Category: creativity

creativity, writing

Leap: The Joy of Free Writing

Christa Avampato

“To think creatively, we must be able to look afresh at what we normally take for granted.” ~ George Kneller

This week, I attended two one-hour classes at the Gotham Writer’s Workshop, one on essay and opinion writing and one on children’s writing. In both classes, we did free writing exercises in which we have a topic in mind, put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard), and write continuously until the instructor says “stop”.

I hadn’t practiced this technique in quite a while. Initially, I thought it was the stuff of high school writing classes. As I got into it, I found that it was incredibly helpful as it revealed ideas, opinions, and interests I never knew I had. It was also very liberating; it made me fearless.

At the start of the opinion and essay class, the instructor had us write down 6 topics that interest us. One of mine was tea and I chose that as my free writing topic. When I began, I had no idea what aspect of tea truly interested me but it became apparent very quickly. Below is the result that I hope to craft into a few different pieces in the coming weeks. This is the raw free writing copy without any edits:

Why is tea so comforting?
Is it the warmth or the body of the tea? Is it the loving kindness that it’s brewed with? Is it because it gives us time for reflection because we cannot simply hit go and have it be made like we can with coffee?

We have to actually open up the canister, fill up the tea soaker, boil the water, pour the water, and wait for just the right amount of time to get the right flavor

Tea demands all of our attention. It helps to focus us. We concentrate with tea in a way that we don’t concentrate in many other points in our lives. I also always think about the eyes that saw the leaves were just ripe, the hands that picked the ripe leaves and lovingly placed them in a basket. Tea leaves are picked by hand, not by machine. I think about the hands and eyes that roasted the tea, bagged it, packed it into a truck, and then drove it to a store or market. I think about the hands that placed it on a shelf, that rung up the order I purchased. So many hands come together to deliver a cup of tea. Dozens, maybe hundreds. Someone planted that tea plant, tended to it with water and soil, and sun. It took time to make, and I honor that time by taking time to brew it and drink it.

There’s a lot of introspection in tea, there’s a lot to ponder. I think I need another cup.

The is no end to the variety of tea, what type of leaf, how it’s roasted, what goes into it. There are so many grades and tea has such a history. Kingdoms have risen and fallen by its cup. It is amazing to think that at one point it was such a luxury, the beverage of kings and royalty, and now here I am in my humble apartment, sipping away, as if it’s just some choice I made from a supermarket, as if drinking it is just consequential, as if anyone could have it.

I think about free trade.

Have you ever tried free writing? Give it a shot:
1.) Think of a general topic
2.) Get out your pen and paper
3.) Set a timer for 5 minutes
4.) Go! And don’t stop writing until the timer goes off. Be completely free with your stream of consciousness. Forget all of the rules about writing and just get it all out. Write down anything that comes into your mind on the topic. You may be surprised at the results!

**Minor editorial note** This weekend I will be live blogging the Social Good Summit. On Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, those live blogs will take the place of my regularly scheduled posts. Hope you enjoy the conversation! For more details, click here.

choices, creativity, dreams, meditation, work

Leap: Keep Chipping Away

Christa Avampato
From Pinterest

“Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” ~ Thomas Edison, American inventor

Are you a few months into a new project and thinking, “Hmm…so what do I do now?” Is it not going the way you thought it would? Is your initial idea not the silver bullet you thought it would be? Welcome to starting up – it has happened to everyone I know who attempted to do something wild, crazy, and wonderful.

I recently had some of these thoughts myself, and decided to let the back of my mind whirl away on them while I continued to focus my conscious mind on working my tail off. “An answer will come,” I told myself. It always does. And it did, and as it often does, it rose up in my daily meditation.

While in meditation, I found myself in a dimly lit room. I was seated across from someone, a man, though I couldn’t really discern his features and for some reason had no interest in those details. What was clear to me was his voice, and his simple actions.

“Which way do I go?” I asked him.

“Follow me,” he said.

He stood up and went over to the wall behind him. I followed. He pulled back a heavy, dark curtain and revealed an enormous brightly lit tower. It was so tall I couldn’t even see the top of it. It had all kinds of decorations and colors on it. At first I thought it was a cohesive structure and then I began to see that it was constructed from so many things that have meaning to me – photographs, quotes, and images of my life artfully pieced together. It was a collage of my varied interests and passions.

“Start anywhere,” he said. “Just pick any place and begin to chip away at it.”

“But I can’t choose. I don’t know where to start.”

He shook his head, laughing. “It doesn’t matter. Just choose any area. They are all connected so what you do to work on one will affect all of the others. All that counts is that you try.” 

And then my eyes popped open. I got up and started my day without fear. I gave myself permission to concentrate my efforts anywhere. It will all come together if I just keep going. It’s amazing what our unconscious mind will cook up if we just give it the space to do its work.

change, choices, creativity, New York City

Leap: The Best Way to Build Cities

Christa Avampato
From Pinterest

“Each detail in a city should reflect that human beings are sacred.” ~ Enrique Penalosa

If I say “city”, what’s the first word that comes to your mind?

Skyscrapers? Concrete? Traffic? Crowded? Busy?

What if the answers were more like “Parks”, “Community”, “Opportunity”, or dare I suggest “Ease”?

Why is this second set of answers so funny? Why can’t we have cities that are beacons of a peaceful, productive, and harmonious way of life? I’m not convinced of the impossibility of this wish. I think in a city we can have the very best of the natural world and the human made world. I believe that the two can co-exist.

How?

It is up to us to make it so. We have to choose it and choose leaders who believe in it. City life is becoming the American way of life, the global way of life. Over 50% of the world’s people live in cities and to make this trend tenable, we must transform city living into healthy, happy, and sustainable living for all people who choose it. The answer is in the details – the green space, housing, transportation, etc. – and those details should honor our creativity, ingenuity, and generosity.

art, blogging, creativity, theatre, time

Leap: Why Create Art?

Christa Avampato
From Pinterest

“Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.” ~ Edgar Degas

I believe in the deep healing of art. I didn’t always believe that. I knew it was healing for me but for a long time I thought my work in the arts was frivolous, self-indulgent, and a waste of time. How time changes and teaches us!

In the 8 years since I left professional theatre management, I have not missed it. The impossibly long hours, the stress and pressure, the constant hustle. Even when you have a job in that business, you’re always looking for work because a gig is gone in the blink of an eye. But I miss it now, in a very deep and passionate way.

More and more, I have thought about trying my hand at it again now that I have a bit more business experience under my belt and a few more lines of time around my eyes. This time I won’t be creating the environment for art for my own sake, but for the sake of others.

adventure, child, childhood, children, creativity, discovery, inspiration, travel

Leap: Have a Little Awe

Christa Avampato
From Pinterest

“He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.” ~ Albert Einstein

I spend time with my nieces, Lorelei and Aubree, because I love them. I also spend time with them because I am incredibly selfish. They are a constant reminder to me that life is filled with the exciting, the unexpected, and the unprecedented. There are millions of surprises just waiting for us. The world wants to astound us, to make us wonder and wander. It wants us to be free and open to its magic, to follow its lead into the miraculous and previously unimagined. My nieces remind me of all of that whenever they see something I have seen a million times before and regard it with amazement.

Show up with a full heart, open eyes, and perked up ears. You won’t be disappointed. You’ll be inspired.

creativity, health, healthcare, hope, hospital, medical, medicine, time

Leap: The Tricky Truth About Using Our Time Efficiently

Christa Avampato
From Pinterest

I am by nature an efficiency hound. I hate wasting time, I love to be productive, and I feel an outsized sense of pride as I check off items on my to-do list. Yoga and meditation have taught me a subtle truth about efficiency that I didn’t know for a long time: sometimes what looks inefficient in the short-term is the most efficient thing to do in the name of long-term productivity.

At the suggestion of Anne Lamott, one of my favorite writers, I started reading God’s Hotel: A Doctor, A Hospital, and a Pilgrimage to the Heart of Medicine. The book chronicles the 20+ year career of Dr. Victoria Sweet at Laguna Honda Hospital in San Francisco, the last almshouse in the country. Low-tech and human-paced the work of Laguna Honda is a far cry from any hospital I’ve ever been to or read about. Early on in the book, Dr. Sweet gives samples of surface inefficiencies that proved to be tremendously helpful when viewed with the gift of time.

There was a nurse who dedicated a good chunk of her work time to hand-knitting blankets for each patient. Efficiency consultants were aghast and put a stop to it. However, those blankets were tangible symbols of how personally vested the entire staff at the hospital was to all patients. It let the patients, many of whom were so ill that no other hospital would admit them, and their family members know how much care and attention was being paid to their health.

Another example of inefficiency was the process of giving Christmas gifts. Collected and wrapped every year, the nursing staff would dole out the gifts randomly and then a day of festive trading between the patients would ensue. It made for a lively atmosphere with plenty of interaction throughout the entire hospital community. Again, the efficiency consultants saw all of this festivity as a terrible waste.

Rather than collect random gifts and wrap them up without any indication of what was inside, the nurses were instructed to ask each patient what they wanted, including size and color, and then that is exactly the gift they would receive. Though the gifts were still lovely, the loss of the trading process deflated the celebration. Christmas at Laguna Honda lost its sparkle when it lost the activity of swapping. And with the loss of celebration, they lost some of the spirit of deep, true healing.

These examples made me think about the efficiency of my own life – my to-do list, the structure of my days, and my constant pursuit of more productivity in less time. These things have their purpose and they’ve served me well but perhaps there’s a bit more wiggle room than I typically allow.

Maybe it’s okay to spend part of my afternoon at a museum today rather than spending that time on business development. Going to the museum probably won’t yield a client contract, but what it may give me in terms of inspiration may be just what the doctor would order and exactly what I need to be at my best tomorrow.

art, creativity, Life

Leap: Pain is Rubbish

Christa Avampato
Image from Khalil Gibran

“I subscribed to the notion that to be able to express yourself in an artistic form in life, you have to live in perpetual pain. It’s nonsense…you don’t have to live it to represent it.” ~ Colin Farrell

The actor Colin Farrell gave this quote in an interview with Ellen earlier this year. As someone who used to work in entertainment, I sympathized with his former perspective. I used to share it and as I got older I realized that empathy went a long toward telling a story with honesty and integrity. Living a life based on method acting was tremendously flawed, less fun, and ultimately less productive than living life from a healthy, balanced perspective.

As a yoga and meditation teacher, I sit with a lot of suffering and pain. It is possible to feel empathy and compassion, without sending ourselves down into a dark spiral. There’s no sense in diving onto a sinking ship. We can’t help people who are drowning from that perspective. It’s far better for us to be on solid ground and offer a hand up and out of the water to those who need us. It’s actually the only thing that does any good.

adventure, choices, creativity, decision-making, time

Leap: When You Don’t Know What To Do, You’re on the Right Track

Christa Avampato
This photo was taken by my yoga teacher, Arturo Peal

“It may be that when we no longer know which way to go that we have come to our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.” ~ Wendell Berry

It feels good to have direction, to feel confident in the decisions that lie in our past, the choices of our present, and the road of our future.

But what about the fork in the road? We stare for a long time down the path to the left, then pivot to stare an equally long time down the path to the right, and don’t know which to choose. We are keenly aware that with a single step, we are changing our future. We don’t know how it will unfold, but we know that there is no going back. With certain decisions, there’s no way to retrace our steps and make another choice. Things will be forever different.

When the going gets tough, we find that in that moment we actually get going. The Hero’s (or Heroine’s) Journey lies not in choosing between good options and bad options but good options and equally good options. That choice will allow us to clearly see our own priorities. We will finally know what’s most important to us, and very often it will surprise us and those around us.

Surprise and realization keep life interesting. They keep us engaged. They keep us growing and evolving. Confusion is a good sign that we are getting down to the real work of life – to decide what truly matters and why.

adventure, art, creative, creativity, education, health, healthcare

Leap: We All Have to Get High Somehow

Christa Avampato
My friend, Blair, posted this picture on her Facebook wall and it perfectly sums up how I feel about getting more creative outlets to more young people.

“Art is the only way to run away without leaving home.” ~ Twyla Tharp

We all want to be high. Once we feed the soul, once we know that feeling of being truly alive, we will crave it more and more often. The happy soul is a hungry beast, and eventually it will require your full attention.

It is heartbreaking to see someone, especially a young person, turn to chemical means for that high. My dad suffered with addiction for most of his life, and our family felt those effects in dramatic and tragic ways. What helped me come to terms with my father’s decisions was to feel that high – after running, yoga, writing, or creating a piece of art. It is a delicious feeling. My father didn’t have those outlets so he turned to other means. The same thing is happening with so many Americans today, particularly those still making their way through school.

We ask young people to say no to drugs, alcohol, and other habits that will eventually destroy their health, but we don’t do a sufficient job of recognizing the need to feel that high. We strip schools of art and music programs. We cut physical education. We prioritize testing over emotional and mental development. We’re creating a generation of very good test takers but we are doing a poor job of helping our young generations grow into healthy, happy, productive, and creative adults.

We need to do better. Is art the answer? For some, yes. Is physical activity the answer? For some, yes. Is a creative outlet of some kind that is supported, encouraged, and celebrated by society the answer. Yes, for all of us.

creativity, entrepreneurship, nature, work

Leap: The Seeds and Harvests of a Gardener and an Entrepreneur

Christa Avampato
From Pinterest

“Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.” ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

A gardener’s work falls into 3 main buckets: planning, planting and maintenance, and harvesting the crops. To build Chasing Down the Muse into a viable business, I use a 3 X 3 X 3 system to measure my productivity and plan my to-do list for the week. Each week, I focus on 3 tasks that maintain what I’ve built (writing, reaching out to existing business contacts, growing my skill sets), 3 tasks that plant seeds for possible new business (preparing business pitches, interviewing), and 3 tasks that investigate possible new seeds that I may want to plant (research, exploratory conversations).

It’s a blast to secure new clients, read a piece of my writing that’s been published, and see the cash from my work arrive in my bank account, but I don’t base my success on those things in these early days of my business. I judge my current success based upon the possibilities I plant and nurture. Harvest season will roll around when the time is right. It always does in nature, so why should it be any different in our own lives?