Why I Want to Live in a Tiny House

If you follow me on Twitter, you may have noticed that I'm a little obsessed with tiny houses. A few months ago I randomly tuned into a marathon of Tiny House, Big Living on HGTV and immediately fell in love with the concept. Right now, nothing sounds better to me than blogging, drinking coffee, and hanging out with my dog in a tiny house.

Source: Cleveland.com

Here's why I think tiny house living is for me:

• Anti-hoarding: My family has clutter everywhere. In comparison, I love nothing more than a good purge of all the stuff I'm not using regularly or doesn't add to the quality of my life, which is really weird to my family (perks of living at home post-grad). In a tiny house, there's no room for excess things. I would be forced to keep only what I need or what brings me joy. I've been trying to build a capsule wardrobe for years—it's still a work in progress—and can only imagine how easy this would be to accomplish with such minimal space
• Low cost: You can own a tiny house outright (although you still need a place to put it) for around $30,000 or less depending on the quality and amount of work that needs to be done. If I eventually get to a point where I can pay off my student loans and save a lot of additional money, I could theoretically live without rent or a mortgage. 
• Solitude: At best, two people can live in a tiny house. As an introvert this sounds like heaven to me. After recently going through a break-up, I can see myself being happy living alone (with my dog) in a tiny little haven. 

I think a tiny house would suit the lifestyle I imagine for myself. Right now, I'm trying to convince my parents to turn the cute little shed in our backyard into a tiny house, but they don't seem to be taking me seriously. If anyone knows of one I can rent in the PA/MD area, let me know!

Lemons and Lemonade

Admittedly, I have a tendency to speak in cliches, but the only way I felt I could start this blog post is "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade." This generic, overused phrase is pretty much the nicest way to explain my long absence from blogging. Short and sweet, 2015 has not been my year. There have been a heck of a lot of downs, but I've been able to keep my head up...most of the time. So now that I've been accumulating lemons for several months, I think it's time that I start making lemonade.

Source: BarnImages

One of the things that discourages me from blogging most frequently is how saturated the market is. How am I supposed to stand out amid millions of other voices with similar stories to mine? This desire for originality and fear of being another carbon copy has prevented me from typing out words to share with this audience. But now I realized that notoriety and expansive readership isn't the point. My blog is a space for me to share my passion projects and what makes life glow a little more. The content that I have from the past still holds true to that. People like Vito and Samantha still inspire me and I hope to share more stories of others who inspire me.

Moving forward, I intend to be less concerned with having a polished, final product and focus more on creating real content that expresses who I am as a writer and a person. I feel like my life has been a little murky for the past few months without a clear purpose, but now that I'm confident in what I want and the future I see for myself, I can't wait to share the journey with you.

If you've been having a lemon-filled life as of late, feel free to share your story in the comments or shoot me an email/tweet. It's always nice to know that you're not alone.

How He Hustles: Vito Grippi

During my four years at York College, I've had numerous great teachers, but I can honestly say that Vito Grippi, adjunct writing professor at YCP, is one of the best--and not just because he's now my boss and could fire me if I said otherwise. Taking Intro to Creative Writing with Vito two years ago made me actually like creative writing despite the fact I normally feel more at home in the academic sphere. Not only did I have a great experience in Vito's class, but my younger brother was also influenced by Vito's teaching in freshman comp, going from an incomprehensible understanding of essay writing to effectively piecing together decent rhetorical analyses.

Of course,Vito's resume is much more extensive than just teaching adjunct at York. Presently, he's the digital editor of Story, a freelancer, and soon-to-be entrepreneur, but even these accolades don't do justice to his wide array of experience. His education reads like a cacophony of words that don't seem to belong together: table tennis aficionado, restaurateur, accountant, music engineer wannabe, small performance car part business owner, and finally, writer.

Photo Credit: Vito Grippi

Vito's became serious about writing when a professor encouraged him to pursue writing as a career as opposed to accounting, which was the original reason Vito came to get his undergrad degree at YCP. "I jumped ship almost immediately. I changed my major to writing and finally felt like I had joined my people. I started out thinking I would be a music journalist. So within weeks I had started contacting small, local entertainment magazines. Nightlife Monthly, which is no longer in business, was the first to give me a writing gig.  That led to others," said Vito.

After making connections in the writing world and pursuing a MFA, Vito and fellow writer, Wayne Cresser, started Shaking Like A Mountain while Vito worked as features editor for an entertainment weekly. Despite loving his work, Vito searched for a job that would lead to more financial stability. "I figured I could actually work part time while earning the MFA. That’s sort of how I stumbled into teaching. I had tutored as an undergrad and I came back to see if I could tutor while in grad school. I set up a meeting with the writing program director and I think I actually caught him while he was trying to fill an intro composition course because he almost immediately offered me the course," said Vito.

Despite all of these accomplishments, Vito is hesitant to describe himself as successful, "Success implies you’ve reached something and that would probably make me stop reaching. Maybe I’ll know when I get there."

Advice from Vito

• Don’t be afraid to try stuff. A lot of what I’ve learned has happened because I told people I could do it before actually knowing how. Someone needed a website and I offered to do it. Then I spent the next few weeks figuring out. A big-time logo designer asked me if I did copywriting on a freelance basis and I immediately said yes, no hesitation. I’m not even sure I knew what a freelance copywriter was. He asked me how much I charged and I said “whatever you think is fair.” He said, “I’d feel terrible giving you anything less than $50 an hour.” So that became my starting fee. I think you should try to learn everything. My dad wouldn’t let me run the family restaurant until I learned how to prep, clean, work as a line cook. I try to apply this to everything I do. 
• You have to put in the time. My father came to the United States and has become really successful because he put in the time. He had no idea how to run a restaurant, or how to cook even. So I take that approach, just try to jump into new things. I also don’t say no to much work that comes my way, which is great for building up a client base and paying the bills, but can really wear you down. I’m trying to get better at turning things down. The downside of all of this is that if you’re constantly busy doing work for others, your projects, the ones you really care about, always get put on the backburner. At the same time, I’m at my best when I’m busy. If I have multiple projects going at once, and if I feel anxious about it, that’s a good thing. 
• Take education seriously. I had an English teacher in 7th grade who would make us memorize and recite poetry. We would have to stand at the front of the class and recite the poems. This caused me so much dread. I hated that guy. One time I forgot to bring my textbook to class and he taped a book to my right hand and made me stand at the front of the room for the entire class. He was the worst, and yet, now looking back I wish I had paid closer attention to him. I think I would have learned a lot from him. I wish someone had told me to take my classes in high school more seriously too. I really limited my opportunities early on because I just assumed I would eventually work in the restaurant business. Education didn’t really play into that. It took me a long time to really appreciate learning and books. But part of me also wishes I would have tried to make a go of it on the table tennis circuit. I could have been something. 

Don't Let Twitter Ruin Your Life

As someone who is hyper aware of identity construction and branding, I spend a good deal of time thinking about how I present myself online. I'm extremely cautious about what I post, carefully weighing the pros and cons of every sound bite of my life. If something doesn't feel right a few moments after I posted it, I'll delete it. While we all know that the internet is forever, at least I have a chance to alter posts that don't fit with my vision or image.

However, not everyone has this same luxury. Jon Ronson of The New York Times wrote an article that examined the lives of people who were"ruined" because of insensitive and poorly thought out tweets. Justine Saccos is Ronson's primary example of regrettable tweets gone horribly wrong. After tweeting a racist comment that was intended to be satirical, Saccos's tweet was picked up and retweeted to a larger audience, basically going viral. As a result, Saccos ended up losing her job and becoming a social pariah.

In an effort to prevent this sort of conundrum happening to others, I thought I'd share my rules for posting content online while maintaining and be true to my constructed identity.

1. Audit your content: My first thought after reading Ronson's piece was to audit my own Twitter feed. Although the good deal of my tweets are industry related, I do include my personal musings and things related to my hobbies (e.g., fashion, British Royal Family, etc.). In theory, potential followers will often look at your past tweets to develop an understanding of the content you're posting. While you can't permanently delete a tweet from history, you can certainly audit your content to more closely align with your brand or personal identity, hopefully engaging more like-minded followers in the future. 
2. Don't use polarizing hashtags: This may be one of Twitter-related problems I struggle with most. Certain hashtags such as #superwhitegirlproblems or #basic have the potential to be offensive to whomever is reading your tweet. While hashtags such as these are generally meant to create a conversation about stereotypes, these phrases or terms have the potential to be offensive or discriminatory to others. Unless you intend to brand yourself as someone who engages in hot button issues, avoid topics that may be misconstrued even if they're socially popular. 
3. Ask yourself if this is what you want to be remembered for: Such as was the case for Saccos, her one tweet essentially has defined who she is and her relationship with the world for the rest of her life. I think it's important to realize the potential of your tweet being picked up and circulated to a massive audience that could define you and measure your future actions by this tweet. If you're worried that a tweet may negatively affect your image in the future, refrain from posting it. 

For more ideas on identity creation online, leave a comment or tweet me at @Sarah_M_Walsh. 

When You're Not The Cinderella of Twitter

I love hearing stories about social media accounts that have become famous overnight or "gone viral." It's like the Cinderella story of the modern world: Person posts cool content, a few awesome people and one particular opinion leader see her at the Internet ball, and poof! instant internet fame with thousands upon thousands of followers, leading to happily ever after.

Photo Credit: Andy Sabis "Cinderella and Charming"

I can't tell you how many times I've tried to think of what I could do to have my Twitter or Instagram account go viral. What hashtag will get X famous person to read my post and suddenly I have tens of thousands of followers? Admittedly, I haven't quite given up this dream yet (maybe this will be the post that goes viral!), but I've also started thinking up more practical, sustainable ways to grow my following.

So far my plan has been working pretty well. I'd been hovering between 110-120 followers since October, but at the end of January, I started making tactical and thought-out decisions to increase my follow rate. I'm happy to say that in the past 2-2.5 weeks I've increased by followers by 100 with minimal effort.

As you can see from the chart I pulled from Twitter analytics, my following has skyrocketed. Since I'm having a good run at this, I thought I'd share my tips that have worked for me so far.

1. Post at least 5x a day: For my internship, I was asked to come up with a social media guide for our alumni volunteers in order for them to learn how to be most effective in getting event attendance. I knew from my experience what works best for my sites and accounts, but I was curious to find out what actual studies had to say about the frequency of social media usage. I found this cool tip sheet that recommends posting to Twitter at least five times a day. At first I didn't think I would have enough to say, but between retweets and engaging in conversations with people I admire online, five posts a day is nothing.
2. Find your niche: When I first started tweeting and developing my online presence, I was really hesitant about limiting myself to a specific type of tweeting. I wanted to be able to talk about everything, but I think this initial fear was based on the fact I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to share my random musings that are quintessentially me. A week or so ago, I was able to let go of this fear after listening to Amy Porterfield's podcast on Instagram usage. She mentioned how she often had more interaction with her personal posts on her various platforms, and this sort of reassured me that if I post good, meaningful content regularly, my followers are still going to be interested in the "life behind the business," so to speak. Basically, I think if you tweet about your passions and throw in quick sound bites of your life, you'll find a lot of success online. 
3. Start a conversation: This piece of advice may have had the most profound impact on me and am so thankful that my new mentor decided to share this tip. He explained that in order to get noticed on Twitter by various accounts you follow, it's imperative that you start a conversation with them. At first this sounds like a no-brainer, but I've always felt awkward about the appropriateness of jumping in on a conversation that's not specifically directed at me. However, my mentor told me that whenever someone posts a link, they're generally asking you to join in on the conversation. Now whenever I see that someone I admire on Twitter posts a cool link, I'll tweet back and add my two cents, hopefully opening a dialogue (and a lot of the time getting a follow back!)

Tips for Grammar in the Digital Sphere

As a die hard grammarian and Oxford comma enthusiast, I initially had trouble adjusting to social media and the confines of 140 characters. I didn't want to be cheated out of appropriate comma placement and mellifluous word choices with too many letters.

Recently, I took to my Twitter account to ask some of my followers what their thoughts were on using correct grammar in tweets and other social media related posts, and I received answers on the opposite ends of the spectrum. My friend Nate, a recent grad from York College's Professional Writing program, doesn't believe in the need of using correct grammar for posts.

@Sarah_M_Walsh Dig. writing is about speed, not accuracy. Reader pointed out errors can be fixed in a second. Errors =/= lack of ethos now.

— Nathanial Alexander (@NaterXander) February 5, 2015

On the other hand, the writers behind The Refined Side, who I've been fortunate enough to develop a digital relationship with, feel the importance of using proper grammar online.

@Sarah_M_Walsh There is a terrible lack of grammar online! Will look forward to reading your surely great piece 😘
— Refined Side (@RefinedSide) February 5, 2015

At first I thought I would disagree with Nate's assertion that posts in the digital sphere don't need to be accurate, but the more I thought about it, I realized I've taken many opportunities to delete a tweet, Facebook post, or Instagram post if I've belatedly noticed an error. The fact that you can easily remove or edit text does take the pressure off when quickly shooting of a tweet.

So far in my social media career, I think I've done a good job at navigating between my grammarian side and the part of me that wants to use social media as effectively as possible. I have a few key rules I stick to:

1. Always, always, always include the Oxford Comma: I'll either re-craft a tweet or not post it at all if I can't include my favorite piece of punctuation. The editor I am at heart requires it!
2. Don't sweat the small stuff: I outwardly cringe when I notice an error in something I've written, but there comes a point when you're in the middle of a conversation and it's just not worth it to delete your tweet. 
3. When in doubt, consult the Chicago Manual of Style: I think Nate makes a great point about any errors being easy to fix, but from my experience, I would rather take a few moments to double check anything that I'm not 100% sure is the correct grammatical form. Although your ethos as a writer might not be affected if you post something with a few grammatical errors, I'd rather not take the chance.