Month: July 2009

friendship, generosity, gifts

My Year of Hopefulness – The high value of giving

Christa Avampato

Finally settled into my dear friend, Rob’s, apartment for the week, I am feeling an immense sense of calm. As the last of my belongings were expertly ushered out of my old apartment with the greatest of care by the movers, I was doing a little dance of gratitude.

My friend, Dan, was one of the people who recommended Flat Rate Moving to me, and I texted him to ask how much I should tip them. We went back and forth several times about an appropriate amount. Finally, Dan said “In these situations I reason that they need it more than I do, so I round up.” I emptied my wallet to double the going industry tip rate (which Dan also looked up for me on the fly, as well as surveying everyone in his office on the spot.) They deserved it.

I swept up the last of the dust bunnies, and grabbed a cab cross-town to Rob’s. Given the gridlock traffic, I had a lot of time to think about giving more than the going rate for exceptional circumstances. Whether it’s a tip to movers or the amount of time and attention to a valuable friendship, it feels good to give far beyond the usual.

So what if we always gave a little more than what was warranted? A little more care, energy, effort, passion, time, and money? What if we shared beyond what would ever be expected by others? Imagine how much further along we’d be. It seems to me that the only way we’re ever going to have a life and a world that’s exceptional is to give and give and give again. More than we’re asked, and maybe even more than we think we’re capable of.

forgiveness, home, moving, New York City, worry

My Year of Hopefulness – Seized Engine

Christa Avampato

The movers from Flatrate Moving have arrived! Only about an hour late – though very nice guys. I’ll take late but nice; far better than on-time and cranky. They were late because they put the wrong fuel in the truck, or someone at the company did. They had to go get a Budget rental truck to complete my move. I can’t imagine how nerve-wracking it is to be a mover.

I thought I was anxious about the move because I would watch all my stuff being carted away – off to storage for two weeks – hoping I’ll see it again in some decent form. Turns out I was anxious for an entirely different reason which I only realized while talking to my sister, Weez. I was worried I’d disappoint my movers. Did I pack the boxes incorrectly? Did I not use enough tape? Did I pack too much in them. Are they going to be cursing my name and playing catch with my belongings?

As Weez pointed out, this is ridiculous, especially considering that I triple taped every box, put my initials and box numbers on at least 3 sides of each box, and set them out in numerical order. (I feel my OCD coming out.) They had their engine seize and were late – they felt badly about it; I was worried about the packing of my boxes and I felt badly about it. We worry so much about disappointing one another; as it turns out, the cure to disappointment is forgiveness and understanding – something we can all do.

One of my movers looked around at my things and said, “this is it?” “Yep, minus the lamps – I’m giving those away to goodwill this afternoon.” “Don’t worry,” he said. “We plan for everything – it will all be fine.” Were my nerves showing?

And then my landlady, Ann-Marie stopped by, to inquire about the keys, my forwarding address, etc. She gave me a hug, kissed me on the check, and wished me well. Since I’ll still be in the neighborhood, I’ll be seeing them around. She and her husband, Joe, have been very good to me, and I appreciate everything they did to help me in my transition back to NYC two years ago.

30 minutes after their arrival, the move’s almost done. The wondrous sound of packing tape are the background music for this post and it’s music to my ears; maybe my triple taping wasn’t enough. No problem though, the movers have me covered. The knots in my stomach are finally beginning to disappear.

home, moving, New York City

My Year of Hopefulness – A Sea of Brown Boxes

Christa Avampato

I’m writing to you tonight atop of a sea of brown boxes containing the tangible contents of my life. The sorting and packing processes are complete. Everything’s taped up, awaiting the movers who arrive bright and early tomorrow morning at 9.

Because my new apartment’s renovations won’t be complete until mid-August, my belongings are headed for the world of storage for safe keeping. I’ll be staying with friends with only two suitcases and a backpack. I still think I’ve overpacked for two weeks. (Do I really need those pink espadrilles for the next 14 days?)

To give myself some peace of mind, I started making an inventory of what’s contained in each box – just a general overview – in the event that my things get misplaced during the move. Trouble is that I thought I could remember what they contained after I’d sealed them. Turns out I haven’t the faintest idea of what’s inside about half of them. Now this could be because it’s nearly midnight and I’m tired. It could be because I’m in post-packer’s coma, and more than slightly incoherent after a long, long day of packing, cleaning, and tossing.

It would be nice to use a logical excuse here to explain my forgetfulness. Truthfully, I know why I can’t remember what’s in half these boxes – because it doesn’t matter. I’m not a “things” person. Why do I need 25 brown Home Depot boxes packed to the gills and sealed with duct tape? I don’t – and even though I sent a lot of my belongings out to retirement, I still have much more than I thought I did. And much more than I actually need.

Too late now, though. Flatrate Moving will be ringing up my Amex card around 10am tomorrow for a larger amount than I ever imagined I’d pay for movers. My bed is calling me for one last rest within this apartment that has been an incubator of creativity and exploration for me these last two years. It’s been a fun ride. New adventures in a new space are already calling me, and being a person who is unable to turn down adventure, I must answer them.

books, New York City, teaching

My Year of Hopefulness – Teachers

Christa Avampato

“It’s lovely to know that the world can’t interfere with the inside of your head.” ~ Frank McCourt

Daily Good wrote a beautiful tribute to Frank McCourt today. Mr. McCourt passed away last week after having written a set of prize-winning books regarding his childhood in Ireland and his career teaching in New York City public schools. I love those books; I began reading them when I first moved to New York 11 years ago. Having gone to public school myself, his stories brought back some fun memories from my own childhood and gave me a new perspective on teaching and writing.

Now years later, I volunteer with Junior Achievement of New York, teaching in New York City public schools. I should revisit his second book, Teacher Man, to refresh my memory and learn from his. His book would also be useful as I prepare to pitch a pilot project that I’d like to launch in a New York public school in January. That’s the beauty of writing out our stories and lessons learned – they invariably help someone else down the line. Mr. McCourt is a wonderful example to illustrate that it’s never too late to tell your story; he published his first book, Angela’s Ashes, when he was 66. It won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

The Daily Good post got me thinking about all of the incredible teachers I’ve been fortunate to have all my life. Though I went to public school in a rural town in upstate New York, I had teachers who believed in me and inspired me every day. It is a rare gift, and I never took it for granted. I’ve been thinking lately that I should break out my stacks of stationery and write them all letters to thank them for giving their lives to help people like me.

I went on to attend two wonderful universities, also with a slate of brilliant and inspiring teachers. Through my life I’ve had a few constants – my mom and my cell phone number immediately come to mind. And I always had the benefit of excellent teachers.

Teachers don’t get enough credit or praise. Their hours are long and yet some people discount teaching as a profession because many have their summers off. In truth, they put in a whole lot of extra time over the 9 months when school is in session, much more time than a lot of people in corporate jobs.

When I worked at Rollins College, Doc Rodgers, one of the theatre professors would joke that he was heading off to class to “shape young minds”. And while he always said it in jest, it’s absolutely true. Teachers take this responsibility of shaping young minds very seriously, and we should, too, by supporting them and thanking them for all that they’ve done and will continue to do on our behalf. Our futures depend on them.

The photo above is Frank McCourt in his New York City classroom.
apartment, business, entrepreneurship, Examiner, home, New York City, rent, technology

NY Business Strategies Examiner – Interview with Lee Lin, co-founder of RentHop

Christa Avampato

It’s moving time again! I’ve been thinking a lot about the moving process and the hunt for apartment lately. I’ll move into my new digs next month and the movers arrive this Thursday. I can be a stressful undertaking, especially Around August 1st when the rush of students and new college graduates is hard to miss!

Looking for a little sanity in your apartment search? Enter RentHop – an innovative new service that allows would-be renters to browse free, no -fee listings in the New York City area. I had the opportunity to speak with Lee Lin, co-founder of RentHop.

For the full story, click here.

art, friendship, mistakes, passion

My Year of Hopefulness – Building a World Out of Creativity, Mistakes, and Art

Christa Avampato

“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” ~ Howard Thurman

“Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.”
~ Scott Adams (Dilbert)

Both of these quotes were provided by my friend, Amanda Hirsch. Amanda is the author of Creative DC, a blog about living a creative life in DC. She found me online while looking for blogs about New York City. After clicking through to my resume, she found that we have just about all the same interests and graduated from the same university, the same year. (It’s a big school so sadly we didn’t meet way back when.)

It’s these online connections to creative, inspiring people that keeps me writing. They make all this effort worthwhile. There are a plethora of interesting, engaging people out there, spread out all over the map. Writing online gives us a way to find each other.

And this brings me to the reason that Amanda’s first quote really got to me. It would be very easy to just look around and see what the world needs, and then go make that. That’s certainly a viable road to entrepreneurship. Trouble is that method doesn’t necessarily get our internal motors running.

Running a business, heck writing a regular blog, takes an incredible amount of dedication and time. There are nights that I have to stay in and write, and I love that. When I’m writing, I don’t feel like I’m missing out on doing something else. I’m passionate about this art form, and have made a conscious decision to become a better writer. That’s going to take time. Point is, I didn’t look around and say “what the world needs is another person to write about creativity.” I’m interested in creativity and writing. They make me come alive – and me coming alive can go a long toward making the world around me a better place to be.

Finally, this point brings me to Amanda’s second quote. There are a lot of times that a whole lot of nonsense flows from my keyboard. The wording is awkward. I can’t turn a phrase properly. I have a tough time translating my thoughts into words that other people understand. I edit as much as I actually write. The creativity piece involves throwing down everything on the page. Forget about beauty and style and grace. Just get the thought down. Editing is the real art – knowing what to keep and what to toss away so that the necessary can speak.

Our world is built around creativity, mistakes, and art. From the buildings we occupy to the streets we walk to the businesses we frequent. These three things are inextricably intertwined. And while the result isn’t perfect, it’s beautiful and unique and interesting – exactly the way the world should be.

choices, discovery, friendship, hope, writing

My Year of Hopefulness – Disappointment as Fuel for Change

Christa Avampato

“We must accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope.” ~ Martin Luther King Jr.

I’m now nearly 7 months through my 1 year commitment to actively search for hope every day and write about it. I’m in the thick of it and the remaining months of 2009 seem to be just around the bend. This is the side effect of working in a retail-focused business: I’m always one step ahead of myself because the industry I work in demands it. Looking for hope is sometimes an easy task and sometimes a game of hunt and peck. Some days I struggle to find something hopeful and positive, and other days it seems that the world is awash with hope, so much so that it’s hard to take it all in and stay still long enough to write about it. It’s these latter days that I try to focus on most.

I’ve become a fan of daily email delivery of my favorite blogs. I get why tools like Google Reader are valuable; I just prefer to use my gmail inbox as my to-do list. (Thank you, David Pogue, for that insight on email in-boxes!) And I like the idea that my favorite writers are sending me little bits of wisdom directly, or at least I feel like they’re sending them to me directly. Daily Good, a blog that posts a daily story about some piece of goodness in the world, is one of my favorites. Their stories always begin with a quote, and it’s responsible for many of the quotes that populate my “food for thought” section in the right side bar of this blog.

This week Daily Good posted up the quote above from Martin Luther King, Jr. He could have easily made the quote “We must accept disappointment, but we must never lose hope.” Still powerful, still emotional, still inspirational. Instead, he chose to talk about finite disappointment and infinite hope, and link the two together. In my 7 months of writing about hope, I have found disappointment. More than I would have liked.

Just this week, I decided I had accepted enough disappointment. I’d reached the finite limit that Dr. King spoke about and then decided that I could no longer wait to do what I really wanted to do. With the help of some friends who help me think clearly, who help to bolster me up when I get a little bit down, I made a plan to turn all of my attention to what I hope to achieve and away from what’s disappointed me. The hope was there all along, even through the disappointment. I just wasn’t seeing it. We can all do a lot more than hope for a change; there will be no grand arrival and entrance of change. It’s always there – we need only reach out and grab a hold of it.

art, career, choices, dreams, friendship, goals

My Year of Hopefulness – Finishing what you’ve started

Christa Avampato

“Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task.” ~ William James

I have a hard time letting things go. I have to watch movies straight through to the end, no matter how bad they are. I have to finish every book I start. Nothing causes me to lose sleep more than tasks hanging around for me to finish tomorrow; hence my tremendous lack of sleep in a partially packed apartment. Why is it so troublesome to let things lie around undone?

It could be that I’ve read too many stories about people who didn’t quite get to see their dreams realized. It could be that I’ve read that quote from John Lennon “Most people die with the music still in them” once too often. I don’t want to look back and be so far away from something I started that it’s too difficult to pick it up again.

We get to these points in our lives where we must go left or right and it’s very hard to double back once we’ve made a choice. Not impossible, but certainly difficult. I’m there now. A lot of my friends are there now. Maybe this is the dilemma we find in our 30’s. We are making choices now that impact every other choice down the line. We’re deciding who we’re going to become, how we’re going to make use of our talents, how the world around us is going to be different because we passed this way instead of that way.

And while I have a natural instinct of which way to go at this fork in the road, the choice in my heart is a tough one. It’s got some risks baked into it. It’s not the safe route. Some times I think the choice in my heart isn’t even the sane route to take. Then again, when has making the sane, safe choice ever lead me to complete fulfillment?

Today I went to a baby shower for my friend, Alex. One of her college friends made a critical choice to leave behind the business world and pursue her PhD in art history, thanks to Alex’s encouragement. She loved art history early on in college and had given up her dream to work in that field to take the safe business route. Before it was too late, she went back to what she loved.

Every one of her professors told her this choice was ridiculous, that she was truly wasting her life in art history, that she’d never get a job. One of them actually told her that a degree in art history and a quarter wouldn’t even get her a cup of coffee. Now she works in New York and helps corporations and nonprofits build their private art collections. Turns out that a degree in art history has earned her much more than a cup of coffee. It helped her earn a happy life. The rewards of finishing what she started and following her heart.

health, productivity, time, youth

My Year of Hopefulness – Getting the Most Out of Your Days

Christa Avampato

“Don’t be fooled by the calendar. There are only as many days in the year as you make use of. One man gets only a week’s value out of a year while another man gets a full year’s value out of a week.” ~ Charles Richards

I am obsessed with productivity. (On occasion, I have spent an afternoon watching an Ace of Cakes marathon on the Food Network. Guilty as charged – what can I say? I love cake.) 95% of the time, I’m doing something that I hope will help move my life forward. Reading, writing, connecting with others, visiting museums, exercising, meditating, running, cooking, and observing life. I am an expert scheduler and I strive to be a model of efficiency.

So why is progress so important to me? Why can’t I just slow down and go with the flow? Why must I be constantly engaged? Part of it is that I am hopelessly nerdy and have been since birth. ‘Why?’ is my favorite question, and I ask it loud, proud, and often. It’s a reflex. I have an overwhelming desire to be in the know, or at least to try to be in the know. The words “I’m bored” have never crossed my mind, much less come out of my mouth.

The other reason for my constant activity is something more serious. For better or for worse, I am constantly mindful of my age and of the time that’s passing. Some people will say that those who are young don’t appreciate their youth or their health. They think they’ll be beautiful forever. I know it’s all fading. Every day I’m looking for a wrinkle, a grey hair, a loss of ability. My WebMD checking can get a bit out of hand from time to time. I was born thinking like an old person, so much so that I am often surprised to look in the mirror and see someone so young.

My siblings and I lost a lot of our family members at a very young age, and those losses stick with us. They changed us. As teenagers, we became painfully aware that life is finite, at least in the form in which we know it. And while I could easily become consumed by the fear of time passing by, instead I focus on making every moment count.

There’s a saying that goes something like “if you live a good life, you’ll be able to enjoy it twice: once as you’re living it when you’re young, and again when you’re looking back on it when you’re old.” Given my love of efficiency, this sounds like a great deal to me – I’ll get two good lives for the price of one! That’s well-worth the effort.

blog, personality. relationships, Seth Godin, writing

My Year of Hopefulness – Island Life

Christa Avampato

Seth Godin wrote a post this morning about island living as it relates to marketing. With the increasing number of new technologies that keep us ever-connected to one another, we are all closer than ever. There’s truly nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. Customers are only a tweet away.

This principle relates to many areas beyond marketing as well, especially for those of us who live our lives online. What we say, do, think, and feel is well-documented and there is an unintended consequence to that documentation: integrity become paramount. With a well-documented life comes the responsibility to walk the walk and talk the talk. Contradictions are noticed instantly now, and questioned, loudly. Authenticity is demanded. In a sense we are now always on stage.

And I’m happy about this. I’m glad to live on an island. It keeps me honest, and it gives me the assurance that everyone else is being kept honest also. I enjoy the fact that people who want to find me can find me, and I like being able to learn and grow from the many people and companies who are living their lives and brands online, too. It’s a treasure actually, to be let into someone’s life, to be allowed to share in the ups and downs of their lives. And it makes our own ups and downs a bit easier to bear. We’re all in this together.
The picture above is by Curtis Dean and can be found at: http://thecartoonsite.com/cartoons/0002.gif