I tell wonder-filled stories about hope and healing
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.
Demonstrators in Amsterdam on Wednesday evening. Photo: Novum
“Everything exposed to the light becomes the light.” ~St. Paul
Yesterday I revisited the writing I did on my trip to India in 2012 to prepare some of my essays for magazine submissions. In my re-reading I found this quote by St. Paul that is especially poignant in the wake of the events in Paris this week at Charlie Hebdo.
People all over the world have come together to stand up against the violence and intolerance of the attackers, and stand for freedom of expression, especially in the face of fear and grieving. With enough time, light always wins and that truth helps me to keep looking up. I hope it helps you, too, and those around the world who need this message now more than ever. Je suis Charlie. We are all Charlie. We are all light.
Tonight, go out into the streets or into the yard and look up at the sky knowing this: our worries are so small in the grand scheme of life. Here are the two biggest announcements in space news this week that got my mind off my worries and piqued my curiosity:
The Pillars of Creation
Oh, Hubble. You never disappoint. 20 years ago, Hubble Space Telescope snapped the first photos of the “Pillars of Creation”, three columns of gas and stars of the Eagle Nebula. Thanks to advances in technology, Hubble snapped a photo this week with much higher definition and the results are even more stunning that the ones that have fascinated us for two decades. Majestic and haunting, they are 7,000 light years from Earth. Through them, we are witnessing the creation of new stars. The finger-like protrusions at the top of the pillars are each larger than our solar system.
1,000 Earths
I’m working on a science fiction short story about a young girl, Marin, who travels the Universe with her father. They land on Earth after the apocalypse so that her father can teach her the cautionary tale of human consumption habits. As I was doing some research for the story, I came across a story in Scientific American. This week, NASA’s planet-hunting Kepler spacecraft discovered two more Earth-like worlds. That brings the total of planets similar to ours to over 1,000.
When life gets a little overwhelming, I’m grateful for space. It reminds me that there is so much more to the universe than us. It lets me escape, for a little while, into the deepest depths of my imagination, so I can face whatever it is that needs facing with fresh eyes and less ego. I hope it helps you, too.
“You try the impossible to achieve the unusual.” ~Floyd Patterson, American boxer and youngest ever Undisputed Heavyweight Champion
When I was a kid, I went to the same church in New Paltz, New York as Floyd Patterson. He was an usher who collected the weekly offering and every week I wondered how someone so kind and gentle could punch someone in the face for a living. I would watch for some sign in his personality that he could even swat a fly. I never saw one; he was known as a quintessential gentleman by everyone in our small community.
He was very elegant and graceful with a broad and beautiful smile. He never sat. Instead, he always stood in the back of the church. I remember thinking he was rather small for a boxer with teeth that seemed too perfect for someone who had such a successful career in the boxing ring.
In those years, Floyd Patterson helped me understand that people are very complex creatures. With his example, I couldn’t and wouldn’t judge anyone through a one-dimensional lens. From him I learned that what we do isn’t all that we are. There is always more to us than meets the eye.
“I’ve never seen any life transformation that didn’t begin with the person in question finally getting tired of their own bullshit.” ~Elizabeth Gilbert
I read this quote today and it really prompted me to think about my own BS. To make 2015 a revolutionary year, I’m going to have to face and blast through a false narrative that’s plagued me for too long in every aspect of my life: the concept of being enough.
For too long, I’ve remained that kid who didn’t have enough and therefore wasn’t enough. All my life I’ve allowed people to make me feel that lack of enough-ness. On the outside it might not look that way, but on the inside their words and the feelings they cause ring in my ears and heart every day. It has to end.
I write this not to elicit any kind of sympathy but as something that might help you and help the world. What we feel and do on an individual level rolls up to the human collective. I think feeling like we aren’t enough might be the very root of so many of our personal and global issues. It’s certainly the root of all of my issues.
Maybe feeling like you aren’t enough on some level is your BS, too. Maybe there’s some other personal and painful narrative that’s holding you back from the transformation you want and deserve. Let’s face all of it together. Let’s make 2015 the year we cut ties to our own BS and rise.
Yesterday was my first day back to work, and like many of you I felt that uncomfortable twinge that comes from the back-from-vacation blues: my inbox was overflowing with requests for quick turnaround deadlines. I had follow-ups to do, connections to make, and pitches to send. And this was just paid work to say nothing of my own personal writing and projects that needed attention. Honestly, I was freaking out a bit.
And then I remembered to breathe. Just breathe. Like every other day, hectic or not, it was about putting one foot in front of the other in the right direction. Doing one assignment at a time in priority order. One letter, one word, one sentence. It all got done. It all always gets done. I’m sure this is a reminder I’ll need over and over again: just breathe. It helps.
There’s something magical about writing a first draft in one month. Author Kazuo Ishiguro, one of my favorite authors, put himself on the one month schedule for his first draft of Remains of the Day after battling anxiety and writer’s block that followed his earlier successes. Many revisions later, it won the Booker Prize and became a major motion picture.
About the process, he said, “I wrote free-hand, not caring about the style or if something I wrote in the afternoon contradicted something I’d established in the story that morning. The priority was simply to get the ideas surfacing and growing. Awful sentences, hideous dialogue, scenes that went nowhere – I let them remain and ploughed on.”
I can personally attest to the power of this one month formula. I wrote the first draft of my novel, Where the Light Enters, as part of NaNoWriMo in November. I’m editing it now and to get the bones of the story down in a month was very valuable. I followed this same one month draft pattern for my play, Sing After Stormsand it was produced in New York City less than a year later.
Maybe you have a massive project, a piece of writing or something else, that you’re afraid to begin. Go at it full force, mistakes and all. Roll up your sleeves and get down into the weeds. Creation is messy for everyone. Give yourself a deadline and charge at it with everything you’ve got. It’s the only way anything ever gets done.
If you’re lamenting your age or wish you’d already hit certain milestones (and I’m certainly part of that group!), I’d like you to meet one of my heroes—Harry Bernstein. He famously said, “My 90s were the most productive years of my life.”
At 96, he published his first book, The Invisible Wall, to wide acclaim after it sat on a desk at Random House’s London office for over a year. At 98, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to pursue his writing. He wrote over 40 books over his life but destroyed almost all of the manuscripts after they were rejected by multiple publishers. He made a living as a Hollywood script reader and as an editor of a construction trade magazine.
I’m impressed by his tenacity and refusal to give up on his craft. He wrote his first published pieces in the wake of his wife’s passing as a form of therapy. They were married for 7 decades. He embraced his creativity to the very end, passing away at 101.
Harry Bernstein didn’t give up and you shouldn’t either, no matter how old you are and no matter how many obstacles you face. I hope I publish my first book before I’m 96, and if I don’t, that’s okay. I’m in good company with Harry. Keep creating.
Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein by accident. Lord Byron was visiting Shelley and her husband. There was a terrible storm that kept them all inside the house. To entertain themselves, Byron suggested they all write and then share horror stories. Byron’s and Mr. Shelley’s stories were mere entertainment for the trio. Mary Shelley’s became a classic novel (after much revision on that first draft!)
You never know when you’re creating the greatest work of your life which is why the very act of continuous creation is so important. And why it’s important to remember that from unlikely, and frankly unwanted, experiences, can come wonderful gifts. Mary Shelley didn’t know she was writing a novel destined to be a classic. She just knew she cared about its theme and wove an entertaining story around it. She didn’t leave her thoughts to spin around in her mind. She fearlessly wrote them down and sent them out into the world. We should, too.
The cuddly Arctic Fox, the only native mammal to Iceland
I’m planning a trip to Iceland in April and my friend, Sheldon, sent me a BuzzFeed piece that confirmed my suspicions: someone crawled inside my mind and built me a country! Why I should live in Iceland, and maybe you should, too:
Happy and friendly
Iceland is the 4th happiest country in the world. I’m now building up my cheek strength by excessively smiling. (I just like to smile. Smiling’s my favorite.) Also, there is virtually no violent crime and the police don’t carry guns.
Books are everywhere
Iceland has a 99% literacy rate and publishes more books per capita than any other country. Books are the most popular Christmas gift. It’s an Icelandic tradition to exchange books on Christmas Eve and then spend the rest of the night reading. They usually take their books to bed with some chocolate. (There’s a pickup line if ever I’ve heard one!)
Beauty (and clean energy) is everywhere
The sun basically never sets in the summer, it has the dazzling Northern Lights in the winter, and is famous for its rejuvenating hot springs. The houses are unique and colorful and the landscape is rich with wildlife including cuddly horses, the adorable arctic fox, and magical reindeer. (Phin will have a diverse set of friends!) It’s also a very clean and environmentally sustainable country. 25% of their power is generated through geothermal sources and they plant more trees per capita than any other country. And here’s the real kicker—Iceland has zero mosquitos! (Now you’re speaking my language!)
Socially liberal
It’s the #1 country for gender equality and was the first country to elect a female president (Vigdis Finnbogadottir was President for 16 years). The former mayor of the capital city of Reykjavik was a punk rock taxi-driving comedian.
Food
Their traditional yogurt is actually cheese (WHAAAAT?) and they have a special sauce for everything they eat. (Just stop it, Iceland. THIS is too good to be true.) There’s no McDonald’s in Iceland and they’re famous for making the world’s best hotdogs.
Technology
Iceland is the most web savvy country in the world. 97% of people have broadband.
Storytelling
Most Icelanders believe in mythical creatures such as elves, trolls, and fairies. (Iceland, where have you been all my life?)
April can’t get here fast enough! I’ve got fairies, cheese, books, and smiling faces waiting on me. Skál! (“Cheers” in Icelandic.)
Happy new year! Each year I set up a general theme for my blog posts. In 2014, I looked for stories and ideas that inspired me and passed them on through my daily posts. Those posts gave me the courage to make major changes to my life last year and I hope they helped everyone who read them.
2015 is going to be very different from any other year I’ve ever had. I truly don’t know what to expect. I turned my life upside down in 2014 in an effort to have the pieces fall together in a better way going forward. This is going to be a year of surprises so I’m embracing the idea of “This Just In” to celebrate the newness that I am seeking and that I know will find me.
Wishing you an adventure-filled and abundantly happy new year! Here we go!
