Category: writing

apartment, home, peace, writer, writing

My Year of Hopefulness – Writing Peace

Christa Avampato

“We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand. Choose a place…and stand in it for all you are worth, facing the sunshine.” ~E.M.

Forester, A Room with a View Yesterday I read a post on Theatre Folk that talks about how the physical place where a writer is located effects the quality of the writing. So often, we think writing is some elusive, muse-like magic that just shows up when it’s good and ready. I’m still waiting for my muse to walk through the door, so I figured that while I’m waiting I should follow the advice of E.M. Forester and hang out in the sunshine.

Right now as I’m writing this post, sunshine is streaming through my living room window, dappling the keyboard. My apartment faces into the courtyard (which sounds lavish, but I can assure you it’s not) so I can see the goings on of all my neighbors if they’re at their windows. This also means I avoid a great majority of the street noise, though because I’m on a higher floor, I also get the sunlight. It’s a win-win for me and my writing. There are some trees and butterflies outside right now. The blue sky is swirled with clouds and the breeze in gently blowing. It’s a peaceful kind of place.

By my desk I keep three things taped to the wall. One is a card with the quote from Thomas Jefferson, “The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.” The art of brevity and good editing. The second is a card that has my 2009 to-do list. I wrote it up in December of 2008 and so far, I’m doing pretty well. I’m actually on track to complete all 10 by the end of the year. They are things I am really interested in, and just needed to dedicate the time to them. For example, I wanted to cook more, get a new apartment, and expand the reach of my writing. Done, done, and done. The third thing is a card with a simple quote by John F. Kennedy: “Peace is a daily, a weekly, a monthly process.”

I used to think that peace was a destination. An achievement. Since I was a teenager, I made one simple wish on birthdays, when I’d see the first star at night, whenever I’d blow an eyelash from my fingertip. I just wanted to feel at peace. Sounds like such an easy thing to have. Just stop worrying and feeling anxious and scared and stressed, right? Right. And all of that was very hard for me. Much harder than I wanted it to be so in addition to feeling all of these things I also felt frustrated. Where was that damn peace of mind hiding?

Now I know that peace wasn’t hiding at all. In order to access it, I had to go out into the world and live. Peace doesn’t have a permanent place at all. It’s an active, living, breathing way of life that moves with us, within us. It’s accessible at any and every moment. And just because we feel it at this moment, doesn’t mean it will be readily apparent the next. It is a state of mind that we must continually commit to, and share with others. And eventually, it just becomes a part of us. We will, with time, patience, and practice, be a living vessel for peace, and I hope my writing takes on that form as well. Though to tell you the truth, sunshine on my keyboard certainly helps.

The photo above is the view from my desk in my living room, where I do most of my writing. If you look closely you can see my reflection in the bottom left corner, snapping the photo.

The Journal of Cultural Conversation, writing

The Journal of Cultural Conversation: Alternative Ending

Christa Avampato

Mondays with Christa continues over at TJCC. This week I wrote about the process of being asked to write an alternative ending to my own story, an ending that was harder to put down on paper because of all of the emotion it carries with it. Check it out here.

choices, discovery, friendship, hope, writing

My Year of Hopefulness – Disappointment as Fuel for Change

Christa Avampato

“We must accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope.” ~ Martin Luther King Jr.

I’m now nearly 7 months through my 1 year commitment to actively search for hope every day and write about it. I’m in the thick of it and the remaining months of 2009 seem to be just around the bend. This is the side effect of working in a retail-focused business: I’m always one step ahead of myself because the industry I work in demands it. Looking for hope is sometimes an easy task and sometimes a game of hunt and peck. Some days I struggle to find something hopeful and positive, and other days it seems that the world is awash with hope, so much so that it’s hard to take it all in and stay still long enough to write about it. It’s these latter days that I try to focus on most.

I’ve become a fan of daily email delivery of my favorite blogs. I get why tools like Google Reader are valuable; I just prefer to use my gmail inbox as my to-do list. (Thank you, David Pogue, for that insight on email in-boxes!) And I like the idea that my favorite writers are sending me little bits of wisdom directly, or at least I feel like they’re sending them to me directly. Daily Good, a blog that posts a daily story about some piece of goodness in the world, is one of my favorites. Their stories always begin with a quote, and it’s responsible for many of the quotes that populate my “food for thought” section in the right side bar of this blog.

This week Daily Good posted up the quote above from Martin Luther King, Jr. He could have easily made the quote “We must accept disappointment, but we must never lose hope.” Still powerful, still emotional, still inspirational. Instead, he chose to talk about finite disappointment and infinite hope, and link the two together. In my 7 months of writing about hope, I have found disappointment. More than I would have liked.

Just this week, I decided I had accepted enough disappointment. I’d reached the finite limit that Dr. King spoke about and then decided that I could no longer wait to do what I really wanted to do. With the help of some friends who help me think clearly, who help to bolster me up when I get a little bit down, I made a plan to turn all of my attention to what I hope to achieve and away from what’s disappointed me. The hope was there all along, even through the disappointment. I just wasn’t seeing it. We can all do a lot more than hope for a change; there will be no grand arrival and entrance of change. It’s always there – we need only reach out and grab a hold of it.

blog, personality. relationships, Seth Godin, writing

My Year of Hopefulness – Island Life

Christa Avampato

Seth Godin wrote a post this morning about island living as it relates to marketing. With the increasing number of new technologies that keep us ever-connected to one another, we are all closer than ever. There’s truly nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. Customers are only a tweet away.

This principle relates to many areas beyond marketing as well, especially for those of us who live our lives online. What we say, do, think, and feel is well-documented and there is an unintended consequence to that documentation: integrity become paramount. With a well-documented life comes the responsibility to walk the walk and talk the talk. Contradictions are noticed instantly now, and questioned, loudly. Authenticity is demanded. In a sense we are now always on stage.

And I’m happy about this. I’m glad to live on an island. It keeps me honest, and it gives me the assurance that everyone else is being kept honest also. I enjoy the fact that people who want to find me can find me, and I like being able to learn and grow from the many people and companies who are living their lives and brands online, too. It’s a treasure actually, to be let into someone’s life, to be allowed to share in the ups and downs of their lives. And it makes our own ups and downs a bit easier to bear. We’re all in this together.
The picture above is by Curtis Dean and can be found at: http://thecartoonsite.com/cartoons/0002.gif
family, gifts, letter, moving, relationships, writing

My Year of Hopefulness – The Things We Keep

Christa Avampato

I’m in the midst of packing up my apartment. I’m amazed at the stuff I’ve got hanging around – old yearbooks, varsity letters from high school, cards, photos, letters, journals, magazine articles I meant to read once upon a time though for the life of me can’t remember why I was interested in reading them in the first place. It’s amazing what we accumulate.

I have two large closets in my front hallway that I have dreaded packing into boxes. I knew it would be a long, arduous process and therefore put it off as long as I could. Finally, I couldn’t sleep because I was so worried about packing them up so I just got up out of bed and started the inevitable sorting, tossing, and packing of their contents. Some of the memories they contain are painful, though most of them are happy. And thankfully, the contents are so old that my mind has gleefully erased most of the sadness, loss, frustration, and unhappiness that some of their contents used to trigger, leaving behind only the good memories in their wake.

I got my love for cards and letter writing from my grandmother, Sadie. She sent cards for every occasion from birthdays to Valentine’s Day to Halloween to First Day of School. I found a stack of them in one of the boxes crammed into the top shelf of my closet. I’d know that handwriting anywhere. My grandmother passed away 9 years ago, and still I miss getting those cards in her perfect cursive handwriting.

As I re-read the cards this week, I was overwhelmed with gratitude that I kept them. It’s my own little piece of her that I can always have. I hear her voice through those cards and am reminded of how much she loved me and cherished me. It’s things like these cards that have become my most cherished possessions. They didn’t cost a lot of money and they didn’t take a lot of time to create. Their simplicity and heartfelt emotion are the only gifts I ever really needed.

blogging, writing

My Year of Hopefulness – How to reach a tipping point

Christa Avampato

This week was a good one in the writing department. I was humming along right at the start of the week, and have been off and running since. It’s a long slow climb to remake ourselves, to truly learn a new skill from the inside out. I started writing every day two years ago, after 31 years of just wanting to be a writer.

I didn’t know what to do so I just began. First with this blog, then with Examiner.com, and now as a guest blogger on sites like Rypple and small call outs in publications like the Wall Street Journal and DailyWorth. Next week I’m joining a new team blogging effort, details to follow in a later post, and this Fall I’ll be writing a blog for the Transport Group on their Fall production of The Boys in the Band.

My friend and mentor, Richard, has been listening to my writing plan for some time now and was the first to say, “at some point, the switch will flip and you’ll find a way to make all this investment in your writing pay off.” He’s talking about a tipping point. Until this week, I didn’t realize that the surest way to that tipping point in writing isn’t only about hunkering down and pounding out the words on my Mac. It’s just as much about connection and kinship with others. To get to a tipping point, we have to let others in and give others the opportunity to invite us in as well.

My writing tipping point may still be a long way off. I’m not there yet, but for the first time in two years, I think I might be getting to that point Richard talks about. At least I see it out there on the horizon. I’m just not sure how far away that horizon is compared to where I am right now. And that’s okay. A little light keeps me going.

The photo above can be found at: http://phlogthat.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/img_7592.jpg

blog, friendship, writing

My Year of Hopefulness – Finding your voice and your pack

Christa Avampato

“He who cannot howl will not find his pack.” ~ Charles Simic

Your own clear, strong voice can be elusive. Writing helps me find mine every day, and that provides a benefit for every other area of my life. I’ve connected with people I’d never have met otherwise. I’ve developed friendships, mentorships, and a vast network as a result of my writing. It’s been a true blessing in my life. Through writing, I found my voice and that helped me find like-minded people.

Someone recently commented to me that bloggers are arrogant and self-indulgent people who just want to talk about themselves. I’m not sure when we turned the corner from wanting to share our experiences to being arrogant and self-indulgent. If we follow that train of thought that means every person who ever wrote a memoir, opinion column, or created any piece of art in any medium that somehow conveys their life experiences is arrogant and self-indulgent. And consider how many stories didn’t get told, and therefore didn’t get shared, and therefore didn’t help anyone because other people like the one I spoke with about bloggers discouraged others from finding their voice. It’s sad.

I’d argue that anyone who thinks their life isn’t worth blogging isn’t living an interesting enough life. Whether they choose to do that or not is of course their business, though the reason for not doing it should never be that they aren’t interesting enough. People are a lot more interesting than they give themselves credit for.

A friend of mine has been pretty badly bullied at work by a senior leader. During a recent focus group about this leader, he found that many other people felt the same way. Until this focus group, he felt alone in his predicament, wanting very much to keep his job and also wanting to stand up for himself. He got that chance through his focus group, though only found his voice because others around him found theirs too.

In a way, the person I spoke to about bloggers is a bully, too. A bully is anyone who dissuades someone else from taking up an activity that helps them realize who they are and helps them find others like them. Or they’re at the very least incredibly unhappy, miserable people. I watch the Today Show while I’m getting ready in the morning, and this morning there was a segment on bullies. It’s becoming all too common these days for adults to encounter bullies. They inflict fear on others because they live in fear themselves.

Finding your voice, and your pack, is about releasing our own fear and not allowing others to make us be fearful. You owe it yourself. The joy of life is found by connecting with others, sharing with others, and helping others to find their own happiness. Don’t let someone else take that joy away from you under any circumstances. Share your story, spread your wings, and make the most of the days you’ve got.

books, choices, priorities, travel, writing

My Year of Hopefulness – 20-10

Christa Avampato

A lot of my friends are asking themselves weighty questions these days. I had brunch with a friend on Sunday who told me that someone we used to work worth just lost his mom to cancer. His mom was 58. It’s a sobering thought to consider how short life is, and how much opportunity for living this world offers us.

In the book In Pursuit of Elegance, Matt May talks about how Jim Collins left HP. One of his former professors gave him an assignment called “20-10”: Imagine you’ve just inherited $20M free and clear. The catch is you only have 10 years to live. What would you do – and more importantly, what would you stop doing? As a result of this exercise, he quit his job at HP, despite his success there, and pursued a life of teaching, researching, and writing. And we are the great benefactors of that choice.

This assignment takes great courage to complete, and even greater courage to put the results into action. It’s easy for us to think we have a long life ahead of us. It’s easy to think that we have all the time in the world to accomplish what we really want to do. It’s easy to just play the game of “let me just get by for now”. The trouble with that game is that for now very quickly turns into a long, long time. It might even turn into a lifetime.

This world is counting on us, on all of us, to do something truly extraordinary. And extraordinary can take many different forms, depending on our priorities. Depending on the outcome of our 20-10 assignment. I’ve been putting off this assignment for a solid week now. Too afraid to answer that simple question. $20M, 10 years. What would I do and what would I stop doing?

I would…
Travel
Have my family and friends close to me
Write and write and write, and read and read and read
I’d find a way to build a company or an organization around a product, service, or cause I care about, so that it would survive long, long, long after I’m gone
Fall in love one more time

I would stop…
Letting someone else tell me what my development plan is
Spending time in a gray cubicle
Worrying

A shorter list than I expected on both counts. I thought there was a lot I’d stop doing, until I realized that most of what I do that I don’t like doing is related to my worrying. I didn’t know that. I didn’t realize how afraid I was, of just living, until I wrote this list. I didn’t realize that falling in love one more time was so important to me. And it further confirmed that the writing life is the right life for me. When everything else fall away, it’s this act, this daily time translating my thoughts into words on a page that makes life worthwhile for me. And that is worth something – it’s actually worth everything.

The photo above depicts Jim Collins and can be found at: http://www.seeseeeye.com/uploads/wp_161.jpg

art, books, music, silence, writing

My Year of Hopefulness – It’s what’s missing that counts

Christa Avampato

Today I started reading In Pursuit of Elegance by Matthew May. May’s premise in the book is that what’s not there – in a product, a service, a piece of art, a book – often trumps what is. 12 pages in and I am completely hooked. It’s about what we choose not to do that shapes as our lives as much as what’s on our to-do list. It’s about editing, making decisions, and taking away the unnecessary so that the necessary can shine.

May quotes a lot of sources, referencing everything from ancient Chinese proverbs to pop culture. It never feels contrived, forced, or overly ambitious. He is making connections between seemingly disparate ideas, and teaching us how to live a more valuable, satisfying life in the process.

Early on, May quotes Jim Collins’s now infamous essay that he wrote for USA Today on the subject of “stop-doing.” Collins says, “A great piece of art is composed not just of what is in the final piece, but equally what is not. It is the discipline to discard what does not fit – to cut out what might have already cost days or even years of effort – that distinguishes the truly exceptional artist and marks the ideal piece of work, be it a symphony, a novel, a painting, a company, or most important of all, a life.”

It’s these last two words that got me. I understand editing a novel, a piece of music, a company. We spend a lot of time, maybe most of our time, stuffing our lives full of experience, people, places, and things. We do more and more and more to the point that we can’t remember what we did 10 minutes ago. So what if we did and said less and less and less. What would our lives look like then? What if we only put the precious time we have with one another toward things that passionately, ardently interest us? How would we be different, and how would the world around us be different? Could we actually have a greater positive impact by focusing on the precious few things that really matter to us rather than the mediocre many?

Jazz great John McLaughlin said, “All the music that was ever heard came from the inner silence in every musician.” I extend that quote to say that every human accomplishment has come to be because someone took something from their inner being, from their own personal silence, and gave it to the world. It’s really the only work we ever have to do: strip away the fascades, the excess, what we can live without so that we can know and nurture the handful of things that really count.

entrepreneurship, experience, luck, writing

My Year of Hopefulness – Know Where You’re Going

Christa Avampato

“The world stands aside to let anyone pass who knows where he is going.”
~ David Starr Jordan, ichthyologist and peace activist

I have come across a slew of powerful quotes recently. This quote by David Starr Jordan is one that had special meaning for me this week. I have been considering a number of different new business ventures, cranking along in my writing, and moving ahead with projects that have been in the queue for a while. This week I started to notice that while I am extremely busy, I’m in a groove. The world seemed to remove all obstacles from my path and allowed me to pass through with ease. And more than once, I noticed that a happy coincidence and helpful resources presented themselves. I’ve even found my typical junk mail helpful!

Nothing has recently changed in my life. I make the same amount of money, have the same skill sets, know the same people. So how did I cross over? How has life managed to somehow get easier as of late?

For one thing, I am asking for help, input, and advice with greater frequency. This is not something that’s easy for me. I pride myself on being tremendously self-sufficient. However, the projects I’m most excited about at the moment require expertise beyond my own knowledge. And therefore, necessitate my reaching out. I’ve been blown away by the willingness of others to help me.

I’ve also noticed my confidence, in my writing and in my business ideas, has also grown. I’ve been playing ‘fake it until I make it’, and guess what? It works. My years of writing and developing idea, products, and services is paying off as I cross over form being a novice with an interest to someone with concrete experience and tangible work to show for my efforts.

Finally, I know where I’m going, making me more aware of the help that has been around me all along. I’m on the path to starting my own company, and I know what I want it to look like and how I want it to function. Knowing where I’m going has made articulating my vision and values much clearer, to myself and to everyone else. It might be a long and winding road, though it’s much easier to keep going when the world provides its encouragement and assistance.