To become a blogger………..

I have always wanted to be a journalist. Since I was a little girl, I loved to tell stories and thought my way of telling a story was so interesting. But this dream didn’t last long before my school assignments and test results told me that my grammar… sucked. I never add an “s” correctly to my verb. Honestly, I still don’t! But these days, I can run it through a chatbot and ask Phillip to check it for me. (And yes, I named my chatbot buddy, don’t you, too?) My sentences are equally disastrous. I concluded that my writing was absolutely disgusting, and there was decidedly no hope of becoming a journalist.

On the other hand, I was “told” by my school report card that I excel at mathematics – ironically, I have 3 sisters, and all of them suck at Maths at varying levels – slightly, moderately and absolutely. Funny enough that one of them ended up having a career as an accountant – time to panic! And all of them are experts at calculating the best discount option at a store in their head faster than I can pull out my calculator! So, STEM soon became my identity. In a family of five siblings, it’s kind of crucial to find a way to differentiate myself if I wanted my mum to have a reason to mention me to our extended family. And it is therefore I pursued science, not language, and studied engineering in university.

As my life continues, communication began to play a key role. My job relies on me articulating technically complex ideas into simple pitches. (More on that in “Work as a Green Collar.”) I also became a mother of two boys, and winning an argument on a daily basis demands wit and grit. I figured out I was pretty good at it – or so my colleagues tell me. (My sons are a tougher crowd – they would prefer to win, so no encouragement from there.) One colleague even suggested that if I ever quit my day job, I could consider a career as a stand-up comedian.

But, most importantly, I married a man of books – lots of books. (More about him in “A Man Called Olli.”) I already liked to read books before I met him. Since we married, my reading level and my speed of devouring books have increased so dramatically that I secretly need to budget how much I am allowed to spend on books. The more I read, the more I realised that, as a reader, I couldn’t care less if the writer’s grammar is perfect or if their sentences are elegant. All I care about is whether I want to flip the page or, well, put the book down. This is when the idea of writing started brewing in my stomach again. I thought: if I could keep you scrolling, maybe, just maybe, I could call myself a writer one day.

So, what is this blog about? I will share it with you in next post!!