Month: October 2012

choices, decision-making, time, work

Leap: How to Decide What to Do

Christa Avampato

I’ve recently been faced with a few career decisions. I’ve had some opportunities crop up that are tantalizing with a side of “I’m not sure this is really the right choice for me right now.” To be clear, they are really wonderful options – good pay, interesting work, nice people. But in each there is a key ingredient that makes me think I should pass. Either the flexibility in schedule isn’t there or the work doesn’t feel like the best use of my time.

These decisions feel like the textbook definition of “the fork in the road.” It would be easy on some level to take these jobs and I’d be good at them. Here’s the morbid, though quite helpful, question I keep coming back to: what if this is it? Post-Sandy, we’re hearing about people who lost their lives despite following all directions and making good decisions. This grim idea gives me pause. I’m not any different from these people. That could have been me, and perhaps a bit too easily.

These are the tough questions, ones that don’t have any right or wrong answers. Isn’t it now, on the tail end of youth prior to solidly moving into middle age, that I can really take every chance to firmly commit to joy in my work? And isn’t that the choice that could have an expiration date? Down the line, won’t there be some job that I could do that feels a bit less like joy and a bit more like selling out that I could take if I really needed to?

This is the hero’s journey and I am in the midst of the “challenges and temptations” portion of the trip. This is where the rubber meets the road. This is where character is formed and tested. Revelation and transformation lie in wait just around the bend. And it is not easy.

creativity

Hurricane Aftermath–What’s Up and How You Can Help | Brooklyn Based

Christa Avampato

This just in! If you wish to volunteer for the Hurricane Sandy clean up efforts in NYC, please click this link: http://brooklynbased.net/email/2012/10/sandy-in-brooklyn/. I just signed up with the Public Advocate’s Office. Thanks to the wonderful team at Brooklyn Based for getting this info to us!

creativity

How to Help in the Aftermath of Hurricane Sandy

Christa Avampato

Hi everyone – Thanks for all of your emails, texts, and social media messages. Phin and I are A-ok. We never lost power but we don’t have internet service. I do have 3G signal through my cell, which I still can’t believe! The greater metro area is devastated. I am grateful beyond measure for my good fortune in this storm and I spent the morning trying to find ways to help others. At this early point, the best thing to do is donate to the Red Cross. I made a donation this morning. Please visit their site http://redcross.org to contribute. You can also text REDCROSS to 90999 to make a $10 donation. Also, a number of other nonprofits are accepting donations. That list of organizations is available here. I will be on the look out for other ways to help in the coming days and will pass that info along through this blog. On behalf of my amazing city, thanks for all of your care and concern.

nature, New York City

Leap: Nature’s Lessons Via Hurricane Sandy

Christa Avampato
View of Lower Manhattan as Sandy moves in

“Being inexhaustible, life and nature are a constant stimulus for a creative mind.” ~ Hans Hofmann, German-American abstract expressionist painter

A partially collapsed crane in midtown, a building in Chelsea that lost its facade to the wicked wind, and a flooded Battery Park City. All bridges, tunnels, schools, city parks, and most businesses closed. Public transit completely halted. The city that never sleeps was brought to stillness by a powerful gal named Sandy.

Phin and I spent the day hunkered down. He snoozed for most of it and I got a lot of solid work done. I put together and sent my personal e-newsletter as well as the one for Compass Yoga. I prepped for an interview I have next week for a dream contract role with an innovative and inspiring education-based nonprofit, and applied for some additional contract work. I worked on plans to raise money for my nonprofit clients as well as Compass Yoga. I wrote, read, talked to friends, cooked good food, and got in a home yoga practice. By all accounts it was a good, good day in my little abode.

In all my activity, the roaring winds outside never let me forget that I am just a small piece of a greater pie, that there are forces beyond my control and prediction that can and will impact me in significant ways. The best we can do is roll with nature, respect her strength and heed her warnings. There are things in this world for which we can only prepare, and cannot fight.

Nature keeps us on our toes. It checks our egos. And it lets us know that we are all in this wild experience together, for better or worse, so we might as well give our best and take care of one another.

happiness, sunshine, travel, work, worry

Leap: If You Want to Find Meaning in Your Work, Find the Sun

Christa Avampato
From Pinterest

I spent the weekend in Buffalo with two of my best girlfriends, Kelly and Alex. Kelly is getting married next Fall to a wonderful man and Alex and I are in the wedding. Alex and I made it to our flights home just in time as Hurricane Sandy approaches the Eastern seaboard.

On my Delta flight, I had the most delightful flight attendant. As we broke through the clouds, I commented that it had been at least a week since I’d seen sunny skies.

“That’s the greatest thing about my job,” said the attendant. “It’s always a sunny day at the office for at least part of the time.”

How many of us can say that? And how many of us would like to say that?

This year, following happiness and joy has been a good strategy for me. I don’t always know what lies around the bend with my newly designed career. Heck, sometimes I barely know what lies in wait for me in my morning inbox. I don’t worry though because I just keep following goodness, sunshine in some form or other, and so far it’s always been a good day in my (home) office.

faith, future, love

Leap: Destination – Love

Christa Avampato

“Love leads us into mystery where no one can say what comes next, or how, or why.” ~ Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg

It’s amazing what love will get you to reconsider. Somehow it helps us to open up to new possibilities in a way that we likely wouldn’t otherwise.

It gives us courage and strength, confidence and the unexplainable knowledge that everything is going work out just fine. And it does this with no answers, no plan, no map, and no proof.

In that way, love is faith of the highest order.

courage

Leap: The Teachings of Compassion and Courage

Christa Avampato
From Pinterest

“Without courage, compassion falters. Without compassion, courage has no direction.” ~ Eric Greitens

Compassion requires that we step out of our lives and take the viewpoint of another. We need to remove our filters, our blinders, and try those of another on for size.

That viewpoint has been years in the making. For sure there were times of discomfort and times of joy. There were great disappointments and equal triumphs. Each experience had some impact on the way this person sees the world. Somewhere along the line they went through something that changed them.

This is not easy work. To have great compassion requires great courage. It’s frightening to put away our own convictions, our own truths. With true compassion, we will be asked to question our own beliefs, especially those that form the bedrock of our lives. If we have the courage to pursue compassion, we will find ourselves in the midst of a profoundly considered life.

adventure, choices, creativity, determination, passion, time

Leap: Passion Projects

Christa Avampato
From Pinterest

“Those who wish to sing, always find a song.” ~ Swedish proverb

If you truly have a passion to do something, you will make it happen. Its allure, its promise, will be undeniable. You will have to set aside everything else in favor of getting it done.

That’s how it goes with projects of the heart. Because it is actually a part of you, you cannot shake it. You will stare down every fear, leap over every obstacle, and shut down every nay-saying thought to bring it to life. You don’t have a choice in the matter. It is just what you must do.

dreams, fear, finance, financing, money

Leap: The Most Important Purpose of Money

Christa Avampato
From Pinterest

“The importance of money flows from it being a link between the present and the future.” ~ John Maynard Keynes, British economist

Money – what we earn, what we save, what we spend, and what we give away – is always a bridge between what we have now and what we will have in the future. It’s just energy. It ebbs and flows.

This perspective helped me to think of money as a much less terrifying force. I used to be petrified of it. Afraid I’d never have enough. Afraid that my pursuit of it, no matter how noble my path, might consume me if I didn’t remain on constant watch.

Now I see it for what it is – fuel that gets me from where I am now to where I want to be next. In this way it’s become a very selfless entity – something that shows up when I need it, allows me to use it to the best of my ability, and then happily changes hands without even so much as a glance back at me over its shoulder.

It feels good to no longer see it as a foe, but rather as an ally.

creativity, time

Leap: There Will Never Be a Better Time to Do What You’re Meant to Do

Christa Avampato
From Pinterest

“Too often man handles life as he does the bad weather. He whiles away the time as he waits for it to stop.” ~ Alfred Polgar, Austrian journalist

I’ll get to it when I have more time, when life is less hectic, when I have more money, when the weather gets better.

How many times have you said something like that when contemplating your next step?

I used to say it all the time. Then one day I just got so sick of hearing myself say it that I stopped making excuses and really got down to business to create a life. On occasion, I catch myself slipping back in to my old “maybe someday” habit. The truth of it is that today is someday, and it’s just as good a someday as any other day will ever be.

Here’s my only motto these days – less waiting, more doing.