The last time I visited my Asian parents, I came upon a few odd items that they keep around. Sometimes, it’s not the item itself that is odd, but rather its particular use.

Growing up as an immigrant, there is often a mentality of scarcity. We need to save to get by. We need to conserve to keep costs low. We need to thrift and stretch in order to make ends meet. My parents and many other immigrant families continue to live this way. You don’t need to tell them to reduce, reuse, and recycle. Immigrants already do.

Think you’re…

As a Christian, I believe in the sanctity of life. I believe that all life is a gift from God. All life is created and known by God.

As a bereaved mother who has an invisible child through miscarriage, you cannot tell me that the fetus I carried is not a person.

As a mother of beautiful 1 month old baby girl, it pains me to know that if she were in utero it would be legal to kill her if I so desired.

Yet, it’s not the place of the state to tell women what they can and cannot do with their bodies. If you don’t want abortions to occur, criminalizing pregnant women and health care workers isn’t the solution.

I believe in an omnipresent, omnipotent, benevolent God who gives me every good and perfect gift…

[This post was written in Fall 2018 and remained unlisted until today, Jan 3 2019, what would have been my daughter, Charlotte’s birthday.]

In everything there needs to be balance. To me, being a feminist is being a strong woman and recognizing that this world was not made with me in mind. Being a feminist means I acknowledge that the prejudice against women is real, true, and unfair. Being a feminist means I fight — when I see this unfairness played out systematically in issues like the gender wage gap and culturally in reinforced micro-aggression like advertising for cleaning products.

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I haven’t even officially announced my campaign, but I wanted to take a moment to write out some of my thoughts as to WHY I decided to run for city council.

I’m a regular person. I walk to work. There are pet restrictions in the building I live in. I jog on Dallas Road and ride the Galloping Goose. I have friends that leave Victoria because they can’t find jobs or affordable housing. I love looking out at the Olympic Mountains on a clear day to marvel that another country is just across the water. …

The first time in my life I wrote about my little secret was September 10, 2014. I wrote a blog post about it because I was learning to build websites for my job. I asked a trusted friend to proofread my post. Afterwards, I made the edits, added images and styling to the blog post, and then… I chickened out. I never published it even though the first line of the post was literally: “I think I’m ready to tell you”. Obviously, I wasn’t ready. I never shipped.

I produced the video below almost 4 years after my initial blog…

In every business, you’ve got ASSETS. These are productive things that are tangible and intangible, fixed or current. Plus’ that help get you to where you’re going. Here’s some examples:

Rethink what you may consider an asset in the following ways:

• What are some non-conventional assets you may have? (i.e. valuable supportive network of friends that can pick up your kids from school, access to social media influencers, a lot of credit card flight points?)
• What constraint, can become an asset after a small adjustment?

Then, there’s also BOUNDARIES. These may be legal boundaries and restrictions placed on your industry…

In grade 12, I started looking at universities and what programs each offered. I explored the various potential majors with great anticipation. At the time, I had recently skimmed Theodore Roosevelt’s biography at the public library. I probably read just a few chapters out of the blue, but it made an impression on 17 year old Anna. With a pulpit, you could speak up for what you believed in. You could make positive change, I could make positive change!

As graduation neared, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” got replaced by “What are you going to…

When we think of salespeople the first thing that comes to mind is the slimy cold caller/spammer. We don’t trust them. They want to get in our wallets. They talk A LOT. They spew all the information about themselves and the product they are selling and somehow their use of buzz words is supposed to impress. All they want to do is “close the sale” and get a “yes” out of you. Sales has a negative connotation in many places. It’s viewed as selfish and dishonest.

GOOD sales is not like that. Good sales is about listening. You need to…