Month: November 2007

happiness, moving, New York, retail

On Happiness: Giving it Away

Christa Avampato

This weekend, a friend of mine moved out of her apartment of ten years. Messy roommate situation, messy subtler situation. She looked around her boxed up apartment to find almost 100 boxes, furniture in various conditions, much of her from her childhood home. She lost both her parents at a young age. She has worked so hard to get her life in order, to find her place in the world. She is one of the bravest people I know.

And even with so much courage, so much meditation on detaching herself from worldly possessions for the sake of lasting happiness, she is having a tough time letting go. Despite the fact that she is thrilled to be saving money, time, and effort by cleaning out many of these remaining remnants of her past, she is finding that letting go is in many ways just as painful as hanging on.

In the U.S., we are criticized as a nation of consumers, pack rats, too few people with too much stuff. I agree with that to an extent, except when the possessions we have really stand for a diary, a journal of where we’ve been and who’s played a part. My friend isn’t just letting of materials items; in a very really sense she is putting to rest a part of her life gone by. Giving up what’s been, what’s defined her, for the sake of what could be. It’s the gamble of a lifetime, literally.

We forget – details, events, emotions. Our minds have a wonderful way of glossing over many awful experiences, dulling the pain, or shock, or discomfort so that we can move forward. Friends and family remind us, and we keep mementos of past experiences to memorialize them. By giving away these mementos, we are not only giving away possessions, but also giving away the ability to recall the details down the road. We are losing a part of ourselves.

And we have to. We can’t possibly hang on to all of it. A lifetime holds so many things, people, occurrences. We have to assume the responsibility of editing our lives – of culling out the things that matter most from the great cumulative mass of living. It is the toughest job we will ever do. In seemingly simple acts like giving away furniture, we are choosing how to remember our lives and how to we will be remembered by others. As nice as a clean slate sounds, there is a period of mourning that happens in the cleansing.

My friend walked me to the subway Saturday afternoon after we spent a good couple of hours hashing through this idea of letting go. All I could do was give her two giant hugs, promise her my positive energy, and assure her that the next chapter would be an adventure. I am sure she walked away teary-eyed. I did, too. It’s part of the cleansing – a clean slate is on the way.

environment, green, innovation, product, retail

Innovation: Laundry minus the water

Christa Avampato

I love smart products – ones designed to fit my crazy life’s schedule, make my days a bit easier, and make me feel good while using them. For example, I don’t like house work. I do it, and the only thing I ever like about it is how it looks when I’m all done. So if a product quickly gets me through the pieces I don’t like, I’m all for it. I’ve got places to be…

Voila – Swash! P&G developed a “smoothing” spray for people like me – I’m an infamous re-wearer. I’d prefer to wear my jeans about 20 times before I wash them. I don’t because they just feel kind of used after just a couple wears. Same with heavy sweaters. With Swash I can get rid of stains, odors, and wrinkles with a few sprays of the can. No water required. And even better, the can is made of recycled aluminum and can be recycled again.

Check it out at http://www.swashitout.com

cancer, happiness, Robin Roberts, story

Making sense of a mess

Christa Avampato

There are many antecdotes that people use to comfort themselves or those they care about when something in their world goes wrong. “You’ve got to turn lemons into lemonade.” “What doesn’t kill you will make you stronger.” “It’s a character builder.”

I was watching the news a few nights ago and Robin Roberts from Good Morning America was getting her head shaved because her hair was falling out from chemotherapy. They showed a clip of an interview with her asking her why she would subject herself to something like that on national television. And she simply said, “Because my mother taught me to make my mess my message.” So much more more powerful than making lemonade or building character.

Making your mess your message actually gives you something to do with what’s wrong with your life at the moment. That can mean cancer, a broken relationship, a lost job. You can scoop up your sorrows, however many there, however intensely they make you feel, and put them to work. And it helps you get through it, connects you to other people going through a similar situation, and helps them pull through too.
luck

How did we get here?

Christa Avampato

Luck never gives; it only lends. — Swedish proverb

Life has funny lines. They divide moments of “aha!” from “huh?”. They separate moments of magic from moments that are just a good time. And there are times when we stumble on luck, or maybe luck stumbles on us. It sticks around for a while and we think we’ve hit the jackpot. Somewhere along the line the shine dulls a bit and so ends the honeymoon period of a new venture.

This happened to me recently and I began to question whether or not I was in the right place with the right people. That familiar old flight response began to kick in, to take hold. The I took a deep breathe, kept at what I was doing, and when I finished I went home. I went to bed, woke up, and started again. There are hard days ahead; there will be tough decisions. Not everyone will be happy with the outcome.

After the honeymoon period ends, we really get down to it. Luck enters our lives, and falls away. It’s the falling away that contains the real learnings, about ourselves, about those around us. We discover our sense of commitment and loyalty. The incredible part comes when we see luck fall away and keep going in spite of it. And then it returns, as mysteriously as it left us in the first place. You have to wonder, is luck ever really there at all or is it our dedication that breeds good fortune? We aren’t giving ourselves enough credit. Rather than attributing favorable circumstance to luck, we should consider how hard we worked to get where we are.

happiness, Real Simple, self-help, Sue Monk Kidd, time

On Happiness: A Matter of Time

Christa Avampato

Some people are surprised to hear that the self-help section on a book store often has the most robust sales. Closet self-helpers like me are the reason; I am a fanatic about it. It often took me many hours to slog through accounting and finance books while I was in school. Self-help books I have been known to fly through at lightning speed.
So when the Today Show launched its most recent series, “5 ways to improve your life”, I naturally made a note of it a la David Allen, the author of “Getting things Done”, so I could check it out later. I must say the writers and researchers of the Today show are working overtime these days. About a year ago, I was becoming very disenchanted with them, though now they seem to be back on track. The information is useful – 5 ways to healthier bones, 5 ways to tone up, 5 ways to ride out the market, 5 ways to save for college, etc. In their section “5 ways to live longer”, one of the suggestions is “make the decision that your time is the most valuable thing in the world.” This, by far, is my favorite. An entire self-help book in one sentence.
I think of all the times that I hand over my time willy-nilly. I do it grudgingly on occasion, though I often treat my time as if it is entirely flexible. What if I compared my resource of time with ways I use other resources? Money, energy, my health, the love of my friends and family. I would never even dream of wasting those resources, and not in small part because those resources have a quantifiable limit. If I waste any one of them, there are dire consequences. I haven’t been thinking of my time that way on a consistent basis. Yes, I know when I am doing a project and my time is running out, then I see how precious it is. But what about my free time? Why do I give that away on a daily basis? Why do I treat it as if it is a resource in abundance rather than something precious?
The root of the problem is that I have not been looking at my time as something I truly own. It belongs to work, to my hobbies, to people in my personal life, to my community. What I need to do is flip that around. I own my time and have every ability and every right to decide how to divvy it up. It goes back to what Sue Monk Kidd wrote in The Secret Life of Bees, “The hardest thing on Earth is choosing what matters.”
And everything always comes back to this choice, this decision of how to spend time. No matter what decision I am pondering, at the root, it is all about time. Even decisions that seem to be about money or health or family. They are really based on “how much time do I have and how much of it do I want to spend on (fill in the blank)?”
This revelation is game-changing. We cannot help but live our lives differently if we begin to place an increasingly high value on the actual minutes that make up our lives. And not just those crucial moments or highlights like getting married, having a baby, graduating from school, getting a new job, buying a home, taking a vacation. Every minute – they all count. They’re all precious. They’re all unique – truly. We cannot repeat a single one of them. There is no do-over, no rewind.
I am a huge fan of Real Simple magazine, and one of their website features is wallpaper for the computer that contains a simple, brightly colored picture and an inspirational quote. On my desk top right now is one by Arthur Ashe and it seems particularly relevant to this post. “From what we get, we can make a living; what we give, however, makes a life.” And what we give to everything we do is time. Treat it like a gift.
change, innovation, work

Workarounds

Christa Avampato

Everyday we create workarounds, conventions that help us get through the day by literally working around difficulties. Most of the time it’s safe to assume that these adjustments we make are simply things we must do get through the day, to get our jobs done, to take care of our family and friends. “Everyone does it,” we tell ourselves.

Workaround get tough when they become the default action, when we do them because it’s easier to create workarounds than it is to fix the problem that’s causing the workaround in the first place. May take a little more time, a little more money, but if we can avoid conflict, we’ll do it. No matter how confrontational people may be, it’s in our nature to avoid situations and actions that cause harm.

The problem with developing and fostering these conventions is that there is no progress in that. If a system is broken and we create a method to deal with what’s busted rather than fixing it, we get stuck. It’s as if we cannot move past this short-term solution. And then the system proceeds to get broken further until it’s so bad that we need to develop a workaround for our workaround.

One of my past employers had board meetings several times a year, scheduled well in advance. There was no process in place for preparing for these meetings. Without fail each time it was absolute mayhem scraping it all together. Everyone would end up completely frazzled, hating each other, pointing fingers at who should have done this and who should have done that. Then a few weeks would go by, follow-up would fall through the cracks, and in a few months time, the vicious cycle would repeat itself. Everyone involved developed their own workarounds to just “get by” because there was no leadership anywhere in the line. No one owned outcomes, so no one owned the process.

This isn’t just a workplace phenomena. We can apply it to our holiday shopping patterns, our summer vacation planning (or lack there of). School assignments. Our nagging to do lists. That home repair we keep meaning to make. Workaround have a nasty habit of making friends with passive aggressive behavior and procrastination, mounting into the perfect storm. Once we get used to doing workarounds, we feel we deserve some sort of recognition for our how hard we’re working and the extra care we’re taking to get our jobs done, despite the fact that the system we’re compensating for is riddled with problems.

Now think about this – channel all of the energy and effort we put into workarounds into actually fixing the system, once, so we don’t have to keep repeating the workaround and so that we can move forward. High anxiety. Discomfort. Short-term losses of some variety. Sure. Any system or process, in order to be designed right and function properly, has to take the long view.

I know that many times fixing what’s broken is more difficult than just stepping over it for now. I know it’s tough; I know you don’t want to do it because you don’t have enough time right now, nor enough money, energy, or patience. Get it done. Systems and processes don’t fix themselves; they won’t go away just because you ignore them. Eventually they will rear their ugly heads and better to deal with them while they’re small and contained rather than have to fix them once they’ve created a gangly mess down the road. Daley Carnegie said “Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.” Just make sure what the things you’re doing will add value, real value, down the road.

change, happiness, New York

On NYC: What gets rewarded

Christa Avampato

NYC is a tough place to live. On the surface it may appear to be all fun and games. It’s not – this city and living in it is serious stuff, not for the faint of heart. People manage it in all different ways – after thinking they can hack it in the thick of it all, they grow tired and weak. Some move to a new borough, or a new state if it’s really bad. They get new roommates, a new job, new friends, new hobbies. They cry, scream, join a gym. Some just hide under the covers hoping tomorrow they will wake up in a more polite, less crowded, quieter NYC, only to be disappointed that overnight the city seems to have grown more rude, more crowded, and nosier.

And don’t forget how damn expensive it is to live here! I won’t even tell you what I pay in rent – it’s horrifying, and I have the best deal in town. I recently went to Disney World for the day with my sister, Weez, and brother-in-law, Kyle. (They live near Orlando.) You know you’ve lived in NYC too long when you think the prices for Walt Disney World concessions are cheap.

So what’s a girl to do? I’ve tried all of the strategies I listed above. I have had horrible roommates, and even more horrible bosses in years past. I tried to moving to a borough, and several other states. I got new friends, and saved my good old ones too. I’ve tried new hobbies, volunteering. I’m quite adept at hiding under the covers, and I consider myself to be an expert screamer and crier when the tension gets too much. I have never joined a gym here – I put initiation fees on par with broker fees. “Oh, please, let me give you an outrageous sum of money to have the right to pay you an even greater sum of money on a monthly basis for the privilege of being in your presence.” No thanks – I’ll take to running on the streets of NYC.

The best remedy I’ve found for surviving and ultimately coming to love NYC – keep showing up. Truly. Falling in love with this city is a long, slow, and very painful process. It takes deep commitment. It plays hard to get better than all of us combined. And it wins every time. The harder you fight its freakish, bizarre happenings, the more it will throw at you.

And then one day you turn the corner to your apartment, or fly over Manhattan to land at one of the city’s airports, and you realize there is no place in the world like your New York. You meet good people. You find that dream job. You nurture and develop hobbies that complete you. Sometimes it takes a few tries – it took me 3. And now I know I could never call another place home. It’s true that if you can make it here, you make it anywhere. Trouble is that once you’ve made it here, you’ll have a hard time wanting to make it anywhere else – you fought too hard to make this work. And just when you’re ready to throw in the towel, it relents. Anything worth having is worth fighting for, right?
innovation, Michalski, organize

On Innovation: thebrain.com

Christa Avampato

My mother and brother are huge Trekie fans. I mean, HUGE. And their favorite character, of course, was Spock. That strangely lovable Vulcan who lacked even a single shred of emotion. My mother’s favorite Spock quality – the mind meld. It’s a useful skill really – being able to dump a lifetime of accumulated knowledge into some other mind in a matter of minutes so that way even when the being passes away, the knowledge lives on. Think of all the progress we could have made if we could have preserved all of the knowledge ever amassed in the world! How many mistakes we could avoid! How much pain we would never have to go through!
While no one has yet developed a mind meld device, there is one man who has developed the next best thing: a way to easily map your brain onto your computer for future referral. All that is required is an itty bitty piece of software and your time to input all your information. Behold: http://www.thebrain.com/. It’s creator: Jerry Michalski, http://www.sociate.com/.

TheBrain allows you to map and bucket any thought you have about, well anything. It’s intuitive, easy to compile, and so logical you won’t believe it. The simplicity of the design has such power that you have to try it to believe how magical, and addicting, this tool will become. Forget any project management software, list-making, favorites bar you’ve ever created. Truly, throw them in the trash. TheBrain will keep you organized, on-task, and will get you to see connections between the seemingly disparate parts of your life that you never realized before. Best of all, it’s a permanent record of how you work, what you think about, and what matters to you. Part journal, part accomplishments list, part powerful resource, part to do, etc. You see where I’m going with this…

I’d stay and tell you more, but I have the building out of my brain to think of. Have a look for yourself at thebrain.com.

change, travel

Travels: Delta Rising

Christa Avampato

Delta is a remarkably consistent airline – consistently horrible. As a general rule, I avoid their flights completely. This could be because I associate Delta with Atlanta, GA, my least favorite city in the country. Until recently, I have put Delta in the same class as Sleepy’s, the 7 train, and reckless bicycle riders on the streets of New York City, all of which I have ranted about on this blog in previous posts.

Times change, views change, and improvement does happen. I flew Delta to Florida this weekend to see my little sister and brother-in-law, and to throw a baby shower for them. And for the first time ever, my flight left a New York City airport on time and arrived in Tampa, FL 15 minutes ahead of schedule. The same situation was repeated on my return trip.

Now, I am still a bit peeved with Delta because they told me a ticket I changed was good for a year from the date of the originally scheduled flight time and it was actually good for a year form the date I made the change – a difference of a month that rendered that original ticket useless when I was booking my recent flight to Florida. Annoying. Really annoying.

But hey, you’ve got to take the bitter with the better. Improvement is a piece-meal process. Delta may be on the path to getting off my bad side. I’m open to changing my opinion – rare, but it happens.

driving, New York

On NYC: Making your own space

Christa Avampato

“No task is so humble that it does not offer an outlet for individuality.”-William Feather

One thing that I love about New York is its constant battle against routine and sameness. At every moment, around every corner lies an opportunity for individuality and a fresh outlook. Always the chance to learn something new.

On Monday I had coffee with a professional colleague and then stopped in at my doctor’s office for my annual check-up. Great experience. Very efficient. Hardly any wait. And now I have a doctor before I need a doctor.

I stopped back at my apartment to pick up my lunch bag before heading to my car on 94th Street, where I had parked it that morning in a very legal space. And what to my wondering eyes did appear but a row of double parked cars blocking me in that brought me to tears. Of course there was no cop anywhere to be found; no where to turn for help. I was boxed in – completely. I was standing on the sidewalk, thoroughly exasperated, and then I saw this kind elderly man, also standing by a penned in car with a friend of his.

At least I thought he was kind. I asked him what was going on with the double parked cars and he replied, “Aren’t you a New Yorker? It’s street cleaning time and there’s no where for them to park so they have to do this.”

“And how the hell am I supposed to get to work?” I asked.

“Well do you have a better solution? Maybe you should run for mayor,” he said in a mocking tone.

Now I was really steamed.

“Usually they leave a phone number as a courtesy,” he offered

“Courtesy? Please. What would be courteous is for them to get off their lazy asses and drive around to find a legal spot like I did early this morning. I’ve heard of make your own pottery, but make your own parking space? This is asinine.” There wasn’t any phone number on any car in the row either. So much for “courtesy.”

“Well that’s the way it goes, kid.”

Now I’m fit to be tied. First my car is penned in. Then this curmudgeon disguised as a kind old man gives me a hard time with that New Yorker, “Everyone Knows This” nonsense, and now at 31 I’m being called “kid”.

His friend commented to me that I was being remarkably good natured about all of this because she was completely furious. This made me feel better – I thought I was being obnoxious. She counseled me that she felt I could inch my way out with the tiny space between the two cars that had blocked me in. I figured what the hell – did I have anything better to do at the moment?

20 minutes later I had inched my way out, literally inch by inch, nearly hitting the two cars beside me and in back and in front of me. Once out of the space, I breathed a sigh of relief, though still annoyed at that indignant man.

That’s the thing about NYC, just when you think you know what’s going on, you realize you don’t. It will leave you with your jaw dropped and scratching your head on a daily basis. There are more than an ample number of opportunities to make your own way here, figuratively and literally. And the only way to learn these peculiarities is to live through them.