Annie Anderson | Blog

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While I am not normally one to discuss things such as politics and current events, there is something going on in the media right now that I just cannot ignore. And though I do not want to really add to the noise, the speculation and the drama surrounding such a private and personal tragedy, I feel lead to share a story.

I’m talking about the Jennifer Hudson family murders that happened last Friday when her mom, Darnell Donerson, and her brother, Jason Hudson, were fatally shot in their home and then her little 7 year old nephew, Julian King was found murdered in the back of Jason’s stolen SUV Monday morning.

I just cannot fathom the pain Ms. Hudson and her family are going through right now. And if I could, I would just hug them all and tell them how much I hurt for them.

Because . . . I can understand the pain of losing a young child you would do anything for, one who is the light of your life.

See, on October 29, 1991 - 17 years ago today - my 8 year old niece, Sherri, died of cancer.

As Ms. Hudson has said about her nephew, Sherri was my reason for living, my everything. She and I were extremely close. She was the first child I ever felt that kind of love for, had that kind of bond with and she was like my own child.

Sherri would be 25 this year, probably graduating college, maybe even getting married or having a child of her own. It’s these thoughts that tear me apart. It’s these thoughts that tear me apart for Julian King and Jennifer Hudson and Julia Hudson and everyone around the world who has lost a special child.

So, tonight, I invite you to hug your loved ones, tell them you love them. Gather them close and let them know they are special to you. It’s time for the world to stop hurting.

Stop hurting ourselves.
Stop hurting our families.
Stop hurting our friends and neighbors.
Our brothers and sisters.
Our fellow man.

The time is now.

And this is why the elections next week are so, so, so important! As an American (if you are one), it is your duty, your job, your right - to get out there and vote. There are no excuses. Every vote counts.

Let. Every. Voice. Be. Heard!

In the arena,

Annie Anderson is a freelance copywriter and graphic designer specializing in the small business and real estate markets. Her tagline “Making your business, my business” means that she’ll take the utmost care when creating words and images for your business - just as if it were her own.

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Or do you have a “throw away” mentality?

In recent years, I’ve noticed what is, to me, a disturbing trend. I call it the “throw away” mentality. And basically what it is, is purchasing something without much regard to it’s quality and thinking “Oh, well, if it breaks/gets lost/malfunctions/whatever, I’ll just get another one.”

And this disturbs me. Greatly.

Why?

Simple. Because it’s seeping into other parts of every day life. Parts of life that should be respected, parts of life that should be held to a high regard, with integrity and moral responsibility.

For example, when I was growing up, my parents placed a lot of emphasis on who on I hung out with, who I called my friends. They taught me that making good choices when it came to relationships was paramount and that true friends don’t hurt you - whether that be physically, emotionally or by doing things such as drugs and other non-healthy behaviors.

But now-days, I’ve noticed there are many kids who seem to just be allowed to do whatever they wish, with very few - if any - rules in their homes. And I think this type of lax attitude imparts to todays youth that it’s ok to be reckless - “No worries - you can always change your mind later.”

Well, not so fast.

There need to be more boundaries. There needs to more thought and attention paid to what we’re teaching our young people. It’s simply NOT ok to be so casual with everything.

We must relearn to “pay for quality.”

We must be conscious of our choices and realize that everything does have a consequence. And we must teach our children that quality is always worth more in the end. If we pay for quality, I firmly believe we not only have a greater respect for our own things and lives, we also have a greater respect for the world around us.

Now, I’m not talking about being frivolous, either. No, just good, sensible choices that reflect respect for each other, for ourselves, for our environment.

And this goes for relationships, too. With The Teenager in high school this year, I’ve seen some kids with a different boyfriend/girlfriend nearly every week. I’ve seen an attitude from some kids that shows no respect for their peers, let alone those they call “friends.”

So the question is - how do we teach our children to have this type of respect and conscientiousness for not only each other, but for life and the world around them? Somewhere, there has been a disconnect in teaching these values and if it’s not corrected soon, we could see some pretty scary results when these kids become adults.

It’s only my opinion, but I also believe that the disturbing trend towards domestic violence is a direct result of this “throw away” mentality. Like it doesn’t matter how things or people are treated because there’s always another one, another can always be “bought.”

As a survivor of domestic violence myself, this is something that is always in the forefront of my mind. I do not want my children to ever have to be involved in that situation. And should they ever find themselves there, I want them to recognize it as quickly as possible and know that there are tools and support for them.

I think it’s time we get back to basic common sense, respect for ourselves and others, and learning to make good - and lasting - choices.

Our future leaders depend on it.

In the arena,

Did you know I design blog headers and ebook cover graphics, too? Yes, I do. And you can get one now for the introductory price of $55 for a limited time. Just send a payment of $55 to me via PayPal along with a description of what you want. You’ll have a design within 48 hours.

Annie Anderson is a freelance copywriter and graphic designer specializing in the small business and real estate markets. Her tagline “Making your business, my business” means that she’ll take the utmost care when creating words and images for your business - just as if it were her own.

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Nearly every day for the past week I’ve found a penny lying “heads up” on the ground on my way back from walking The Teenager to the bus stop in the morning. (Yes, I walk her to the bus stop - it’s over a half mile away and at 6:30 in the morning, it’s not very light.)

I’m not quite sure what the pennies mean but I know it means something.

See, it’s not the first time it’s happened - that I’ve found pennies lying around for days in a row. And every time it’s happened before, it has had some significance. Like the last time - we were looking at our house and we came by on several occasions to look around, check things out, get a feel for the house and every time we came by, there was a penny lying the floor or in the window sill somewhere. The house was vacant at the time.

We took it to mean it was the right house for us.

Now, I don’t know what these pennies mean this time. They’ve been outside around the corner from our house between here and the bus stop and frankly, I’m perplexed by it. I have no idea yet what the Universe may be trying to tell me.

But my eyes and ears are open and I’ll keep watching with eager anticipation.

In the arena,

By the way - the blog header special listed below is going to go the way of the dinosaur pretty soon so if you’re even the slightest bit interested in having me design a blog header for you, get it now!

Did you know I design blog headers and ebook cover graphics, too? Yes, I do. And you can get one now for the introductory price of $55 for a limited time. Just send a payment of $55 to me via PayPal along with a description of what you want. You’ll have a design within 48 hours.

Annie Anderson is a freelance copywriter and graphic designer specializing in the small business and real estate markets. Her tagline “Making your business, my business” means that she’ll take the utmost care when creating words and images for your business - just as if it were her own.

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The last week has been an interesting one. Some sweet memories and some teenage rebellion I hope doesn’t go any further plus an awesome concert and lots of pictures.

One thing at a time, though. Right now, I want to share what it was like putting my baby on the bus the first week of school.

The Short Dude started pre-school last Wednesday and I was a bit emotional watching him get on the bus. Then watching the bus drive away with my little man on board - without me, without his siblings - just new faces and strangers he didn’t know. That was a difficult moment. But I knew it was for his growth (and maybe for mine, too) so I anxiously counted the minutes until his return home. I did not cry, though.

Really. I didn’t. Because isn’t he cute? Sitting there in his seat like the big boy he is, with his backpack, on his way to his FIRST DAY of school.

We took lots of pictures (you can see them all on my flickr photostream) before and after school last week. Like these flowers at grandma’s house -

And this one of the Short Dude riding Little Girl’s bike -

And these grapes the Short Dude had for snack after school on the first day that he *insisted* I take a picture of -

I love the clarity and quality of the pictures my new camera takes. It’s a Fuji FinePix S5100. Although it’s technically a point-&-shoot camera, it has all sorts of options like you’d find on a DSLR. I think I may do a review of the camera here on the blog soon. Since I got the camera last week, I’ve taken over 400 pictures! And I haven’t even touched them up in Photoshop.

Anyway, I am tired - it was a long weekend but I’m just not ready to talk about it yet. It’s time for a quick bath to relax and head to bed. I will be back this week with an around the web post (which I simply got too busy to post last week - sorry!), part 3 of Stories make us who we are, another post about connecting, a review of the George Duke & Anthony Hamilton concert I went to at McCaw Hall Friday night and anything else I happen to think of.

Oh - and probably a boat load more pictures. I hope you like them!

Until then . . .

In the arena,

Did you know I design blog headers and ebook cover graphics, too? Yes, I do. And you can get one now for the introductory price of $55 for a limited time. Just send a payment of $55 to me via PayPal along with a description of what you want. You’ll have a design within 48 hours.

Annie Anderson is a freelance copywriter and graphic designer specializing in the small business and real estate markets. Her tagline “Making your business, my business” means that she’ll take the utmost care when creating words and images for your business - just as if it were her own.

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Now that I’ve got a more powerful camera, it’s time for pictures! I’m going to be posting some pictures of lots of different things - from cats to cows to flowers to mountains to food and anything else I decide to capture.

These were taken this weekend.

Where’s my apple? These are my mom’s cows. Leone is bellering at the kids, wanting them to bring her more apples.

Waiting for apples. The kids are up the hill getting apples from one of the trees.

Grandma’s Tree - This is a tree my parents planted in the yard 20 odd years ago. They transplanted it from my Grandma’s cabin property in rural Snohomish County. It was about 3 feet tall back then. Now it’s taller than my parents house.

View from my moms farm. You can see the Olympic Mountains, Whidbey Island, Tulalip Bay and part of Camano Island here. You can also see part of Ebey Slough in the foreground.

My neighbors flag waving in the breeze.

I’ll post more later. I took over 150 pictures this weekend. It was a lot of fun as the weather was very nice so I spent a lot of time outside with the kids. We took pictures of anything that caught our attention - lawnmowers, gas cans, buckets, basketballs, animals, trees, the sky and much more. I have uploaded about half of them to flickr if you’d like to see more before I get ‘em posted here.

Also, I still have my around the web post from last week sitting here in the drafts folder. I didn’t have a lot of time to stumble around the web and therefore, don’t have too many things to share. As such, I’m kinda waiting until I have some cool things to share that I think you guys would really enjoy. So stay tuned because I do plan to post it soon.

The Short Dude starts school on Wednesday (he got in the morning class!! yay!) so perhaps I’ll be able to share it then.

In any case, I hope you all enjoyed your weekend as much as I did. Did you do anything fun? Anything new? Something different? Please share! I’d love to hear from you, as always.

In the arena (& shooting pictures),

Did you know I design blog headers and ebook cover graphics, too? Yes, I do. And you can get one now for the introductory price of $55 for a limited time. Just send a payment of $55 to me via PayPal along with a description of what you want. You’ll have a design within 48 hours.

Annie Anderson is a freelance copywriter and graphic designer specializing in the small business and real estate markets. Her tagline “Making your business, my business” means that she’ll take the utmost care when creating words and images for your business - just as if it were her own.

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In part one of this series from Thursday, I left you with the thought that we can get beyond the stories by realizing that change is possible. Change is ok - it helps us grow, share and can even help us become stronger. It’s like a tool, if you will.

The first step to embracing change is trusting that the Universe knows exactly what it’s doing. At every moment, it’s operating just as it should be. There is an underlying balance and order to all things, a cycle of life that continues on and on. We must trust, then, trust that the Universe (or God or whatever you wish to call it) is answering your every question, your every thought, your every whim. You just haven’t caught up with some of them yet.

As a result of this cycle, you must understand that at every moment, you have a choice. You can choose to be happy, to be sad, to be angry, to be worried, to be anxious or whatever other emotion you care to attach. It’s your choice.

Let me tell you here and now - happiness IS a choice. It is not something that happens to you. It is not something outside of you. It is not caused by something or someone else. It comes from within - a choice you consciously choose at any given moment.

And this is one fundamental truth that must be acknowledged.

Your state of being is directly related to YOUR OWN INNER COMPASS. Your own thoughts. Your own will power. Your own consciousness. Nothing else. It does not live outside of you. It only dwells within. You can be happy simply because you decide to.

Imagine that!

No matter what else is going on in your life, you can learn to trust the process and know that whatever happens, is happening for a reason. There are no accidents, no coincidences. And when you begin to take this to heart, you will learn to become peaceful. You will find joy.

And then, an interesting thing will begin to happen - when we operate our daily lives from a place of joy, trusting in the Universe for our every need, things begin to come our way. All the things we truly desire and wish for, begin to appear in our lives. It’s almost as if we’ve found luck.

But really, it was there all along, simply waiting for us to open up and embrace it.

In other words, stories don’t have to rule our lives. We don’t have to let them encumber us, weigh us down, make us heavy and depressed. We can acknowledge the bad along with the good and find joy in the learning. We can find joy in simplicity. We can find joy simply because we can!

This is one of the greatest things about being human - we have our own thoughts, our own will. And we are free to use it. When we use our free will while trusting in the Universe, miracles and magic happens. Doors open.

You have a door open before you today. The door of inner peace. Of inner joy. Walk through it and empower your life.

Start by choosing to be happy.

Next time, we’ll talk about how to be happy when we’d rather be sad.

In the arena,

Make $10k in a weekend - “Too good to be true.” That’s the first thing I said when
I heard of http://tinyurl.com/5lq2g4. You can’t REALLY make $10K in a weekend. But I quickly bit my tongue once I saw the content. . .

Annie Anderson is a freelance copywriter and graphic designer specializing in the small business and real estate markets. Her tagline “Making your business, my business” means that she’ll take the utmost care when creating words and images for your business - just as if it were her own.

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Stories make us who we are. Yes, it’s true. They certainly do. But, we must realize we are so much more than those stories. We must learn to move beyond the stories and just Be. And we must understand - we are NOT our stories. They do not have to define who we are. Each of us has a unique gift, something to share with the world around us. In the hubbub of every day life, sometimes those gifts get lost or buried under all those stories and as a result we can’t find our way.

I really got to thinking about this last night when I was in the walk-in clinic with my husband who tried to take off his thumb at work. Ok, well, it wasn’t quite that bad. But it sure was nasty.

He was holding a granite slab and his boss, who was on the forklift, was getting ready to clamp onto the slab so they could move it around the warehouse. Well, somehow - nobody is quite sure - the clamp grazed his hand, pulling the thumbnail nearly off and causing a hell of a lot of blood. Just before quitting time, of course.

So he got home last night, hand all bandaged up and tried to tough it out. I called my mom (a radiologist) to ask her about meds (he’d taken aspirin which hadn’t put a dent in his discomfort) and she promptly put together a package of gauze and tape and bandage-y type stuff and brought them over. While she was on her way, we rinsed it well with sea salt water and once she got here, we decided he should see a doctor. Mostly because he looked rather peaked and was having trouble processing his thoughts coherently. (I’m guessing he was in a heck of a lot more pain than he let on which is unusual for him because he’s quite the whiner when he’s ill or hurt. )

I guess the admin gals at the front desk thought he looked a bit worse for ware, too, because we were ushered in to see the intake nurse within just a couple of minutes. I hadn’t even finished filling out his paperwork.

Fortunately, since it was obviously draining, there wasn’t a need to drill the nail to release the pressure or anything but because of the clamp situation, he was given a tetanus shot as well as antibiotics. The doctor cleaned it up some more and dressed it all with ointment and a pressure bandage. And he’ll have to change the bandage every day at least once, if not twice, for the next several weeks until the new nail takes form.

Anyway, this all got me to thinking about stories and getting rid of things in our lives which don’t work or changing our course just a little bit so they do. I began thinking how our stories shape how we think, how we feel, what we do (or don’t do) and where our lives ultimately lead.

It became clear to me how my husbands childhood thoroughly affected how he handled the situation. He treated it like one of those, “ignore it and it will go away” things. Not me. I went into what my family calls “fix it mode.”

Now, when I was growing up, my mom was much the same way. She just gets in there and automatically, somehow, knows exactly what needs to be done. No wavering, no worrying, no wondering what should be done. It just gets done. And that’s what I do, too. We don’t freak out, we don’t get upset or angry or emotional. (Until it’s over, anyway!)

I began to wonder what stories made my husband react and act how he did. What caused him to downplay (in his own mind) the severity of the injury and his resistance to doing anything about it. He didn’t even seem to know what nearly anyone who’s ever had any kind of injury knows - to elevate the injured body part.

The good news is - we can learn to get beyond the stories. We can learn to accept that just because a certain thing happened in our past, doesn’t mean we have to continue on that way. We can change our world for the better.

And it starts by realizing that change is possible.

(Stay tuned for part 2.)

Oh - and by the way - I haven’t forgotten about my before and after office pics. Just haven’t had time with all the other fun stuff going on to get them out of the camera. Hopefully this weekend will slow down a bit. Or probably not. It’s my mom’s birthday Sunday.
In the arena,

Make $10k in a weekend - “Too good to be true.” That’s the first thing I said when
I heard of http://tinyurl.com/5lq2g4. You can’t REALLY make $10K in a weekend. But I quickly bit my tongue once I saw the content. . .

Annie Anderson is a freelance copywriter and graphic designer specializing in the small business and real estate markets. Her tagline “Making your business, my business” means that she’ll take the utmost care when creating words and images for your business - just as if it were her own.

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