How I Wanted My Childhood to Be

Growing up I wanted to be Pippi Longstocking. Who wouldn’t want to be the little girl stronger than ten men? She didn’t have to do anything she didn’t want to do and she wasn’t afraid of anything.

She was my first hero. And she got around by flying on some sort of goose.

How It Really Was

I grew up in a small northern Canadian mining town of about 2000 people where I *gasp* didn’t quite fit in.

Because I didn’t have many friends, I read books. A lot of books. I lost myself in the worlds created by talented authors.  One of which was, Astrid Lingren’s Pipi Longstocking.

This discovery, at such a young age, began my lifelong love affair with reading imaginative stories set in fantastical worlds. This love grew to encompass the act of creating my own story lines about characters I’d love to meet if I were dropped into a world of dragons.

Real ones, not these kind:

But instead of following my dream of becoming a writer, I became a chemical engineer with a specialization in environmental engineering — now the ‘not fitting in’ part becomes abundantly clear, doesn’t it? So I spend my days trying to keep rivers clean while keeping to a project budget.