adventure, beauty, opportunity, time

Beautiful: Everyday Celebrations

Christa Avampato
From Pinterest
From Pinterest

If you replaced the cat in this photo with a fuzzy dachshund, this would be me and Phin. Everyday we celebrate something. Even if it’s just the sunshine. Even if it’s a rainy day that let’s us stay in and enjoy some serious R&R. Sometimes, it’s a trip to someplace exciting. Most of the time it’s just the miracle of being alive and in good health.

It’s so easy to let life get us down. Things don’t always go our way. Most of the time, they never work out exactly as we expect or want them to. But in 37 years I’ve learned that I can’t fight life. It unfolds in its own way, in its own time. The mystery of its inner workings is not for me to control, but rather something for me to be curious about. Everyday celebrations remind me that even in the midst of difficulty, there’s always a little light.

entrepreneurship, social media

YCombinator Alumnus, Edward Wu, Wants to Help You Raise Your Social Status

Christa Avampato

YCombinator alumnus, Edward Wu, takes a unique approach to Facebook marketing. His brand new web app, Social Status, is unlike any traditional Facebook marketing app.

Companies have been unsuccessfully trying to make Facebook work for them by using “contests, sweepstakes, giveaways, content curation,” says Wu. “Social Status focuses on the bread-and-butter of your social media campaign and enhances your posts.”

How it works: Social Status transforms your text-based social media posts into stunning images, getting you more Likes, Comments, and Shares. Social Status conducted a study using 500 random posts; half were plain text and the other half were enhanced with the app. The Social Status posts received 60% more Likes, 400% more Comments, and 12x the number of Shares.

Social Status works with Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. Users can post directly to their Facebook Fan pages, Twitter Feeds, or Pinterest boards, all in a matter of seconds. Before Social Status, there was no simple way to post text on Pinterest; Social Status now makes this possible. Social Status also has an export feature that makes it fully compatible with social media management tools like Sprout Social, HootSuite, and TweetDeck. Social Status has an aggressive roadmap. They plan to add detailed analytics, hundreds more templates, and more social media platform integrations in the coming weeks.

If you want to take it for a test drive, Social Status is free for personal use, and $10 / month for businesses. (The $10 fee removes the watermark and unlocks all the templates.)

About the company: Social Status is based in San Jose, CA. Edward Wu is also the Co-founder of Vidyard (Series A funded startup with over 30 employees).

animals, Easter

Beautiful: Happy Easter from the Easter Dachshund

Christa Avampato

You’ve heard of the Easter Beagle? You’ve heard of an Easter Egg Roll? Around this house, we get an annual visit from the rolly polly Easter Dachshund. Happy Easter and Happy Spring from our pack to yours!

beauty, dreams, grateful, gratitude

Beautiful: Love What Is

Christa Avampato

45b9139e10a6a126038d35f7c74b3618“We spend too much time living in the ‘what if’ and need to learn to live in the ‘what is.’ “ ~ Reverend Leroy Allison

There is a casualty to being a dreamer. Sometimes we spend so much time building a world of our own design that we miss the beauty that is right in front of us. We miss the chance to be inspired right now because we’re so in love with our vision of how things will be.

I have no intention of giving up any of my dreams. I am passionate about carving my own path. However, I also want to make sure that I appreciate exactly where I am on each step of this journey. There is beauty in process, in the act of becoming. In these small, ordinary moments, there are extraordinary things happening. I want to recognize them for all the magnificence that they hold.

beauty, creativity, imagination, inspiration, Life, nature, Spring

Beautiful: The Beauty of Spring

Christa Avampato

I love this photo. It makes me want to crawl inside this scene and take Phin for a long, winding walk under a canopy of pink petals. Beauty matters. It wakes up our senses. It increases our awareness. It inspires our imagination.

Spring is slowly making its way toward us, bringing with it warmth, color, and new beginnings. Life is about to manifest in a big way in the world around us. And so it goes within us, too. After a long, cold, dark winter, we’re ready to shrug off that blanket in search of the new, untested, and yes, beautiful. Spring is a time of action, movement, and growth. It’s a time to start again, unencumbered by the past.

Wherever your winding road takes you this Spring, I hope it’s a place where you can explore and experiment, a place that is as magnificent as you.

adventure, creative, curiosity, imagination

Beautiful: Where the Wildest Things Are

Christa Avampato
From Pinterest

“Adventure is not outside man; it is within.” ~ George Eliot, British writer

I love the movie, Hugo. I was hooked when I saw the preview and Hugo asks Isabelle, “Do you want to have an adventure?” I couldn’t think of a more perfect question to ask a friend! Curiosity brings people together.

We often think of adventures as travels to far-flung sites around the globe, escapades into places that are strange, new, and even a little risky. But the greatest adventures lie not “out there somewhere” but within. They are in our imaginations. There we will find fantastical worlds that no one has even dared to dream of yet, much less build. Our creativity knows no bounds. It doesn’t limit itself. If we close our eyes, turn our attention to the breath, and tap in, we can go anywhere.

That’s my kind of adventure.

choices, priorities

Beautiful: Make Your Convictions Your Full-time Job

Christa Avampato

“Decide what you stand for. And then stand for it all the time.” ~ Clayton Christensen

Integrity is a long road. We will be tried and tested many times along its path. We’ll be asked to state and re-state our convictions, defend them, and ultimately live our lives by them. We may question ourselves, reconsider our positions, and doubt our abilities. We’ll be tempted to shrink back from criticism, confrontation, and disagreements, but in those moments our integrity will rise up, just when we need it most.

Integrity is a leg to stand on. It’s a warm blanket on a cold night. It’s a light during our darkest hour. You can hang your hat on your integrity, and there’s a lot of power in that knowledge.

How do you need to live in order to be true to yourself, to wake up and be proud of the person staring back at you from the mirror? Figure out what matters most to you and then do whatever it takes to build a life around those priorities. It’s the only way to be certain that we fulfill the promise of our potential.

learning

Beautiful: The Battles We Face

Christa Avampato

“You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it.” ~ Margaret Thatcher, British prime minister

Do you ever feel like you are continuously fighting the same battle over and over again? Do you find yourself running into the same difficulties, the same tough times, with the same challenging characters?

A long time ago, my friend, Derek, said something very wise to me and the simple lesson it conveys has stayed with me in many tough times. He told me that the world is a very generous place. It gives us the same lesson over and over again until we really learn it and don’t need to go through it any more.

That’s not to say that you’ll never face the same difficulties, even after you learn your lesson. But you will be different. Wiser, stronger, more resilient. So while the situation you find yourself in may feel like déjà vu, your reaction can be different, and therefore you can generate a different outcome.

There are just so many varieties of battle you’ll face in life. The difficult boss, the person who tries to bully and intimidate you, the relationship that goes awry, the stresses you didn’t expect. But the chips can fall any number of ways. There is no end to the learnings that are available to each of us in every circumstance that arises.

art, community, teaching, writing

Beautiful: We Are Angels to Each Other

Christa Avampato

“I’ve seen and met angels wearing the disguise of ordinary people living ordinary lives.” ~ Tracy Chapman

When I think about what I really want to be, an angel is an accurate description. Whether it’s through my writing, teaching, art, or business work, I hope it’s all useful to someone. I hope that it makes someone’s life a bit easier, happier, and healthier. I hope that it helps me connect to others and helps them connect to me.

What good are angels up there somewhere? We need them down here, on this Earth, right now. I can’t imagine any work that would be more valuable or gratifying than to know that what I’ve done has in some way helped someone navigate this wild world with more grace.

art, books, creative, creative process, creativity, design

Beautiful: Blender Master Class from No Starch Press

Christa Avampato

blender_simonds_complete_V7.inddDesign skills are quickly becoming a part of the necessary knowledge base of professionals in a wide variety of fields. Plenty of courses, online and off, free and fee-based, are cropping up to demystify the process of design. Open source design software is also paving the way to help us evolve from media consumers into media creators.

If 3D design is on your wish list of skills, you’re in luck. Blender is an incredibly popular open source 3D design suite with a massive user community. No Starch Press has just published the book Blender Master Class by author and professional 3D artist Ben Simonds. The book guides you step-by-step through 3 intricate projects by teaching you modeling, sculpting, materials, and rendering skills. The book also explains how Blender interfaces with GIMP, an open source graphic design program, and includes a DVD with all of the relevant files for the projects described in the book.

Simonds makes Blender, a sophisticated program, approachable by breaking down its basic features one by one. Blender is used by many artists for animation, simulation, and game design. However, these features are not covered in this book. Simonds focused his efforts on the niche that needed to be filled – helping new Blender users understand the basics of creating still images.

With this book you can quickly get started on the task of getting those 3D designs out of your imagination and into the world. While Blender can feel overwhelming at first because of all of its bells and whistles, you’ll have Simonds with you on every step of the journey as a guide and supporter. I can’t wait to see what you create!