About

I'm Annie Mueller.

My mom used to read the book of Proverbs every month, with a pink highlighter in hand. Someone had told her to mark all the verses that could be applied to raising kids. She had two daughters, so she marked in pink.

When she corrected us, it was usually something like this:

Mom: "Girls, don't argue. You know what Proverbs says about starting fights..."

Us: (groaning) "Yes, Mom."

I lost my Mom to breast cancer in June of 2007. In January of 2008 I started this site. It isn't a tribute to my Mom, or even directly related to her, except that it's from her I got the habit of reading the book of Proverbs, and from Proverbs that I got the habit of living in pursuit of wisdom. The website name comes from a verse in Proverbs:

{Prv. 7.14} Say to Wisdom, 'You are my sister,' And call understanding your closest friend.

I started writing to help myself and others to build better lives by consciously seeking wisdom. The old Personal Growth train, reworked a bit.

As I wrote, a few themes emerged:

routines and habits
monthly challenges
books and writing

Oh, look, a helpful graphic to illustrate my bulleted list. (Did I mention that sarcasm is also a common theme?)

I tend to sit on topics like parenting, marriage, home making, and freelancing: why? Because that's my life. I am a Mom of 3 children, wife to my best friend, modern home maker, and freelance writer. Also an amateur gardener and food lover, and those topics sneak in here, too. Attitude, emotions, and spirituality come up frequently; you can't really avoid them when you talk 'personal growth' at any depth.

My ultimate goal with this website is twofold:

I want to help you and me step out of the mundane, ordinary, culture-induced, bad-attitude ruts and step into better lives, full of creativity, zest, joy, independence, peace, fun, thought, and, most of all, wisdom.
I want to make a living from my online work, which involves both this site and several other projects, as well as consulting and freelancing work.

I'm not here to sell you stuff you don't need. I am here to share what I learn (often as I'm knee-deep in the messy process of learning it), help as I can, and make a return on my labor. I make money by

Standard ads (Google and the like).
Affiliate ads (Amazon and the like, as well as smaller affiliate sales).
Direct ad sales ( inquire here).
Sales of ebooks, courses, workshops, and the like.
Consulting, speaking, and teaching.
Related freelance work.

I'll be the first to tell you that nothing here is really new. Most of this content, these ideas, exist in many forms both online and off. You could write many of these posts yourself. But sometimes it helps to hear it again. Sometimes it helps to hear it from a different perspective. Sometimes you need to be reminded, as do I, that a better life is not just possible, it's possible to start building it today.