buying frivolous accessories, and so forth.

Our society is so materialistic and we keep fueling it.

Having a gigantic house is a sign of having made it and being successful. Driving a slick new sports car gives people the perception that you’re well off and doing good. Bigger is considered better. Did you know the size of an average american house today is 1,000 square feet larger than homes in 1973. People buy houses and never use certain rooms Or worse, they buy houses and buy more things to fill it up.

I don’t get it.

Growing up, my mom was obsessed with having the big grand house she always imagined. Under the direction of my dad, my siblings and I would help build and renovate over a dozen additions to the the house we lived in and two other rent houses my parents owned. As an 11-year-old, my Friday night plans consisted of going to an auction house, located next to a strip club, and seeing my parents buy dressers, furniture, and decorations. My dad would haul all of the stuff in a trailer back to the house and the next Friday the cycle would continue. The majority of the stuff my parents bought ended up just sitting in storage and not being used.

I didn’t understand the need to have so much stuff. At age 16, dissatisfied with my large bedroom, I moved into my closet (no, seriously). In my 6.5 ft by 6.5 ft closet, I fit my twin sized mattress and a night stand. It was all I needed and I was happy. This was the moment when I started wondering about building a tiny house.

Fast forward a few years to 2015 and I have now become super interested in it. I want to build a tiny house on wheels. I started looking at trailers and decided on building the house on an 8x20ft trailer. It’s still a few years before I start building the house, but I’ve already gotten an idea of how I want it structured.

(Above) This is sort of how I want the outside to look. The house is built on a 20ft trailer just like I want to build mine on. Instead of the little porch, I want to bring the door out to the end of the trailer like the walls are and have a 2ft overhang (where the circle window is) to provide a shield when it rains and you’re trying to get in the door.

(Above) In the first photo, you saw dormers on the roof. I want dormers on my tiny house because, as you can see, it provides more room in the loft when sleeping/moving around. Also, in this photo you see the house has a second loft used for storage. With the extra overhang on the outside, I hope to have a bigger second loft to use as storage or for an extra mattress. Twin size mattresses are 3’3 wide and 6’3 long. Accounting for wall thickness, the loft will be 6’8 across, big enough to fit a twin mattress length wise. I want the loft to be about 4ft long, enough to fit a twin mattress width wise and have a little extra few inches for having knick knacks.

(Above) I’m thinking a workstation near the front of the house like the picture above would be great. The wood paneling is awesome.

(Above) The white in this house from Tiny House Nation is awesome! The layout is very nice in the house and the ladder to the loft is creative.

I’m strongly committed to building a tiny house. I love the aspect of it and could see using it for years to come. When I start building on it within the next few years, I want to keep costs under $15,000 to make the 160 square foot house on wheels. Interesting to know how I’m in the minority demographic when it comes to tiny home dwellers. A lot of the people building them are married couples or women, not many single men seem to be building tiny houses.

I’m keeping tabs on supplies I want and hope to make this a reality within the next few years. Sometimes bigger is not always better! I want to be part of the tiny house movement.

The photo below explains the differences between a tiny house and “just buying an RV or camper trailer”

Mark Duplass’ SXSW 2015 Keynote

March 30, 2015March 29, 2015 - Colin Ashby 1 Comment

I really like mumblecore film (i.e. microbudget, no-budget film). If you go the archives from years past, you can see I’ve done some film reviews, usually of independent films. Of the independent films I watch, Mark Duplass is a stand out I like. He’s gotten sorta huge in the past few years. Currently he has a TV show he writes and produces on FX called The League, HBO show Togetherness that he writes and produces, and has a guest-starring role on Fox’s The Mindy Project, all while still managing to have a movie career outside of all of those other projects. Busy guy!

He wasn’t always this way.

He used to be just like the rest of us: working a day job, living in a crappy apartment in South Austin, TX, and wanting to have a career as a filmmaker but having no connections to the industry. This wasn’t the typical tale of some twenty-something guy who passionately wrote a screenplay, happened to know someone who worked in the Warner Brothers mail room, and the script ended up at the studio heads who loved it and immediately produced it. That usually only happens in lofty dreams/hollywood movies.

Duplass didn’t know anyone who worked in the mail room at a studio. He didn’t know anyone in connection with Hollywood film, for that matter. He just knew he wanted to be a filmmaker. So set out to do that by making a no-budget short film with his brother, Jay Duplass, that cost them only $3 bucks. According to him the film was poorly shot and not that good. Despite the production quality, the taste and vision was there.

He worked at his day job, diligently saving money, and continued to make short films almost every weekend. He and his brother started to build a community of people they collaborated with, acted with, wrote with, and edited with.

Big piece of advice? Don’t go to film school. He says to minor in film and major in something that can get you a good paying job (since you’ll need to save money). When a guy in the audience asked a question about if he should go even go to college and film school, Duplass told him to think hard about it and maybe even skip college due to how expensive it is.

Duplass had some incredibly great, fresh, advice on up and coming filmmakers trying to break into the industry further. He talked about his experiences going from a guy having no connections to honing in on his craft, building a community, and moving up in the industry. There were eight tips he touched on.

1. The $3 Short Film

When you’re just starting out, find out the resources and locations you can work with and build the short film around that. Duplass said he and his brother spent $65,000 on a film called “Vince Del Rio”, it was their first film and it turned out horribly bad and him and his brother got depressed and almost gave up. They didn’t. They persevered and made another low/no-budget film and submitted it to a bunch of festivals.

“It doesn’t matter what your film looks like as long as it has a distinct quality and unique aspect to it”

2. Make a Feature for Under $1,000

Again, figure out all the resources, locations, and people that can help you and make a super low-budget film. Go make the movie on your own, with your own team.

3. Show Your Movie to Notable Stars

Even better, notable stars who are frustrated by the lack of choice in roles they get. Let them see your $1,000 movie at a festival and tell them you will build a movie character based on what they want. A lot of them won’t respond, but some will.

4. Make Another Cheap Movie–But With Notable Star

The cheap movie with the notable star will have the power to get distribution to video on demand services (iTunes, Amazon, Google Play, etc).

5. VOD is the indie film’s savior

“This is where I think VOD is an amazing thing to have for independent film” Duplass says

The cheap movie made with notable star will get some attention on VOD, unlike it would if it played in just a few theaters, and agents and other people will start to notice you.

6. Next Stop: TV

At the beginning of the keynote, Duplass mentioned how much of middle class film is dead. There aren’t that many $5 million to $10 million dollar budget films that are produced unless they have a notable star in them. TV is the replacement. TV is the new age medium indie filmmakers can go to.

You pitch a show to a network, it will probably get denied, and so you independently produce a few episodes of the show and sell it to a network looking for fresh, inexpensive programming.

7. Raise Your Friends and Help Them Out

Now that you are in a better place, help out your lower level friends produce their projects. All about building a community of people.

8. Crossroads

People will be offering you directing, writing, and producing jobs. They will be tempting to take. A lot of the offers will fall through. It’s okay though. You have built yourself up. You won’t be rich but you’ll have a solid reputation, people will see you as a filmmaker. You will be able to show your kids your movies and say that was 100% no compromise, your movie. Some studio doesn’t own it, you do.

The speech ends at around the 25:00 minute mark. The floor is open for questions. One that stood out was about moving to Los Angeles. A person wondered about if, when they should move. Duplass answered by saying a filmmaker should keep making films where they are, where they know lots of people that can help them (with locations, props, crew,etc) and can get to know themselves. A filmmaker just starting out can’t do that kind of thing in LA.

Two pieces of great advice (don’t move to LA until you find your style/voice and don’t major in film) and eight tips on success in the film industry.

Watch the keynote for yourself. It’s a great viewing with lots of original and fresh bits of advice and anecdotes.

Would you rather one novel or several?

March 23, 2015March 23, 2015 - Colin Ashby 2 Comments

photo-1418479631014-8cbf89db3431 — photo by Andre Freitas

There are a lot of crappy novels with even crapper cover designs

This is what I was thinking as I scrolled through different selections of self-published novels on Amazon. As a soon to be self-published author, I always try to look through self-published books on Amazon to buy so I can support my fellow indie authors.

I interact with authors and book bloggers on Twitter and started to notice something. Many self-published writers followed a very strict, militant-style writing routine where they would write for several hours every night of the week and anywhere from 5-12 hours on Saturdays and Sundays. Some people, who had the luxury of not having to do a full-time 9 to 5 job, said they wrote even more than that. Over and over, I kept hearing about how self-published authors apparently need to write between 2-4 novels a year in order to stay relevant and keep people from forgetting about them.

So there comes to be writers who quick draft their manuscripts and complete the journey of word one to publication in 3 to 6 months. They skimp a bit on editing by either getting a not as experienced editor or by only doing certain editing like developmental editing and then opting to skip proofreading editing and just doing it themselves.

Sometimes this works. A lot of times it doesn’t. Authors get so wrapped up in releasing as many books as possible, they forget that if they built a platform where readers could interact and regularly engage with them, the readers wouldn’t suddenly “forget” them if they didn’t release several books every year.

So many authors put out a bunch of books that are less than stellar but could be a lot better if they took the time to do an extra draft, get good quality editing, and have a good book cover design.

I don’t want to be a self-published author who churns out several okay books per year rather than one great one. I don’t want to be one of those self-published authors that has an abundance of typos/grammatical errors and plot holes in their book. I don’t want to be one of those authors who has a shoddy cover design that doesn’t follow certain design guidelines. I don’t want to be one of those self-published authors that gives a bad name to self-publishing by fueling the stereotype that it’s inferior to traditional publishing.

Self-publishing a book can be expensive, but I’d put the money in to creating one great book rather than spreading my money thin by releasing several books a year and not being able to afford professional high-quality editing and book cover design.

There should be a diligent pace in place when writing a novel but you shouldn’t write it so fast you glaze past making it the best it can possibly be.

Jenny Bravo, founder of the blog Blots and Plots and author of the forthcoming novel These are the Moments, posed a question on Twitter about novel writing:

I was conflicted about it. Writing several books helps a writer hone his/her craft. In contrast to that, there are also a lot of great authors who have only written one novel.

Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird*

*To Kill a Mockingbird was Lee’s only novel for over 50 years before it was announced early this year that she was publishing a second novel

There are a lot of other famous authors who have written only one novel. I’ve been working on my first novel for a while now and felt conflicted about the one novel vs. several novels idea. It didn’t take long before I came to an appropriate response to the idea after another writer on Twitter gave her answer on the question.

I will continue to write several novels since I want to get better at writing. Will those future novels ever see the light of day/get published? Probably not. I don’t mind it though. As long as I’m working on my craft I’m fine. Many “one novel authors” have most likely written several stories but that one novel was the only one published.

There is a happy medium. Writers can publish several great novels. The idea is to only publish novel you (and beta readers and editors) have faith in.

What do you think? Would you rather write one great novel that touches lots of people and gets several accolades or write several okay novels?

Image credit

On Traveling & New Experiences

March 18, 2015March 18, 2015 - Colin Ashby Leave a comment

Let’s talk about traveling for a moment.

All throughout college people would say over and over “You need to study abroad. It opens your horizons and makes you aware of other cultures!” Lots of the study abroad representatives would always say the slogan “You won’t know until you go.” They would give me pamphlets detailing trips visiting the Eiffel Tower, backpacking through Europe, touring the Irish countryside, visiting some castle in England, helping build things for kids in Colombia. You get the picture.

When people in class talked about the things they wanted to do, a recurring theme would always be to travel because they loved traveling. Where to? They would respond with far off places like the Greek Islands, backpacking through Europe or teaching English in an Asian country. When I’m older I’ll regret not having travelled when I was younger. Traveling can be expensive but the money is worth it to have the experience!

I always had a problem with these things. I wondered about some things. Why do people think that they need to go off to far away places to experience more of the world? Can’t you just do that by going to Canada, another state in the US, or maybe a place in Central America? To me, “experiencing new cultures” and “broadening your horizons” could be done by simply going out of your comfort zone and seeing how other people approach things.

Back in 2013, I felt discouraged. I had only ever been outside of Texas (where I live) three times. As part of a 2014 New Year’s resolution, I committed to getting out more and meeting new people. And I did. From March 2014 to March 2015 I went to South by Southwest Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas for the first time, New Orleans, then on a cross-country trip to Chicago and New York City with stops in Memphis, Tennessee and Cleveland, Ohio. Other visits for the year included Chicago for a second time, Twin Peaks, Colorado, and New York City two more times.

My full list included:

March 2014: South by Southwest Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas: I met celebrities like Melissa Fumero and Stephanie Beatriz and I sat/got sandwiched between Seth Meyers and Olivia Munn after a panel.

At the festival I got to meet a role model of mine, Mindy Kaling. She signed some photos for me and jokingly agreed to be in a movie of mine that I said would be like “a new age Sex and the City…but better and with less ego”.

While sitting in the hallways of the convention center waiting for a panel, a lady came up to me and asked if she could use the plug next to me. I said yes. In a weird twist of fate, she turned out to be a childhood friend of a famous film director I admire, Joe Swanberg.

April 2014: New Orleans, LA. Encountered copious amounts of horse poop and drunk people on Bourbon Street, saw the plantation from the movie Django Unchained and went to a WWE wrestling match.

August 2014: Cross country trip to Chicago and New York City: Tight on money, I decided to ditch taking a flight and instead took a MegaBus to Chicago and New York City. I scheduled meetings with seasoned improv professionals and visited with a communications agency I admired. The route let me make prolonged pitstops in Memphis, TN and Cleveland, OH.

On the 18 hour bus ride to New York City, I talked with a 63-year-old woman who was going to her 45 year high school reunion in Ohio.

“I want to look hot when I walk through those doors! Do you think I will look good in this dress?” (she hands me her phone with a picture of the dress. Amused and happy by her confidence, I nod in agreement).

While in NYC, I stayed at a hostel-type place and met a 19-year-old girl from Hungary. She talked about studying at university and how much she loved to study languages and cultures. She said she had always wanted to visit America but was unable to because of the cost. After several months of saving up money, she finally made the trip and was visiting NYC for a few days and then Chicago. She had such delight in her eyes as she talked about all the places she was visiting and food she was trying.

September 2014: Traveled to Chicago again to make a talk show appearance on Steve Harvey for an article I had written that went viral. The shows producers sat down with me and talked about their career experiences since college. I got to meet the other guest of the show, a 64-year-old cancer survivor who had beaten up a guy with, get this…a neck scratcher, when he tried to rob her house. Her adult daughter talked with me about the frustrations she had with the college system, how expensive it was, and how good-paying jobs were hard to come by.

On the flight back home to Austin. A woman came up and sat down in her seat beside me. We started talking and she mentioned how she had just visited her boyfriend in Chicago where he was working as a sound engineer for a great company. She had lived in Chicago while going to college but moved to Austin. For seven years she worked at an environmental agency as an editor. There was no upwards mobility in terms of promotion for her so she quit and started her own company.

The company, Austin Editing, had been something she was working on as a freelance side project for over a year before quitting her day job. I was surprised when she told me she didn’t have a lot of clients lined up when she quit her day job, just enough money to cover rent and a few things each month. Slowly but surely, with a lot of hustle, she built up a client list and today she had several team members that she manages as part of her company. She said something that stuck with me afterwards.

“Sometimes you aren’t fully ready and you just have to have this fuck it attitude and do it.”

November 2014: Twin Peaks, Colorado. I visited relatives and stayed in a freaking awesome cabin (I really love architecture so staying in the cabin was super fun). While in Colorado for a few days, I climbed mountains, sled down the hills, and had snowball fights. One of my cousins wives was studying to become a forensic photographer. She talked about how she had arrived at her desired career path and the way she loved photographing things to unravel a case.

January 2014: Visited New York City again for an interview. I got to see the inside and workings of a company whose site I read on the daily. By a stroke of luck, I got to meet with a seasoned PR professional near her workplace’s Williamsburg office.

March 2014: New York City for the third time. On my flight I met with a women named Denny who talked about how excited she was having just visited her son in North Carolina where he was graduating from Air Force training school. She said she loved Austin for all that it was and didn’t like the crowded, non-stop nature of New York City. She had a knack for solving crossword puzzles and sudoku.

Next month I’ll be going on a cruise with stops in Yucatan (Progreso) and Cozumel, Mexico. For the summer I will be going to Italy.

I traveled a lot in the timespan from this time last year to now. Did I go to some far off place, backpack through Europe, or help kids built houses in Colombia? No. Instead I just went out of my comfort zone, the safe nest of my apartment in Austin, Texas and visited places all across the US. I met a lot of people, learned their stories, their struggles, and how they approached life.

Many of the people I talked to who have gone on study abroad trips say it was great but they never seem to pull out anything other than talking about the different monuments and tourist spots they visited.

A girl once told me “Yeah, I just studied abroad for useless crap. I got to see some tourist spots and stuff but that was about it.”

You see? When people say they want to travel to “broaden their horizons” they usually think of visiting tourist spots rather than meeting people and seeing their walks of life.

My point with all of this is that you don’t need to go to Europe or study in England to broaden your horizons, sometimes the easiest way to do it is by going out your backdoor and talking with new people. I’m not discouraging international travel, if you have the money and resources, then by all means, go do it. I’m speaking to the people who say they can’t afford to travel, the ones who think it’s out of their reach.

Traveling can be as expensive or as cheap as you make it.

I used to think it was out of reach until I discovered that traveling can be as simple as going to another state. See the Grand Canyon, go to the Golden Gate bridge, see the nature of Washington state. You don’t have to break the bank just to broaden your horizons.

There’s something more I have to reveal. Some people know about it but many don’t. Right now (and for the past several months) I’ve been writing a novel. I don’t talk about it much but it involves a women graduating from college and joining a support group. The novel features people from all age ranges and walks of life. Throughout all of the flights, bus rides, and car rides while traveling, I was writing and working on the novel. The people I met along the way and interacted with have influenced my book in a great way. I can’t wait to share more about the book soon. For now I will leave you with the title’s initials (#LOTR). Can you guess what it is?

Also, if have an urge to travel, don’t let it go vacant. Go out to somewhere in the US you’ve never been, meet up with people you might know there, strike up conversations while in the coffee shops. Just get out there.

Happy trails.

Mindy Kaling at SXSW 2014 — Meeting one of my TV writing role models, Mindy Kaling at SXSW

Imagine Central Park John Lennon — At Strawberry Fields Central Park dedicated to John Lennon.

message in a bottle coney island — Found a bottle on the beach at Coney Island. No long lost message in it.

chicago bean summer time — Rare photo of the Chicago Bean without a bunch of crowds around it. I woke up early and took this photo at 7:30am to beat the crowds

Chicago skyline from the Willis (Sears) Tower skydeck

chicago skydeck — looking down from the skydeck. 103 floors high!

twin peaks colorado — Twin Peaks, Colorado

monica gellar apartment building — Monica Gellar’s apartment building from the TV show “Friends”

colorado cabin — Cabin view while in Colorado

My green room name display while getting ready to appear on Steve Harvey

Coffee Shop Etiquette

March 4, 2015 - Colin Ashby Leave a comment

It’s 2:33pm on a Sunday afternoon. I’ve been holed up all weekend and I want to get out. My brother asks to hang out. After going a few places, we stop at Starbucks. An afternoon caffeine pick me up, ya know? Anyways, the store doesn’t look to busy as we walk in, the line isn’t long and there seem to be some tables left.

Surprise. After getting our coffees, we try to find a good table and come up at a loss. The inside is packed and the only ones available are on the outside patio where the weather is currently a windy 55 degrees. Not too cold, but enough to not be comfortable.

Guess who’s occupying all of the tables inside? Wi-Fi Leeches. Eight of the nine tables have people sitting with laptops at them, browsing away. Maybe I shouldn’t be so harsh. A few of the people seem to be doing actual work. Although most are not. From what I can see, two people are watching videos (probably through Netflix or something), a couple more are on Facebook and Twitter. One girl is intensely staring at her laptop, looking at Pinterest and writing down some of what she sees.

Can these people be considered “Wi-Fi leeches” or are they just people who are using the complimentary service provided to them after purchasing a beverage/snack? Public Wi-Fi is mainstream. It’s everywhere now. Starbucks, McDonalds, Chick-Fil-A, Burger King, Panera Bread, and more offer free wifi (as long as you purchase something). Heck, even airplanes now have wifi (albeit with a price tag).

Why do people use it so much though? It seems normal to sit in a coffee shop for maybe 30 minutes or an hour and use the wifi, but three hours, four, five…? I remember going into Starbucks when I was younger and–get this–there were seats available to sit down at. People would sit down, read their newspaper, drink coffee and leave after 30 minutes or so. Times have changed.

Although skeptical at first, Starbucks began offering free, limited wifi in 2008 and then free, unlimited wifi in 2010. Other businesses began following suit and public wifi became commonplace and expected by consumers.

Is using public wifi for hours on end bad? Probably. If you order a coffee and sit down for hours, using your laptop, you’re taking away a table that new customers can use. Although I’m guilty of using free wifi at places like Starbucks to do work for a few hours. However you look at, there are a few rules people should follow for proper coffee shop etiquette.

1. Consolidate your stuff

Don’t be that person that has all of your stuff scattered across the table and chairs. Do you really need to spread out all of your work over the table and have your power charger strewn across the walkway? No, you don’t.

Only bring what’s necessary and make sure your laptop has a full charge before coming to the coffee shop. Stop taking up unnecessary space with your jacket, backpack, purse, and so forth.

2. Don’t hog power outlets

I went to this one coffee shop where they had a big community style table among the other smaller tables. The big community table was big enough to sit about four people comfortably. It had a four plug wall outlet. When I walked by the table, there were three people sitting at it, two of them appearing a little disgruntled. The other guy at the table was occupying three of the four plugs. He had his phone plugged in, laptop plugged in, and some type of power pack or something plugged in. Seriously dude?

*Bon Qui Qui voice* “Rude!”

3. No Phone Calls

Unless you’re famous, no one wants to hear your phone calls to your business partner, co-worker, mom, dad, boyfriend, or girlfriend. Stop. It’s alright if it’s a quick one minute call but when you’re on the phone for minutes on end, for the whole coffee shop to hear, it gets annoying.

4. If you’re in an independent coffee shop, make sure to buy something every hour or so.

Support your local coffee shops, be a good, non-freeloading customer. You could maybe apply this rule to Starbucks, but they seem to be doing fine considering they always seem to have a steady line of cars in the drive-through and a line inside.

5. Nobody wants to hear your music

Put in headphones and make sure the headphones volume is low enough so that the people around you can’t hear it blasting out.

All in all, practice courtesy at the coffee shop. Share power outlets, buy more coffee or food if your going to be there a few hours, and don’t hog space.

Review: The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving

February 4, 2015March 2, 2015 - Colin Ashby Leave a comment

Life is something that can’t really be planned. Even when you have a plan, it ends up getting a few detours, roadblocks, and your plan may even drift away altogether. The only way to get past setbacks, disasters, and tragedies is to seek a new context, and focus on the now (and not the how or why).

Benjamin Benjamin (yep, he has two first names) is a 39-year-old guy who’s trying to figure out how to approach life in light of a terrible family tragedy. He’s separated from his wife and dodges all of her attempts to get him to sign the divorce papers. He hasn’t worked in months, getting by on a cashed out IRA and cash advances from an old Visa. Ben isn’t a deadbeat, he’s just a guy wondering what the next step is in his life after losing all that he had before.

He takes a 28-hour night course called “The Fundamentals of Caregiving” and gets a $9 dollar an hour job caring for a 19-year-old guy who is confined to a wheelchair due to duchenne muscular dystrophy.

The novel isn’t the typical tale of a saddened atmosphere surrounding a character with a fatal condition. The tone of the story follows a similar nature of John Green’s book, The Fault in Our Stars. Although even with the common characteristic of a character in fatal condition, The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving follows a different tone.

The characterization is very good. Ben Benjamin is a broken guy wondering out to get out of the hole he’s in. The author interweaves the present day story of Ben’s care giving with his past life as a stay-at-home dad. The reader is introduced to his wife and two kids and gets a glimpse at the cherished, loving life he had before the tragic accident. (Note: This isn’t a spoiler, there is much, much the novel dives into).

Trev, a young guy slowly withering away, yearns for normalcy. He dreams of the seemingly simple things he could do if he didn’t have his condition, things like peeing upright in the way most guys do. When he gets a notice about his estranged father living in Utah, Ben decides to pack up the van and take Trev on a road trip from Washington state all the way to Utah.

Along the way they pick up a handful of characters like a runaway teen (Dot), a bright-eyed cheerful pregnant woman appropriately named Peaches, and her husband, Elton, a guy looking to get rich quick with a seemingly smart business idea.

The novel, with it’s delightful character anecdotes and scenarios, forms part road trip novel, part buddy novel. The characters are real, flawed people trying to find the next direction in their lives. Along the road, the stop for sight seeing and evaluate their next steps.

Trev isn’t cast with the stereotypical brave soul sufferer. He’s real, and the reader gets to experience his want and desires in life. He yearns to experience what “normal” people do. He’s blunt in the way he speaks. When he develops a crush on Dot and creates experiences while living life on the road, he gets a sense of normalcy that he’s never had before.

The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving is able being open to where life takes you, moving forward in life, finding your place, and forming connections with people that are experiencing the same difficult journey in trying to make sense of their situations.

In life there are a lot of things you can’t control. You won’t be able to control things like when setbacks happen, when things don’t go your way, when failure and mistakes set in and the circumstances your born into. The one thing you do have control in is how you respond to things in life and how you choose to move forward in life. The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving ends on this commandment.

Note: In case you haven’t heard, the novel is getting a film adaptation! Paul Rudd, Selena Gomez, and Craig Roberts have all signed on to appear. The movie is currently filming in Atlanta, Georgia right now and is expected to be released this fall. Make sure to read the book before the movie comes out!

Never Settle, Keep Moving Forward

January 28, 2015January 29, 2015 - colinashby Leave a comment

With New Year’s resolutions crossing people’s minds, and the everyday grind of work, it can be easy to feel stifled, unmotivated and wanting to be lazy. Don’t fret. Below you’ll find some awesome things to read and to use. Keep churning on!

Praytell Strategy: Never Settle

Earlier this year, I got in contact with a startup “new school” public relations agency, Praytell Strategy. Aside from them having a freaking amazing site (I thought it was Squarespace, I thought wrong) they also have a great company blog.

One of the blog posts from earlier in the year could be super relatable to writers everywhere (even though it wasn’t even about writers). The agency’s founder, Andy Pray, goes through a rough time while drafting content for a social contest.

The post reminds me of when I was working on the first draft of my novel. Filled with doubt and an extreme critical eye, I would always not last more than thirty minutes or so of continuous writing time before getting frustrated and going on the internet, getting food, and so forth.

So what should you do as you’re trudging through writing and your self-critic won’t shut up as you try to reach your word count?

Keep going

Many times you have to go through the clutter to get the prize. If your writing isn’t working and you feel like throwing in the towel, don’t. Habits take time to build.Sometimes the grand idea is right around the corner.

Go on and read Praytell’s blog post on never settling. It’s short, to the point, and will get you thinking and ready to move.

Realizations Upon Visiting NYC

January 21, 2015January 12, 2015 - Colin Ashby Leave a comment

As you may have seen from last Wednesday’s post, I visited New York City. Aside from a job interview, I played tourist a bit and wandered around, finding new places to visit. Along the way, some thoughts entered my mind about The Big Apple.

1. New Yorkers seem to walk really fast or really slow, there is no inbetween

2. Making eye contact with a stranger in the murky underground subway station is more awkward than most eye-contact scenarios. Keep your eyes on a revolving rotation while in the station.

3. People really love Starbucks here (everyone I walked past was jam-packed crowded (although maybe it’s just cause NYC has so many people…maybe).

4. WHY DOES EVERYONE IN THE COFFEE SHOP HAVE MACBOOKS ?!?!? (sorry, macbooks are just too expensive for me #windowsforlyfe).

5. By the end of your visit to The Big Apple, you will have perfected your “subway smug face” (seriously, everyone has it while they ride the subway).

6. There is little treasures of different places everywhere

John Lennon dedicated Strawberry Fields section of Central Park

7. WHY IS IT SO COLD HERE?!?!? (I’m from Texas, I’m not used to 9 degree weather!

8. You can find the most incredible views in the most unexpected places.

dumbod — View from a bathroom window in Dumbo, Brooklyn

9. I suddenly love bagels (NYC has great bagels)

10. Movie Tickets are expensive (I thought paying $10.75 in Texas was expensive, in NYC tickets range from an okay-reasonable $11 to $15 freaking.dollars.).

11. This may be the city with the most amount of jaywalking

12. There’s so many neighborhoods and different cultures (I mean, I thought it was just the standard Manhattan, Brooklyn, what’s Dumbo? Williamsburg? Greenpoint?)

13. Times Square is a horror zone that must be avoided at all costs (seriously though, there’s SO MUCH more to explore in NYC besides Times Square).

14. Basically, NYC is beautiful and you should definitely take a visit up to the city that never sleeps

Magnificent Brooklyn Bridge *not posting a picture of Times Square*