An Ode to 2024: Everything I Do, I Do It For You (My Passion. My Mission. My Drive.).

Okay yeah sometimes it happens. You lose your dream job and leaving behind renewable energy hurts you so much you take 11 months to process it. Except you don’t leave renewable energy. You leave a training role for a legit role. You learn beginners Python in 10 days. You learn some Django. You travel to London multiple times to make the good impression.

You sort of realise that you have been hired to a backend role. You sort of don’t realise that the role was more senior than what you thought. You upskill like crazy for the next 8 months.

Because you are autistic this can take a while to show. It can take months for the results to break through to the surface.

You have the best manager in the world who is kind and really really supportive. Even so it’s so hard for the results to break through

You finish a huge Python course. It’s so hard and there is so much to cram in while working - but you still manage to do it and consolidate it all…

You finally got told in a 1:1 while you are really ill and shouldn’t be working (working remotely at my insistence) that your biggest problem is problem solving (and later you get told autonomy and independence too).

You needed something literal like this and you do

• 5-7 intense 1:1’s with your amazing manager
• An intense weekend of research
• Fill out a gigantic sketchpad
• Make 5 posters for your wall, 2 A4 and 3 A1!!!
• Listen to a podcast twice 💞 (and I) only listen to one podcast episode a year lol)
• Watch the same YouTube videos multiple times even though I never do that/really focus in on those videos 
• Rewatch all of those calls with your boss cos we record them
• Write 20 blog posts on the topic

You meet with your director and he takes you for a walk under the internet tower and he buys you a coffee and a cake and this doesn’t feel like the end…

You take away your problem solving skills and you realise you can do them. You take away your problem solving skills and you realise you can solve them on your own.

You realise you can replicate the process of your technical test. You realise that it’s not over yet. You have a printed out course on debugging and you have to decide whether you need a 100% break over a Christmas or whether doing some more debugging training now will benefit you later. As my mum says, they both have good sides…

I have so much more to give

I can be so much better

I can be so brilliant

Thank you