About me

My name is Olle (he/him). You can also call me Ollie if the Swedish pronunciation trips you up.

I'm a psychology resident practising cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) in Stockholm. When I'm not working with clients, I tinker with websites, nerd out with friends, and jog around town or lift weights at the gym.

In my line of work, we love a good test. But tests only tell half the story.

Mine says I'm curious, reliable, and friendly. That's fair enough, but it leaves out the best parts:

I will spend an entire evening nudging fonts on a Bear blog theme just to get it right.
I bake carrot cake with way too much cream cheese icing.
I am a (very) amateurish breakdancer who likes to take a spin to shake off the work week.
And I am an unapologetic Hufflepuff.

Who am I?

The short answer: a left-handed, 37-year-old Swedish therapist-in-training.

The longer answer is simply what fills my days:

I journal daily, switching between my paper notebook and Obsidian.
My favourite colour is purple, and my pencil of choice is the Faber-Castell Grip 0.7 (more on that in my favourite things).
My best hour is early morning: a quiet sofa, a book, and a warm cup of Queen Anne tea or coffee.
I nerd out on board games with friends (Traitors, Hint, and Pictionary). My drawings of lobsters are ~~terrific~~ terrible, but I draw them anyway for the laughs.
My sister helped me design a creative signature, which I still use with pride in my journal and on birthday cards.

Writing & books

Writing is how I make sense of the world. I have been at it for fifteen years, published three books, run a free blog, and still learn something new every time I sit down at the keyboard.

If you're new here, you might want to start with a few of my favourite essays:

Languages

I grew up in Sweden with Swedish parents. At age twelve, I moved to an international school, which left me with lifelong friends and a curious mix of accents.

British spelling was drilled into my head by my fifth-grade teacher, Bette, who insisted that "colour is spelt with a u!" I kept the "u", along with a preference for double quotation marks on web pages because they simply look better on the screen.

English let me stretch beyond the Law of Jante, while keeping an appreciation for lagom—the Swedish art of just enough.

After school, I lived with a host family in Barcelona for six months, then headed to Melbourne. Australia taught me about baby koalas, bogans, and gave me an Aussie twang that lingered for years.

Today, I speak Swedish and English fluently, and get by in Spanish, Norwegian, and (written) Danish. If you want more, check out my Languages page. (Ask me in person for my Harry Potter impression.)

A few things I care about

A character test once told me my top strengths are Zest, Love of Learning, Kindness, Curiosity, and Gratitude (I wrote about zest and my core values here).

In plain English, that mostly means:

Choosing kindness: Everyone is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Life is noisy; being gentle with people is almost always the right call.
Staying curious: I never want to stop learning new things, from brain science to simple CSS tricks and everything in between.
Loving animals: I'm a dog person at heart, but I will stop on the street for any friendly cat. (And after living in Australia, I am convinced the platypus is one of the coolest creatures alive.)
Keeping the footprint small: My dad taught me to care about our planet early on. This site scores an A+ on Website Carbon.
Putting people before machines: A slide from an old 1979 IBM presentation put it best: "A computer can never be held accountable, therefore a computer should never make a management decision." Still holds up.

Say hello

I love to hear from readers. Have a thought on an essay, a book recommendation, a suggestion for the site, or a killer carrot cake recipe to share? I'd love to hear it.

Send me an email, or leave a note on Letterbird. Both land directly in my inbox. I look forward to hearing from you!

You made it to the end

Look at you go! Thanks for reading this far.

Here is a quick clip that never fails to make me smile:

Snape puppet from Potter Puppet Pals nodding to the mysterious ticking noise.

(Snape from Neil Cicierega's classic Potter Puppet Pals)