The National Building Museum is one of my favorite places in D.C. It always has interesting exhibits that are often interactive and always raise issues about what it means to live and work in an urban built environment. They often blend science, art, and society. The latest exhibit, The Beach, brings out the kid in all of us. I went with a big group of friends this week and we had a blast. After playing around in the giant ball pit, we had some cocktails crafted Union Kitchen and danced around to the music of a jazz quartet. Here’s a slow mo video of part of our group. I’m the one on the far right who completely disappears. If you’re in D.C., I highly recommend stopping by!
Author: Christa Avampato
The short of it:
Writer. Health, education, and art advocate. Theater and film producer. Visual artist. Product geek. Proud alumnae of the University of Pennsylvania (BA) and the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia (MBA). Inspired by ancient wisdom & modern tech. Proliferator of goodness. Opener of doors. Friend to animals. Fan of creative work in all its wondrous forms. I use my business skills to create passion projects that build a better world. I’ve been called the happiest New Yorker, and I try hard to live up to that title every day.
The long of it:
My career has stretched across Capitol Hill, Broadway theatre, education, nonprofit fundraising, health and wellness, and Fortune 500 companies in retail, media, entertainment, technology, and financial services. I’ve been a product developer and product manager, theater manager, strategic consultant, marketer, voice over artist, , teacher, and fundraiser. I use my business and storytelling to support and sustain passion projects that build a better world. In every experience, I’ve used my sense of and respect for elegant design to develop meaningful products, services, programs, and events.
While building a business career, I also built a strong portfolio as a journalist, novelist, freelance writer, interviewer, presenter, and public speaker. My writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, PBS.org, Boston.com, Royal Media Partners publications, and The Motley Fool on a wide range of topics including business, technology, science, health, education, culture, and lifestyle. I have also been an invited speaker at SXSW, Teach for America, Avon headquarters, Games for Change, NYU, Columbia University, Hunter College, and the Alzheimer’s Foundation of America. The first book in my young adult book series, Emerson Page and Where the Light Enters, was acquired by a publisher and launched in November 2017. I’m currently working on the second book in the series.
A recovering multi-tasker, I’m equally at home in front of my Mac, on my yoga mat, walking my rescue dog, Phineas, traveling with a purpose, or practicing the high-art of people watching. I also cut up small bits of paper and put them back together as a collage artist.
My company:
I’m bringing together all of my business and creative career paths as the Founder of Double or Nothing Media:
• I craft products, programs, and projects that make a difference;
• I build the business plans that make what I craft financially sustainable;
• I tell the stories that matter about the people, places, and products that inspire me.
Follow my adventures on Twitter at https://twitter.com/christanyc and Instagram at https://instagram.com/christarosenyc.
This just in: I’m keeping it weird in Washington, D.C.
This week I met with an artistic director of a theater company as I investigate ways to get involved with Washington’s creative community. He likes my variety of business and art skills. This was also true when I interviewed for my current job at my ed tech startup. My weird and winding road, my New Yorkiness, is of value in Washington where being unique isn’t always seen as desirable. This has been a welcome surprise for me and I feel like I’m in just the right place at just the right time. I’m not sure exactly where this next chapter of life is heading, but I’m excited for the adventure and possibility!
This just in: How to feel better
When something or someone gets you down, there are exactly 3 solutions: smile wider, laugh louder, and stand taller. You are your actions, not someone’s opinion of you.
This just in: Washington D.C., a capital of creativity
While D.C. may be known as a government and nonprofit hub, I’m finding a whole new side of Washington every day. This weekend I went to the celebration of SpeakeasyDC, a storytelling organization where I take a class, rebranding itself as Story District. They had a carnival-type atmosphere of dozens of arts organizations from all over the District. We visited all of the different tables that highlighted the creative work of storytellers, comedian, writers, filmmakers, and visual artists. It was an inspiring and spirited evening that made me so happy to live in this city and be a part of its creative evolution. Here is a list of the participants from that evening. I hope you’ll check them out and support their incredible work!
- Batala – an all-female Brazilian dance and drum corps
- PoeMC – rappers
- The Originals – dancers
- Soul & Ink – interactive screen printing
- Acre 121 – a local bar in my neighborhood that offers live music every weekend
- Better Said Than Done – storytelling
- BrandDave – artist
- Creative Mornings / DC – monthly get-together for creatives
- Dance Place
- DC Shorts – short film festival
- Docs in Progress – documentary makers
- Figment DC – free arts exhibition
- Flashband – musicians collective
- General Assembly – co-working space for entrepreneurs that offers classes and events
- Human Rights Campaign
- Impact Hub DC – co-working space for social entrepreneurs
- Men’s Story Project – storytelling organization that shatters male stereotypes
- Mortified DC – a storytelling project that features storytellers telling embarrassing moments from childhood
- Photography by Alexander
- Possibilities Publishing Company – independent small press
- Recreative Spaces – temporary creative art spaces for hire
- Sixth & I – performance space
- Split This Rock – youth storytelling organization
- Washington DC Comedy Writers – free Monday evening group of comedy writers
- Washington Improv Theater
- Women in Film & Video
- Atlas Performance Space
This just in: The only way to be happy
“Alignment is easy…just remember something that feels good and focus on that.” ~Abraham Hicks
This weekend I read a self-help book that was a good, hard read. I think this quote by Abraham Hicks is really what every book like this boils down to. If we want to be happy, we have to stop putting ourselves in situations that hurt and harm us. That means staying away from negative people who don’t treat us well. You can’t change adults, nor save them. Leave that to expert therapists. They aren’t your work to do. We are each responsible for our own happiness and our own transformation. Be with people who appreciate you and care about you. Invest your time and effort in activities that lift you up and bring you joy. Anything else is a waste of your value.
This just in: What I no longer have time for by Meryl Streep
My friend, Nisha, posted this over the weekend and I just love it. These are things that we should all decide we no longer have time for. Life is so short. Let’s spend it with the best people we know doing the very best we can.
This just in: It’s not the tool that matters, but how you use it
I saw this image yesterday and it stuck with me all day. We’re so inclined to think that technology, money, emotions – any tool or source of energy – has control. It doesn’t. It’s up to the user. It’s how you wield these tools that makes the difference. It’s about intention and purpose. It’s about deciding how to use the forces within us and around us that determines our impact. Choose and act wisely.
This just in: Place your bet on the Universe
“In the fight between you and the universe, back the universe.” ~Frank Zappa
Have you ever just wanted to understand why something has happened, why life has unfolded in this particular way that doesn’t match the vision we have for ourselves and our futures? I spend a lot of time thinking about this idea, and when something doesn’t go my way I often go through the classic stages of grief. Because let’s face it, having life not pan out as we hoped, in big and small ways, is a kind of loss or at least a recalibration of expectations. And it feels awful.
No matter what I’m facing, the idea I come back to is the one Frank Zappa references in this quote. I’ve got grand ideas about how life should go, and they rarely, if ever, happen. But here’s what I know to be true—never, not even once, have I looked back on any time in my life and said, “If life had gone the way I wanted it to go, I’d be so much better off now.”
The Universe always gets it right, and I’m so grateful for that. It’s so much wiser, more experienced, and generous to us than we are to ourselves. That knowledge temporarily stops the whirring in my mind. It stops the incessant analyzing, bargaining, and blaming that I usually direct inward in a moment of disappointment. It helps me smile, pick up, and go on. Double down on the Universe—it’s there to support you.
This just in: Hoffman Academy is a free and flexible way to learn piano online
My beautiful electric piano is all set up and ready for me to figure out how to use it. While I can plunk out a simple melody, I’m looking forward to the day when I can play simultaneously with both hands and press more than one key at a time without it sounding dissonant. Small dreams.
I stumbled across Hoffman Academy, an online resource for people like me who want to teach themselves to play the piano and need an inexpensive, flexible method. I’m impressed with it so far. The method is simple and powerful. Most of the resources are free and nominal fee resources, including sheet music, seem well worth the small financial investment. Also, Joseph Hoffman reminds me of a young Mr. Rogers, and I mean that in the best possible way.
If learning to play the piano is on your bucket list, I highly recommend giving Hoffman Academy a spin. Who knows what music is stored inside of you?
This just in: The answer is in the music
“Many people die with their music still in them. Why is this so? Too often it is because they are always getting ready to live. Before they know it, time runs out.” ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., writer and physician
On Sunday I sorted through several years of blog posts looking for a story to use for my storytelling class. I found it. Below is an expanded version of an experience I had with one of the students who was non-responsive during the class. It’s a testament to the power of music in every phase of our lives.
I started a busy week of yoga teaching at New York Methodist Hospital. I went to the Geriatric Psychology Unit. Because it is an acute care facility, I always have a different group of patients whom I work with in a small group class. Their cognitive and physical abilities vary widely.Their illnesses are both fascinating and heart breaking to witness. My mind can’t help but go to the thought that some day I and / or the people I know and love may find ourselves in this same situation of loss as the years tick by.
Ruth was one of the students in the class. Though she could hear me speaking, my questions didn’t register in her mind. There was a piano in the room where I was teaching the class. After class was over, Ruth slowly shuffled to it and she played a church hymn that she probably learned as a young child. Every note was perfect and she played with emotion. Her shaking hands steadied. Color came back to her cheeks, and for a moment she seemed truly alive. I was astonished and asked Caroline, the recreational therapist, why Ruth could play the song perfectly but not answer me when I asked, “How are you?” Caroline had a very simple answer. “Music is the very last thing to go from the mind. Reasoning, logic, math skills, speech, and even emotion can be gone, but music sticks with us until our very last days.”
I’m certain that there’s a very sound, neurological reason for this. Maybe musical ability is stored in an area of the brain that is not affected by the loss of cognitive ability from aging. But I think there’s a more mystical, maybe even spiritual, reasoning. It provides a beautiful and powerful justification for making creativity and the arts a very necessary part of our lives at every age. We are literally and figuratively wired for music. When everything else falls away, and I mean everything, we can take comfort in the idea that music will become our final voice to the world.
Holmes’s well-articulated concern has been a part of my life for a long time. I don’t want to spend any time getting ready to live. I want to live now, this and every moment. I don’t want that music stuck in me, never to reach the ears of others, whether it’s actual music or the work I’m meant to do with my life. My electric piano arrived this week, and I’m starting on my childhood dream of learning to play. When I sit down to practice my simple beginner scales, I think of Ruth. And Holmes. And the great continuum of humanity that has shared and reveled in music since our very beginning. I try to let the music come through me rather than from me. Somewhere out there is a cosmic symphony playing along. I just want to tap into it.
Ruth passed away a few weeks after she played her hymn on the piano for us. I’ll never forget that hymn, nor the lesson she taught me by playing it. Her music lives on in me, which is the most any of us can hope for.
