Goals for 2015

January 1, 2015 - Colin Ashby Leave a comment

The college graduate feeling has officially kicked in.

Being a December graduate has been weird. Since graduating nearly three weeks ago, I’ve been under the thinking that “Oh, I’m just on break. I’ll be going back for classes come mid-January.” Wrong.

I’m finally out in the real world, with no job lined up yet, and it’s both hugely exciting and hugely terrifying. I have a mixture of emotions but I’m ready for this new part of my life. A few job applications have managed to get completed and sent out but I had to constantly remind myself to enjoy this period. This period of free time, unemployment, and job hunting stress. I’ll never get this amount of time again until I retire, so I better enjoy it while it lasts (although I seriously hope it doesn’t last too long, bills gotta be paid, amiright?).

With 2015 now upon us, I have a few goals I want to achieve this year. New Year’s resolutions have gotten a bad reputation due to most people failing to achieve theirs. The usual sayings go: You don’t need a new year to decide to do something new. You can go after opportunities any time of the year. New Year’s resolutions are stupid!

Well…yeah, I agree with all those points. At the same time though, it’s still great to set New Year’s resolutions as long as the resolutions are realistic, measurable, and you know the goal you want to achieve with them.

Another reason for starting my new year’s resolutions now is because the the time constraints of college are behind me. Granted, I will soon have the time constraints of a full-time job, a job has a more structured time block than college and it’s endless required essays, assignments and quizzes that take longer than expected.

Below are my goals for the new year:

Learn more graphic design

I’m not quite sure the specialties of graphic design I would like to learn more about design theory, logo design, web design, e-book cover design, and illustration.

For the past week, I’ve been putting together a “syllabus” for my self-directed learning of graphic design. I’m investing in some hardcopy material including The Design of Everyday Things, Logo Design Love, and You Can Draw in 30 Days.

To create a measurable aspect to learning, I’ve outlined some things I want to accomplish:

3 typography sketches per week, every week
3 graphic design projects per week, every week (retouching a photo, doing an exercise in Illustrator, the project can be anything but it has to involve working in Photoshop, Illustrator and/or InDesign)
Design one website/blog per month

Publish my first novel

I’ve been working on a novel for nearly two years. I’m editing it and feel confident in it. This year, I will set out to self-publish it and build readership for the book. The release date will be sometime this spring, no set day yet.

Ahead of the release, once I get the manuscript back from my editor, is to share excerpts and quotes from the novel. I want to build excitement for it!!

This is my biggest goal for 2015 so for the first few months of this year, I’ll be spending a majority of my free time on it.

Go to the freaking gym already

I signed up for a planet fitness membership in August 2014 and started going there. It’s been great and I’ve made progress but I haven’t been consistent. I would go to the gym five days one week, two the next, you get the gist.

My goal for 2015 is to maintain a routine of going to the gym five days a week. Exercising gives me a better outlook and attitude on things. It makes me feel great. I want more of that feeling so I’m going to better my gym visiting habits this year.

Hope everyone’s new year is filled with insightful conversations, great connections, growing friendship, and full of learning. Here’s to the new year!

College Graduation Day: Part 1

December 12, 2014 - colinashby Leave a comment

Well, it’s here: the day I graduate college. A mixture of emotions are running through me right now. The most obvious one is happiness…or is it nervousness? I’m not too sure. The thing I know is that I’ve done a lot to get here. Story Time I grew up in an oh so small town of 8,100 people. As you can probably imagine, there wasn’t much to do there. I made it my mission to get out of the town and pursue great things in a (much) bigger city. So I set out to do just that. My high school had a partnership with a nearby community college that allowed high school juniors and seniors the ability to take college classes for FREE (all you had to pay for was the class textbooks). I thought, “This is my chance! I can start on college early, finish early, and get out into the real world sooner!”. At age 15, I signed up for my first set of college classes. The early college start agreement allowed students to take up to two classes per semester for free. I made sure to take advantage of this opportunity. I signed up for two college classes almost every semester of high school in addition to my AP high school classes. I had a goal of finishing college early and starting my career in the real world (who wouldn’t want to live their own live and have their own place, amiright?). Although I was happy to be pursuing my goal, there were challenges. You would expect the challenge to be a high schooler struggling with college level work. This was one of my challenges but not the biggest one. My biggest challenge at the time was that I was at a disconnect with people my age. Several of my friends and other people I interacted with wanted to play video games, watch Netflix, go to Starbucks, and the ever popular “hanging out”. Hanging out was the big one. People would see me doing work and go: “Colin, you need to chill out and relax! Just hang out!” Ugh. I hated it when people said that. Don’t get me wrong, I hung out with people and had fun but that seemed to be all that they wanted to do. Every so often I would check myself to see what goals I was working towards and what I had accomplished so far. Several of the people around me in high school weren’t the same way. “Man, I’m just trying to graduate, lol” “I’m relaxing and living in the moment!” Some people even got frustrated with me because they said I was “too motivated”. Long story short (even though you read already, haha) is that I had goals and was looked at as some weird person who (because I didn’t “hang out and relax” most of the time) didn’t know how to have fun. To people reading this, I want you to know something: If you have a goal, protect it. Work towards it and don’t let people bring you down. Whether you’re starting a business, starting freelancing, doing a blog, learning a new skill, or just trying to plan the type of life you want to live, it’s going to take time and investment. Your gut and intuition will tell you if you’re doing the right thing. I don’t advocate for being a workaholic but also don’t give in to never ending requests to have a night out, hang out, chill, and so forth. Just as importantly, when life happens, figure out a way to move forward.

Last day of college! — With Paige Vaughn on my last day of college!

There were tons of obstacles that stood in the way of me graduating college early (money, remedial classes, family obligations, personal health, mode of transportation, scheduling, etc. etc. etc.). Regardless of the obstacles, I did it. I’m graduating college today with my 4 year Bachelor of Science (BS) degree in Mass Communications-Public Relations in only 2.5 years…at the age of 20. I’m freaking proud to say that I did that. Good luck to everyone, whether you’re graduating college and planning your life or if your deciding on a new direction in your life. I wish the best. Part 2 will be filled with graduation images (right now I’m just sitting in the campus library…waiting two hours before check-in starts). I leave you with this J.K Rowling quote. Although she is talking about writing, it can apply to a lot of things. If you have a passion project, are learning new skills, or whatever, keep this in mind. To excelsior and silver linings!

Are All Twenty-Something’s Lost?

May 4, 2014 - colinashby 3 Comments

Movies following the “typical” twenty-something as lost and searching for what to do are far from adequately representing what this age group is about.

If I was anything like the typical twenty-something depicted in movies then I would walk around clueless about what to do and lacking direction. That’s not the case. I’m not like that (for the most part). Career goals fill my future outlook. I dream of the different jobs I want to have and what I am doing to get there.

Actually, a lot of twenty-something’s are like that. At least for the ones I encounter in college. Big ambitions and realistic planning with their future lives fill their days.

This group of ambitious, go-getting, persistent people never seems to be portrayed in films dealing with a twenty-something. It’s similar to when Hollywood movies are made about teens. The twenty-something is put into a stereotype of how the rest of society thinks they act.

Movies dealing with the lost twenty-something and having a quarter-life crisis have grown in popularity. Lena Dunham’s feature film Tiny Furniture was beloved by audiences and received the award for Best Narrative Feature at the South by Southwest Festival. The film follows recent college graduate Aura (Dunham) who moves back home with a lack of direction. 2006’s Accepted shows a group of 18-year-olds as they create their own “college” after being rejected from others and not knowing what to do. Reality Bites depicts a lowly videographer as she lacks guidance and irresponsibly quits her job. Greenberg, Frances Ha and How to Be follow the same suit.

What’s the deal with all of this? Are all twenty-something’s taking longer to grow up? No. It’s quite different. Many of them have dreams (that are realistic), goals and plans for how to achieve them. There are many twenty-something’s that are stuck in a somewhat slow period. They work less than ideal jobs, low-paying jobs and/or still finding a job. It doesn’t mean there lost. Many of them are just stuck in the phase of getting experience to qualify them for jobs they really want.

The appeal to the lost and directionless crowd is understandable. Everyone has been there. It’s something that is a common experience. However it can be overdone.

The coming-of-age “finding yourself” films seem like they are going the way of the parody films. Everyone is tired of them and want to move on.