Category: creativity

art, creative process, creativity

This just in: Live life like a sculptor carves stone

Christa Avampato
A sculptor's capable hands make use of imperfections
A sculptor’s capable hands make use of imperfections

Rarely is a sculptor handed a perfect piece of stone to carve a work of art. Often the stone is craggy, jagged, and discolored in some spots. Imperfections abound. While there is the impulse to do away with all of those imperfections, the capable sculptor sees them as gifts to be worked into the piece rather than subtracted from it. He or she doesn’t fight them, but cherishes them and uses them.

Our lives are like these stones. If we have lived, really lived, we have been broken. Sometimes repeatedly. When there’s a fresh break, healing can feel like Oz, a destination we can see but never reach. But if we can sit with these disappointments, massive and painful as they are, we find that Oz is not so unattainable after all. If we can really let the light flow freely through them, if we can find a way to learn the hard lessons that brought them to us, then these misfortunes are as valuable as every triumph we ever achieve. Maybe even more so. We can make meaning out of them just as the sculptor draws meaning from every stone, imperfect as it may be.

creativity, environment

This just in: My wanderlust is kicking in

Christa Avampato
Wwoofing
Wwoofing

Maybe it’s the heat. Maybe it’s the humidity. Maybe it’s the fact that summer just isn’t my season and so it always ignites in me a desire to get away. Yesterday my boss told me about “wwoofing“, a travel phenomenon that involves volunteering to work on organic farms all over the world in exchange for room and board. It stands for “World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms”.

I’ve done two volunteer vacations—one in the south of France and one in Costa Rica—and deeply loved those experiences. They made me a different and better person. I came away from them grateful for the blessings and riches in my life, and determined to pay forward all of the goodwill I found in those countries.

This idea of wwoofing has me intrigued. I have a feeling a plan is already in the works.

creativity, love

This just in: How we become who we are

Christa Avampato
We become what we want
What we want determines who we are and who we become.

What we want determines who we are and who we become. Where we want to live. Who we want to be with. What we want to do. That all feeds into our experiences now that will shape who we are tomorrow. Right now, we’re actively shaping who we will be, and that’s worthy of consideration.

change, creativity, love

This just in: We’re all a work in progress

Christa Avampato
Keep calm. Work in progress.
Keep calm. Work in progress.

These last few months have held a lot of change for me and I’m not particularly skilled at giving myself any slack. I expect that I can accept and make the most of change at every turn. This weekend I found myself a little overwhelmed by it all. I had a stressful week and a weekend that, while filled with activity, was also on the stressful side in a number of ways. At one point I was very tired, and also not feeling well, and all of this change hit me like a ton of bricks. Even though many of these changes have been good, all change takes some getting used to.

So today I’m making a pledge to be kinder to myself. To give myself some more time and space to breathe and just be. I’m working on making my life simpler and easier to manage. I’m setting aside specific blocks of time for writing and reflecting. I’m also doubling down on my home meditation and yoga practice. More sleep. More leafy greens. More water.

These sound like simple things. But they’re powerful. I’m learning to accept that I’m a work in progress. I’m not going to get everything just right out of the gate. It’s going to take some iteration. It’s going to take making some mistakes and falling down. And that’s not easy but it’s necessary. Anything worthwhile takes time, and love, and sometimes that love needs to be directed within.

art, creativity

This just in: The reason for art

Christa Avampato
Art is everything
Art is everything

“The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.” ~Aristotle

Art has a way of reaching us in ways that facts can’t. Though it’s composed of fiction, biased perspective, and opinions, it helps us discover truths about ourselves and the world around us. It gives us something to react to, to revel in, to disagree with, to love, and to hate. It makes us uncomfortable and can also bring us solace. We can struggle in it or rest in it. It helps us to know that we aren’t alone, in our joy nor in our sorrow. Art is a shared experience, a way to communicate what we experience and how we feel. It’s a mirror that we never knew we needed until it was right in front of us.

creativity, encouragement, memory

This just in: Spirit of the mind

Christa Avampato
You might be poor, your shoes might be broken, but your mind is a palace. ~Frank McCourt

I believe in the indomitable spirit of the mind. It is incredible how perspective and point-of-view literally change everything. Our image of the world is fragile. It can, and often does, change on a dime.

Difficult things happen to all of us. Joyful things happen to all of us. But how we see and think about those things determines our true experience. Our lives are determined by how we believe them to be, and that belief is in your control. Change your mind, and you change everything.

creativity, relationships

This just in: Faults and remedies

Christa Avampato
#waytobe
#waytobe

“Don’t find fault, find a remedy.” ~Henry Ford

Faults are easy to find. And the voicing of those faults are the very things that can break us down and damage relationships and the best of projects. What’s more powerful, mature, and helpful is finding a remedy to those faults. The remedy takes creativity, empathy, and concern. It takes a willingness to win, and help others win, too. It means that we’re more interested in seeing something succeed than we are in voicing our own opinions and biases. So let’s be remedy hunters. Let’s help each other find a better way forward, together.

 

creative process, creativity, leader, leadership

This just in: Fighting for what matters

Christa Avampato
Leadership is service.
Leadership is service.

“Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.” ~Ruth Bader Ginsburg

The creative process is always messy, always fraught with disagreement on some level. This is especially true when the stakes are high and there’s a lot of passion to fill the need that began the effort in the first place.

What I’m learning in my startup is that strong opinions need to be expressed with a lot of care and concern for the people who are hearing them, the people whom we ultimately want to win over and have support us. So often our point-of-view is so strong that we forget that it’s not so much about us voicing it as it is about it being received in the way we want it to be received. That takes finessing. We can’t lead if no one follows.

courage, creativity

This just in: The gift of honesty

Christa Avampato
Honesty takes courage
Honesty takes courage

“Honesty is an expensive gift. You shouldn’t expect it from cheap people.” ~Warren Buffet

No one ever said honesty is easy, at least at the moment when it’s needed. Honesty is one of those things that grows in value over time. We get honest feedback and it can be tough to take. We scowl, run, and brood (or at least I’ve been known to do all three of these things when I hear something that’s less than a glowing remark.) But after I’ve had time to reflect and absorb that honesty, I’m grateful. I appreciate how hard it is to deliver honesty, especially when the stakes are high. It takes a lot of courage to be honest, and that courage should be honored.

 

 

creativity

This just in: Keeping it weird

Christa Avampato
Let's be weird together
Let’s be weird together

When we’re first getting to know someone, we may let our eccentricities out of the bag slowly. I’m not saying this is good or bad. It’s just natural. Recently I’ve started wondering if a slow intro to our weirdness is really the best approach. Like Austin, Texas, maybe we should keep it weird as much as we can.

What if right from the get-go we decided to just be our crazy nut bag selves? If people run in the other direction, so be it. They were probably going to do that anyway, or we were going to get stuck in a cycle of playing a part that’s not meant for us and pretending to be someone we aren’t. Maybe if we let ourselves be free to be who we are, then others will feel free to do that in front of us, too. Then maybe we’ll run in the other direction or hang around to see what their crazy selves do next.

Either way, isn’t authenticity, crazy or not, the point of it all?