Life – Page 2 – Aubri Black

Life May 31, 2018

5 Ways to be a Happier You

A happier outlook is calling. Here are five things to consider when happiness is on the line. It’s time to answer the call. Remember you are the expert on your own life. You are the one responsible for your actions. You are also the one who gets to reap any benefits. That knowledge lets you off the hook to not listen to bad advice. Certain things work for certain people, and they might work for you or they might not. Either way, you don’t have to listen to everything you hear. You get to choose! Your friends care about you, that is why they give you advice. Be thankful you have friends that care. Listen to them. Be respectful. Then remember that you don’t have to apply what they say to your situation. See other people’s success as a good thing. It is far too easy to fall into envy…

Life May 7, 2018

The Fear of Imperfect Writing

There are days when I have a lot to say and write about, but I don’t know where to start. I type and I type and I type, but I end up not writing anything that is blog-worthy. Though I am unsure if I know what that even is at this point. I’m a recovering perfectionist, or rather some days I still am one, who reads all the blogs, books and articles I can to know how to be a better writer and blogger. And then boom the overwhelm creeps in. I can’t seem to keep all the advice straight. So I don’t post anything because it doesn’t have a theme or a point or isn’t well-written or doesn’t pass the length test or whatever reason the other people told me I needed to do in order to be great. Too many times I have started blogs and then dropped…

Life March 7, 2018

What Depression Feels Like to Me

It’s strange for me to share something like this. I don’t always know how to talk about my struggle with depression, and I usually don’t want to. Sometimes I feel like there are multiple versions of myself and they appear at different times. I feel so completely one way one day and then the opposite the next. Despite my desire to not talk about it, depression is something that needs to be talked about. It’s something that can be helpful when learned through the eyes of those in the midst of the battle. Often I find it easier to say that I have anxiety, but not depression because it comes with so many more negative stigmas. I don’t want to be looked down on. I don’t want to be seen as sick or messed up. I don’t want to be broken. I don’t want sympathy. I’m not lazy when I lack…

Life January 25, 2018

An Idea That Became a Reality: Overflow Market

Kim Norcross and Carla Thiessen went to a pop-up used clothing sale put on by a local organization not that long ago. The event was at High Street in Abbotsford, BC. While they browsed, they realized most of the people attending were a lot younger than them. Even though they picked up some nice items, the event was targeted at younger, early twenty-year-old group. They didn’t feel like they belonged. Carla had been thinking about putting on a similar event like the one they went to for awhile. She suggested to Kim that they do a curated second-hand clothing market, but with a bigger age bracket of 20-40s. From their experience, it was hard to find used clothing for their age. “It’s our age group though, that really cares about being eco-friendly, reusing and not being wasteful,” Kim says. Sure, you can go through Value Village or any…

Life January 3, 2018

Living life at my own pace

Do you ever feel the pressure to do more, achieve more, be more? More often than not I feel this pressure in my life. I feel the pressure to make new year’s resolution. I feel the pressure to constantly be getting better at things. Most nagging is the pressure to be perfect. This year, I’m taking the pressure off. I don’t need to do something just because everyone else is doing it. Resolutions can be good, it’s wise to look at what you want to change, and think about what you want to accomplish. However, I’ve found that an all or nothing/extreme approach to change, doesn’t work out in the long run. Habits take a lot of time and effort to create and undo, and trying to do all the things all at once, doesn’t build new habits, it just crashes our already exhausted brains. It sets us up to fail in…

Life November 21, 2017

That Time in the Grocery Store When I Remembered Why I’m a Feminist

I was in the line up at the grocery store. There was a middle-aged man at the register in front of me. He was buying four packages of ice cream sandwiches. The girl at the checkout rang them up. When she told him the total, he was upset. “Uh no. That it not how much it should be for four boxes.” The cashier unfazed, asked if they were on sale. He said yes. She turned and asked another girl standing near by to run and check the price for her. What she actually said, gave him the benefit of the doubt: “Can you find the correct prices for these, please. Thank you!” “What?” he said. “You don’t know what the prices of these are?” He used as rude of a tone as possible. Translation: Wow you are stupid for not knowing the price. If I were you, I would know…

Life October 14, 2017

Does Writer’s Block Exist?

It is not that I have nothing to write. It is that I have too much to write. I start and go down one path then another then another. My head is swimming in thoughts and some connect, some don’t. Probably some on a subconscious level do and don’t connect, confusing all other conscious thoughts. I used to think that I got writer’s block. I don’t think I do. In some ways, I don’t think it exists. Maybe it does for some people, but it manifests itself in different ways. I never run out of things to write about, I simply run into something else that blocks my creativity. I get a thing I call perfectionism block. Where my mind shuts off when it discovers I can’t do something perfectly. As soon as it thinks through all the possibilities and the idea that I might have missed or perspectives…

Life October 5, 2017

From Blonde to Brown and Back Again, an Aubri’s Tale

Unless you are bald, the hair on your head is with you everywhere. It is a defining feature. I have changed my hair many times. I’ve had orange, red, black, brown, blonde, platinum…to name a few. For the past maybe eight or so years, I’ve had short hair, usually in a pixie cut. After a bad experience at a salon, I declared: I’m growing my hair out. Then another moment came—where I was fed up with things in my life—and I decided: Ok, I am done with blonde, I am dying my hair brown. This was in an attempt to go back to my natural dark blonde roots. Oddly enough, four days after changing my hair I quit my job. Clearly there was unrest happening in me that I didn’t even know about fully, and it manifested itself… in my hair choice. I have gone through many different times…

Life September 22, 2017

The Great Pumpkin Depression

When a pumpkin spice latte doesn’t make you feel better… perhaps something is wrong. There are a lot of people who are excited about fall. But this year, I’m not one of them. The long nights and the rainy days, the gloomy cloudy rainy dark days and nights: fall begins them all. I don’t completely hate this time of year. I like the colder nights, snuggling up with a giant fuzzy blanket and a bunch of pillows. I like everything pumpkin. I do sometimes like the excuse to stay in and not feel guilty because it’s raining. I however struggle with depression and the weather affects me. When it isn’t sunny out, I feel less hopeful and less motivated. I wish I could explain this in a way that makes sense to those who don’t know what that is like, but I don’t know that I can. The first day…

Life September 12, 2017

What is a Copywriter?

Recently I’ve noticed that what I do for a living is not a commonly known term. When people ask me what I do, I say: “I’m a copywriter.” Side Note: I am also a writer, but if I said writer—and not copywriter—people usually think novels, poetry, articles, etc. (which I do write), but those are not how I make money (right now). I’m a freelance copywriter. The next question is: What’s a copywriter? After I explain, these are some of the responses I’ve gotten: Oh, I thought you made photocopies or were a scribe. I figured you copied other people’s writing. Ok, so you’re not a ghostwriter? I was thinking you wrote copyright laws or some legal thing like that. I’m glad people ask. The other day I went to a new hairstylist, and her first response was to laugh when I used the term “copywriting” as if…