Meet the Artist – My Story

When I moved to the United States several years ago I sometimes felt like I had fallen down my personal rabbit hole. There was a lot of unfamiliar territory, things I’d never done, never seen, and some that I didn’t even understand, at least not right away. Some things, like the washing machine in our rental didn’t work “right”. I had to call a friend to find out how to wash our clothes. Some of the knowledge I’d so easily learned while growing up was suddenly obsolete. Relearning, researching, and asking for advice was my daily exercise.

You would think our two countries are not that different, but they are.

The first year was filled with adjusting and helping my daughter to find her place in school and in the new language. To settle down our family I had to find “our” grocery stores, “our” doctors, “our” dentists, … and all the knowledge that we take for granted when we live in an area for a long time. Not that there were none of these things, but I had to find the ones that fit us. I even had to get a new driver’s license and relive all the feelings I had the first time around as an 18-year-old. It is a funny feeling sitting in the car, waiting for the DMV guy, doubting your ability to drive a car even though you have over 30 years of driving experience.

This whole “move-to-a-foreign-country-experience” was exciting, fascinating, and sometimes frustrating. It changed me, and it opened my mind.

After the first year, we were almost settled and I started to peek outside my little box. With the settling came more time and the openness for new beginnings, and I rediscovered my old passion – creativity – the gifts and talents that God had given me.
I designed necklaces, bracelets, and earrings as presents, or for myself, I took my camera everywhere, because there were so many things I had never seen before, and I started to write again.

I truly believe that we are born to create. Creativity fills my heart with happiness; a happiness I want to share.

Our lives are fragile, they can be messy, bad things can happen, things can take a turn for the worse, but there is still so much beauty, as Anne Frank said.

I search for this beauty that is around me every day – beautiful landscapes, awesome animals, interesting faces, captivating people, and intriguing stories playing out in front of my eyes. On this website, I want to share it with you, my valued readers. I hope you enjoy my posts and get a glimpse of the beauty that is still around us!

Be Inspired

Over the last few years, photography and design have become my passion, I hone my skills by taking classes and participating in conferences, competitions, and challenges. I love it. I’ve learned a lot – not only about how to take pictures and design products, but also about the technicalities, and the little bits and pieces.
You can read about some of my photo adventures on the blog.

To see more pictures, please check out my Galleries

If you like my pictures, you can find even more on my Instagram Page anneroses_photography

Enjoy Reading

I’ve written stories all my life, but they all ended up in my drawer, and never saw the light of day again, let alone another pair of eyes. Then I found out about NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), a yearly challenge in November to write 50,000 words, the draft of a new novel so to speak. Having never heard of such a thing, I was hooked. The first time I saw the advertisement in 2012, I chickened out.

One of my inner voices (I have two of them, and they fight all the time) told me not even to think about bringing a new story into existence. ‘Who are you?’ it said, ‘you are surely not good enough.’ The other voice rooted for me, ‘You got this, you can do it, give it a try!’
Friends and family took the same stand. The next year I dared to try and wrote the first draft of my very first YA Sifi novel. I even wrote it in English (not my native language) and to my own surprise, I won the challenge and made some friends along the way.

Since then I have participated several times in NaNoWriMo and have written new drafts in November. One of them, Panther’s Head is in revision and I’m planning to publish it soon.
Other projects are journals, coffee table books, and photo books. Some of them feature inspirational pictures and quotes.
I also have written several short stories, and some of them were published over the years – you can find them and some design projects under “My Books“

I also dropped some stories on the blog.