andrewelsass, Author at Andrew Elsass

Back. . .and with a book!

Published at December 26, 2012October 19, 2016 In Category Writing and Creativity Leave a comment

I know it’s been a long time, but I have been busy chasing the dream, I promise.

While I am still in the process of switching fields from PR to something more writing-intensive, I have taken these last five months to write my first book- How To Get A Job In Sports PR. It will be available digitally on January 3rd for a wide variety of e-readers on Amazon, B&N, and Smashwords.

Also in my time ‘off’, I revamped the blog by putting it on its own dedicated site. All of the “Most Important Things I’ve Learned” have been transferred over, as those will still be the centerpiece of my writing.

The Becoming Awesome Reviews are no more, as ultimately they felt contrived and I simply didn’t enjoy doing them. There will also be no set posting schedule this time around, although I imagine that with my recent productivity habits there will be anywhere from 5-10 posts every month.

This domain will now also serve as a pseudo-portfolio for potential employers to see examples of my writing (and hopefully my creative initiative). Up already are some work samples from previous jobs and occasionally I will post other writings from the past that I have dug up and want to share.

So, if you’re a friend who dutifully read my other blog, thanks for returning! And if you are a new reader, welcome!

I truly hope you enjoy reading these posts even half as much as I enjoy writing them.

I’m going to make a lot of crap

Published at August 12, 2012January 6, 2018 In Category Writing and Creativity Leave a comment

Up until I was about 22, I had paralysis.

No, (thankfully) not paralysis of my legs or any other appendage, but of my mind. Specifically, the creative side of it.

Ever since I was little, people had complimented my writing. Like how others are born with the ability to draw, sing, or dance well, writing came naturally to me.

Through my bashful humbleness, I always brushed these comments off as people just being nice, thinking to myself something along the lines of, “sure, maybe I can write better than Joe Shmoe classmate, but I could never be a sports columnist or fiction author. . .those people are in a whole other league, they have ‘it’. . .I am just me.”

I had planned and pursued grand writing endeavors before. This is actually around the third or fourth blog attempt (and at three months, the longest lasting) that I’ve made. Other past failures include several short stories and fiction books, as well as a column I planned to turn into an e-newsletter.

As soon as I hit any sort of wall in these projects, I was done- I quickly accepted my defeat without any sort of fight. I did this for many, many years. “It wasn’t meant to be”, I would think.

The big difference now in my attitude is that I enjoy the process– I like that I am no longer attempting to produce a polished final draft on my first attempt. I like that what I spit out on my first go is often utter crap. And I love that I get to scrap, mutate, and edit the hell out of the original piece until it is something I am proud of. And even then, it may not necessarily be considered “good” in the grand scheme of things, only in comparison into what it was a few hours prior.

Which led to a major epiphany. . . all creative people, all people who produce great work, have a produced a ton of crap. It’s a numbers game. Nobody bats 1.000. The larger volume of work you produce, the higher your odds are of breaking through that threshold and producing an amazing work. I’ll let Ira Glass say the rest:

It’s easy to look at people who have ‘made it’ already and think they just had ‘it’ from the get go. Rarely do we get to see the mounding pile of drafts crumpled up in their trashcans, all the missed free throws, or the sketches with giant X’s scrawled through them.

I recently read the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. In it, he cites another book that argues that Mozart wasn’t actually a child prodigy, but more a product of his environment and of consistent practice.

Wolfgang started writing music at age 6. While this is certainly an unusual and advanced hobby for a child of any age, the quality of these early works tends to get blown out of proportion:

“by the standards of mature composers, [his] early works are not outstanding. The earliest pieces were all probably written down by his father, and perhaps improved in the process. Many of Wolfgang’s childhood compositions, such as the first seven of his concertos for piano and orchestra, are largely arrangements of works by other composers. Of those concertos that only contain music original to Mozart, the earliest that is now regarded as a masterwork (No. 9, K. 2) was not composed until he was twenty-one: by that time Mozart had already been composing concertos for ten years.” –Michael Howe in Genius Explained

If Mozart of all people didn’t produce anything widely considered “great” (without the help of his dad) until he had been at it for over 10 years, it’s only fair that I extend to myself that, “hey. . .I’m going to make a lot of sub-par crap for a while before my work gets where I want it to be.”

Producing bad work is a great sign- as some crap is better than no crap, right?

I Love NY (but only as a friend)

Published at July 24, 2012January 3, 2018 In Category Travel Leave a comment

This past January through the first week of July, I served as an intern for Major League Soccer in Midtown Manhattan.

I had never lived outside Ohio nor been to New York prior to this, so needless to say it was an eye-opening and life-changing experience. The two weeks I’ve been back have been a whirlwind of catching-up and figuring out what’s next, but I finally found time to reflect on and summarize the experience.

The People

New Yorkers have a reputation as cold and gruff, and while I am not going to dispute this, I will say that to live there you have to be that way at times. With the number of people that approach you on any given day asking for money, trying to convert you, or peddling their rap CD (that they will autograph for FREE), you would be broke and make it about five blocks in an hour if you welcomed everybody with open arms.

Unfortunately this sternness can carry over to when you do need to approach someone on the street with a legitimate question, but I am not going to pretend that people in Columbus, Chicago, or anywhere else I’ve been are that much more friendly and “stranger-tolerant.”

Hardly anybody is actually “from” New York. The city is made up of people from Long Island and New Jersey, and then of course transplants from around the country and world. When out and about it was not uncommon for four or five different conversations to be going on around me, with none of them being in English.

“Bad” experiences include being regularly cold-shouldered when saying ‘good morning’ to whoever I was sitting next to on the train that day, two NYPD officers shooting me daggers and being not at all helpful when I asked where the nearest newsstand was, and a random homeless lady screaming that she was going to beat my ass if I came back her way again (I was innocently walking by and texting). Again though, in my limited travel experience you will find that kind of thing anywhere.

But for the most part, once you get past the necessary, tough, outer shell, New Yorkers are kind, and would love to talk to you about their neighborhood, the Yanks, or their favorite places for happy hour.

The Food

I am sorry to report that New York pizza (minus Grimaldi’s) is vastly overrated.

Everything else is not.

From what I remember, I tried Cuban, Dominican, Northern Chinese, Argentine, Indian, (real) Italian, Korean, Venezuelan, and Thai. And of course the options I missed out on are limited to the number of countries you can name. Seriously. . .it is all there.

The selection of food trucks alone on any given day gives most city’s restaurants a run for their money. From these- to name a few- I sampled kimchi tacos, lobster macaroni, and salted caramel ice cream that sat between two oatmeal and butterscotch cookies with potato chip crumbs sprinkled in the dough.

Favorite eats included spicy lamb sandwiches at Xi’an Famous Foods in Chinatown, the famous Gray’s Papaya, and the wild boar burger at Bareburger.

The Nightlife/Entertainment

Nothing really needs to be said. I drank hot cider and vodkas on a rooftop bar on Fifth Avenue with Frenchmen, took a tap-dance/beer tasting class (called Tappy Hour of course) in the backroom of an East Village bar, and happened to be strolling through Times Square when Nicki Minaj decided to give a surprise concert.

With so much variety to offer, it’s almost a shame to go anywhere twice, but some of my favorite haunts included the oldest tavern in New York (1854), a Belgian Trappist beer bar where loud talking is prohibited, and a sports bar with a flea market’s-worth collection of random memorabilia on the walls. For perspective’s sake, all three of these were on the same block.

That said, my first ‘oh-shit’ moment in the city as far as expensive living goes was when I was at a friend’s birthday party and stuck to drinking the cheapest available option: $6 cans (8 oz.) of PBR.

There is endless amounts to enjoy, as long as you have the means to do so.

Fortunately, there is more than enough to do for free in the city (if you are bored in New York, you have failed).

Museums, free concerts, and just exploring various neighborhoods kept me more than busy on many weekends where I needed to watch my spending. Trying to see everything in Central Park alone takes up most of a Saturday.

Even though I had the opportunity to live there for six months, I merely scratched the tip of the iceberg of all there is to do and see- I can’t imagine the exhausting whirlwind it must be to visit as a tourist for a few days and try and see ‘everything’. You simply can’t.

The Day-to-Day Life

It’s scary.

As someone whose experience with public transportation was limited to occasionally taking the bus from Ohio State to downtown Columbus, riding a train and/or subway to work and around town everyday was a completely new experience.

With 45-90 minutes of every day eaten up by the commute (depending on whether I took the subway or train), the days were gone before they began.

I realize this is a relatively short commute compared to what many New Yorkers face, and even for those that drive themselves to work in other cities around the country.

However, this rush-around does not lend itself well to a healthy lifestyle, and adults 15-20 (or much less) years into their professional careers looked visibly more worn compared to those of the same age in the Midwest. My best reasoning for this is the endless stress of always trying to make a train, grab-and-go eating, and just general constant overstimulation.

Working 8:30 (or earlier) to 6 is the rule and not the exception, and with the commute added in, little time or desire is left to cook a hearty meal or get in a proper workout.

This was easily my biggest caveat with the city, however, I very well may be singing a different song if I could have afforded to live closer to work and had the means join a gym (rather than resorting to bodyweight workouts for six months).

Planning a rendezvous with friends was always an ordeal, and despite high gas and maintenance costs, I craved the simplicity of hopping in my car and meeting somewhere without worrying about train schedules, delays, and switches.

Call me soft, but I also felt that if I stayed there I would wake up one day and be 40 in the blink of an eye. It’s that fast.

The Most Important Thing I Learned

Talk to everyone. Period. Through random small talk, I met the first openly transgender athlete in college sports, a chef who had made appearances on the Food Network, and Uruguay’s top female golfer.

And this guy:

I recognize that such an eclectic mix of people is found in seldom few places around the world, but the point remains that you never know the story of the person next to you, and more often than not they have something of value they can teach you.

—

Overall, I loved the experience of living in New York and I don’t regret for a second taking the internship there. My pay and living situation, as well as my inability to afford a gym and quality food wore on me at times, but also made me realize just how important those things are to me.

It also just never felt like ‘home’ to me; instead it seemed more like a 6-month work-study program. In this, I gained a new appreciation for Ohio and the Midwest.

But, if I can make it there, I can make it anywhere, right?

I look forward to returning in the future, as New York is a special, special place.

It’s just not especially for me at the moment.

Do the most important thing first

Published at July 18, 2012October 19, 2016 In Category Self-Development Leave a comment

I am a to-do list junkie.

When I can check multiple items off of Wunderlist at the end of a busy day, I feel a rush of accomplishment.

The problem with populated to-do lists is that it is all too easy to simply complete all of the easiest tasks first.

While this gives an illusion of getting a large amount of work done, often it is solely the busy work we give ourselves, and not the most important (and often more difficult) things on the list.

A solution to this I learned from reading The 4-Hour Workweek is to do my single most important task first thing in the morning.

Since returning to Ohio, every morning before checking email or social media, I sit down at my laptop and write 1000 words. I also leave my phone off in another room to avoid that distraction as well.

By knocking out the most important items on the agenda prior to doing anything else, it sets a great tone for the rest of the day and gets rid of the “Man, I really need to. . .”s. There is also something liberating about not checking email or social media the second I awake.

So far, the experiment has gone great and I have produced more content in a single week than ever before. In addition to writing more blog content, I am also currently writing an e-book, and for the first time in my life I can actually picture one of the many grandiose ideas I’ve had becoming a reality.

What do you, or can you start doing first thing in the morning?