“What matters most is how you walk through the fire.” – Charles Bukowski
4 years ago today, my apartment building caught fire and I lost almost everything I owned. I got out of the building just in time. A few moments later and I might not be here writing this post to you today. On that day if someone told me I’d be grateful for that fire, I probably would have punched them in the nose. Now I know better.
I’m more grateful than ever for that experience. Through that healing process, I found out what I’m made of, and I found out what so many other people are made of, too. I emerged from the other side of that grief a far better person than I was before. It was difficult, and many times it was awful and painful. A big part of me wanted to give up on remaking my life. A small part of me refused to give in. I listened to that small voice. I fed it, and eventually it grew loud enough to drown out the doubt. And if knowledge is power then I’m more powerful now than I ever dreamed I could be.
It doesn’t matter what challenges we face. What matters is how bravely we face them. It doesn’t matter how much nor how little we have, but how much we do with anything we have.
Ira Glass, I love you. I love you for so honestly putting it out there: storytelling is a craft, an art, and it takes a really long time to get good at it. And the only way to get good is to try over and over and over again. Write. Write. Write. There is no substitute for practice. There’s no shortcut. It takes blood, sweat, tears, and time.
Thank you for encouraging writers everywhere to keep going. Check out Ira’s video:
I’m learning this lesson in spades this summer. I’m in the midst of working on a handful of stories that have been churning in the depths of my mind for years. I’ve worked on them in fits and starts, stopping short when I would hit a roadblock that I couldn’t figure out how to remove. And so they’ve sat, unexplored and never shared.
“I’ll think of something eventually. I’ll meditate on it. I’ll just leave it alone and somehow it will fix itself.” I would try to make myself feel better with these affirmations. Really, they are just excuses.
The thinking doesn’t help. The meditating doesn’t help. The leaving it alone doesn’t help. The only thing that fixes writing is more writing. Yes, you have to lean into your writing, especially when you don’t know what to do.
You have to say to hell with the fear of writing garbage. All writers write garbage. It’s part of the process. It gets edited out later. Ditch the fear of being a screw up, of being wrong, fear of putting crap on the page and having it stare back at you. Write anything and everything that comes into your mind. The devil, and the answers to my roadblocks, are in the details and those details only step into the light through writing.
Once I committed to take action, I stopped being a writer and transformed into an observer. I follow my characters around as they tip-toe, stomp, saunter, skip, hop, and run through my imagination and the world they create in it. Rather than writing a story, I decided to trust my characters; those highly flawed, beautiful, totally irrational beings create something much more authentic and poignant for themselves than I can build for them. I set them free and let them act the way they want to act and do the things they want to do. They mess up. They hurt each other, and themselves. My instinct is to protect them like I protect my friends and my family, but that doesn’t serve anyone and it’s not my place.
Two people go through the exact same experience and end up in radically different places. Why? Because of their stories.
What happened to them before the experience? How did they view the experience while it was happening? What did they do with what they learned from the experience? The answers to these questions build out a person’s stories, the ones they tell themselves and the ones they tell others.
When you go out into the world, you are bound to have things happen. Some of them will be wonderful, and some will be awful. We can bear them all and make good use of each one by putting them into a story. Stories help us cope. They give us an outlet for celebration and for understanding. To write a story, we have to stand at the nexus of our experiences, past, present, and future. We have to be in the moment while also reflecting back and looking forward.
If we can tell a story that’s honest and helpful, then we have lived well.
The U.S. Army’s point dogs with their handlers during the Vietnam War
On Sunday, Phin and I took a long walk over to the Third Street Promenade, essentially an outdoor mall with shops and restaurants in downtown Santa Monica. Phin loves going down there, mostly because every 5 feet someone stops to pet him and tell him how cute he is. I like to go down there because it gives me the chance to interact with random people whom I probably wouldn’t meet otherwise.
One man in particular had a real impact on Phin and I. He was born in New York and he’s been in LA since the 1980’s. Phin went right up to him and had a seat at his feet. He was more than happy to pet Phin. I thanked him for it, and he said, “Oh no. The pleasure is mine. It’s actually an honor to have an animal take such a liking to you.”
We talked for about 10 minutes and he told me about his 16-year-old pitbull that he raised from a tiny puppy. He loved her so much, even spending his savings to replace her two knees. She passed a few years ago and he said he’s never felt right since. We went on to talk about a documentary he had just seen about point dogs, the 4,000 German Shepherds that went on patrols with soldiers during the Vietnam War. Point dogs literally saved their lives many times over. The documentary explained that after the war, the soldiers had to leave the dogs behind. They interviewed some of these soldiers who are now all senior citizens. Decades later, these vets still think of those dogs, miss them, and feel horrible that they couldn’t take them back home.
“It’s their innocence that gets to you. They never lose it. No matter how old they get, no matter what they go through. They trust and show up and love, over and over again. It’s really amazing how they wind their way into your heart with nothing other that sweetness.”
I couldn’t agree more. Without ever uttering a single English word, Phin’s taught me more about love, second chances, and healing than anyone else ever has. It’s such a blessing to have him here with me on this LA adventure. I would never have the conversations I’ve had here without him. Somehow he helps people open up without ever saying a word. Just by being who he is and taking a seat right next to someone (sometimes on them!), I get to hear someone’s life story. I’m the lucky one in this deal – to have the love of a remarkable animal like Phin, to have the chance to take him places where he can offer comfort and love to others, and to hear the stories of these people who are my neighbors for a little while.
“Everyone has inside of him a piece of good news. The good news is that you don’t know how great you can be. How much you can love. What you can accomplish. And what your potential is.” ~ Anne Frank
It’s important to share your dreams and triumphs. First, people who love you and care about you want to hear about them. I would argue that more importantly you never know just who will be inspired by them and how much that inspiration will alter the course of someone else’s life. You’ve lived your story; the life you’ve created is the result. Stories in and of themselves do not have value. It is the sharing of those stories that makes them valuable. Sharing gives us time to reflect on them and it lets others do the same. When we keep our stories to ourselves, we never realize their full potential.
So go up to the highest mountain top and shout about it. Tell people what you’ve done, and how and why and what you plan to do with everything you learned in the process. Listen to their questions and do your best to answer them. Tell them what your fears were and how you overcame them. Explain your gratitude and thank those who helped you along the way. Talk about your choices and their consequences. Share what you would do differently the next time around. Help others learn from your mistakes.
We have so much to gain by telling our tales and others have so much to learn from hearing them. Be a hero. Share your news.
I am a huge fan of Pixar’s storytelling and their 2 word business plan – “quality rules.” I found this illustration of their storytelling rules and had to share it with all of you. My favorite is #4 because it so elegantly and simply gives us a way forward in telling and understanding the framework of any story. I hope you find this list as helpful as I do!
Yesterday the play that’s been in my head for over a decade began to take shape on a page – a yellow legal pad in blue ink. I needed to see this beginning in my own hand rather than in uniform lettering on my laptop screen. It feels more deliberate, more personal in my own scrawl.
Stories stuck in the mind of storytellers serve no one. For stories to be useful, we must share them with others. Put them out into the world and let the world have at it. Some people would prefer to run naked through Times Square than put ink to page and let others critique their ideas. I understand this sentiment. It took me a long time to be comfortable with critique, mostly because I was fairly beaten up by criticism early on in life. As I grow older, I realize what a gift it can be. I have enough conviction and confidence now to keep only those critiques that improve my work. I let the others roll away as if I have a Teflon shield around me.
This play is one of the things I’ll be crafting into the new year. 2013 will be a year of making, a year of thoughtful and purposeful creation for me. More details to come as we wind down the month of December and turn our collective and hopeful gaze toward January.
I’m very certain you have some kind of story in your head, too. In 2013, I hope you’ll take up your pen, get it down, and share it with the world. We’re all ears.
A buzzing street market in Sunset Park’s Chinatown. Photo by Michael Vito
Michael Vito is a dear friend, Compass Yoga board member, and all-around rock star advisor. When I founded Compass, Michael was one of the first two people I consulted to read my 5-page plan. (The other was Lon Tibbitts, another dear friend, Compass board member, and rock star advisor – I am a lucky girl!) Michael very honestly supported my vision and laid out about 100 things that needed fixing in such a way that I felt even more motivated rather than crushed. His ability to weave a tale is pretty darn extraordinary.
In a way, we took the big Leap into working for ourselves together, several weeks apart after about a year of seriously talking about how on Earth we were both going to do the work we love and get paid for it. I’m very happy to share Michael’s story below, in his own beautiful words. To learn more about him, check out the Third Place Media site and his personal blog, Like a Fish in Water.
Michael Vito’s Leap
About two and a half months ago, I decided to take my list of “stuff I want to do when I have the time and money, someday” and just do it. I left my research and communications position at the Corporate Eco Forum and launched my own business, Third Place Media.
The name is based on the term of art used by urban planners to refer to settings other than home and work that support civic engagement and help build social capital. On top of this concept I’ve layered transit oriented development and walkable neighborhoods, two related forces that work best in tandem to reduce dependence on automobiles. I think the combination of the three creates more diverse, economically vibrant and environmentally sustainable communities that address the needs of a broad group of stakeholders.
I place myself in the role of 21st century storyteller. In order to help drive more of this kind of land use and development, I think there’s a need for rich narrative content to help communities understand what is at stake and what tools are available to create change. Armed with cameras and a keyboard, I plan to get down in the trenches with local governments, planners, economic development organizations, community leaders and businesses, supporting their efforts to build better places. I will be offering both content development and communications strategy consulting to tie things together.
I’ve designated the first six months to be focused on pilot projects, designed to both get a feel for workflows and methodologies I’ll be using, as well as create a portfolio demonstrating the concepts. So far, I’ve spent plenty of time camping out in train stations and exploring of the communities built around them. I produced some prototype Third Place Media content that will be used by the newly formed South Orange economic development organization. I just wrapped up principal photography and will shortly begin the editing phase of a miniature documentary on 热闹 (rènao), the Chinese cultural affinity for noisy, rowdy, lively environments. Next month, my wife, daughter and I will visit our family in China. Both while there and during a short side trip by myself to Tokyo, I plan to photograph, film and document transit infrastructure, mixed-use development, and social phenomena in public spaces. All of these are things I would have done anyway, for no other reason than pure curiosity. Such is the magic of choosing one’s own path.
Looking back on the summer, it’s a little bit unbelievable to me how much ground I’ve covered, both in terms of the actual work and the emotional distance I’ve traveled since making my leap. I would never have anticipated how much and how intensely I could work (and still want to do more) after immersing myself in all of the things that really light me up. I’ve also lost what remained of my tolerance for the kind of uninspiring leadership and poor behavior to which I have been subjected in previous stages of my career. In my own approach to management, it’s my goal to make sure that the people who work with me never have to don the hard shell I needed to preserve myself. Regardless of position and level of experience, everyone deserves no less than complete respect, to do work that inspires their curiosity, and to be empowered to take risks and explore their creative potential. The great challenges of our time are too interesting and too complex to not bring everything we have to bear.
5 years ago this weekend I started this blog. I never thought it would become such a labor of love that would bring so many incredible gifts. And finally, after all of this time, I got it together and created a Facebook Page expressly for the readers of this blog for several reasons:
1.) To provide a way for me to connect more closely with all of you and for readers to connect with one another
2.) To promote the works of other writers and to give readers the opportunity to do the same
3.) To offer all of us a way to share what inspires us – books, articles, photographs, stories, good works in our communities, quotes, travels, ideas, questions, etc.
4.) To give writers another way to promote their own work and connect with other writers
5.) To connect people who are taking big leaps in their careers and lives
I want this page to be a place where we can all offer up ideas and commentary in a supportive and thoughtful way. As I’m preparing to make my own professional leap, I’ve met so many people who are in the process of doing the same thing. Here’s our chance to get behind one another and encourage each other on the path forward. I really want this page to be incredibly dynamic with many contributions by a wide circle of people who are curious and passionate about living their best lives.
Christa Avampato 