Susanna Codes

Amplifying Women’s Voices Sometimes I wonder if I am writing too much. Then I hear what is happening to women's voices around the world. And I write more. So what do I have to say. Not very much write now. Software engineering is hard. Investigating components is hard. Remembering which way your props are flowing in is very important. I will never ever ever forget that props flow down. Remembering that your React props flow down into your nested component is very important. Trying to understand your props when you think that your props are flowing upward is a glass mountain I never wanted to climb. Women have important voices and tell beautiful stories. When you try to silence women you silence the world. And as a neurodivergent woman I know very, very, very well what it means to have my voice taken away from me. And so I will never stop saying I love software engineering I live for the renewable energy React is hard Software engineering is hard One day all of this will click One d...

Confidence Yesterday I built out some stuff in React. And I got very happy and excited when it worked. My mentor said to me:  “why are you so surprised to see your components there. You’ve built some React and it’s working. It’s normal.” That’s when I realised how bad my self confidence was as a software engineer. I’m not talking about my self confidence on the dance floor - that is about 23 trillion. I’m not talking about my self confidence to stand up and talk in a room full of people - that is about 10 thousand too. No I’m talking about my self confidence as a software engineer. Because that is zero. Let’s be real  I’ve written almost 1000 posts on this blog. I’ve worked across teams. I’ve built out AI features. I’ve changed UIs that thousands of people will use. I’ve done more interactive rebases than I will ever count. I’ve approved code across repos. I’ve posted on software engineering LinkedIn 22 million times And yes. I know what really matters. Taking on tickets. Deli...

Believing That I Deserve To Be Here This is a quick lunchtime blog post. I don't want to make any apologies or excuses. I want to reflect on the fact that I deserve to be here. What are the steps I took to get here? I studied two masters degrees in renewable energy. I got a first job in renewable energy - that was very very hard - against the odds. I worked for over a year in a very very hard job that was not suited to me just to stay in the industry and to contribute. After a year I got hired into product based on my knowledge, passion and research skills. As I was making that transition people began to talk to me about coding. So I followed those leads. And then began a crazy 3 year journey.  First I taught myself to code. A lot of this was evenings and weekends. As well as some learning and development time at work. I was obsessed; I couldn't stop. Then I began to blog about this every day and post on LinkedIn. Kind of like I still do now. Then some more things happened: I g...

Why do I write about anything other than how much I love renewable energy Night sets in. My dinner is made and I have enough for tomorrow too. A year ago I wouldn’t have recognised myself. When I was working twelve hour days and learning python every waking minute. But here I am now. Life is so much better and so much easier. And I have to ask myself now: why do I write about anything other than how much I love renewable energy. Because when I see a pylon Most of the time. All I can feel is that. The great oneness of the world. The great oneness of the universe. I understand now the struggle of all great artists  To put into form the formless. To put into words the wordless Because that is how I feel about renewable energy Thank you 

Across the time and space, the electricity will find me I had a rubbish time this evening. And then a miracle happened. A friend I hadn’t spoken to for years sent me a video. It was a video of some pylons And electricity wires in France as she rode along the motorway. At sunset. It was divine. I set it to some electricity music (I have a list of songs) and I put it on Instagram. Day made. Evening made. Renewable energy is the love of my life. Everything good and beautiful that I have in my life comes from renewable energy. I love what I do so much. I love what I am so much. I love what I have become so much. Because I became a software engineer by following renewable energy. And I met all of my friends and colleagues whom I love by working in renewable energy. And maybe the most of all. I find structure and joy in what I do and in the work that I love. I find the support in people around me. And best of all I finally have the funds to self finance my healing journey. And that’s very ve...

“The Mistakes of a Night” The mistakes of a night is another name for a play called she stoops to conquer. Someone wrote it. No idea who. Googling is too much effort. Anyone help me out? Tomorrow I have not one but two appointments I am extremely nervous about. Especially one of them. In the past especially when I was a young university student I would cope with this kind of stress in less than stellar ways. But at least I made it through. As a “responsible adult” of 31 I need better ways to cope. So tonight’s plan is simple. I am making some blueberry tea. It has special significance to me because I stole it from the tea stack at my Lake District dance workshop (only one tea bag). I’m so glad I did. May it carry me through this difficult night. It will bring me the strength of my dance teacher and of the group and of the Lake District and of the elements and of beautiful borrowdale - I hope. And I have a nice book. Why go crazy and use hardcore coping mechanisms (nothing that bad I pr...

Every day I go… “Above and Beyond” Above and Beyond are one of my favourite electronic music artists.  They have a song called “Surge”. That song is exactly what a power station sounds like. That song is exactly like what it feels like to drive among the pylons as they come out of a power station. That song is exactly what it feels like to be in the flow of electricity, flowing around and curling around, lightning fast, and FULL OF POWER. Because I came into this industry for a reason. I CAME INTO THIS INDUSTRY FOR A REASON. And  every time I get down. EVERY TIME I GET DOWN I only have to look out to sea and see a wind farm And it’s all okay again. I only have to look out to the sea and see a wind farm And everything is okay again. All is right as rain in the world  So how do I go above and beyond every day? Well today I am focusing on narration. And overall at the moment I am focusing on narration. As this seems to be my saving grace and my redemption arc in software eng...

“Loving you was really hard” This is a Lana del Rey quote. It was from a song about Jim Morrison. But it’s sometimes the way I feel about my work. I don’t know what on earth happened. My head is sometimes still spinning from a decision I made three years ago. It wasn’t a decision. I wanted to ignore it. But it wouldn’t go away. It was so insistent. I had to do it. My first 18 months were a high. A permanent high. I wish everyone would feel like that at least once in their lifetimes. I guess it’s what falling in love must feel like. I don’t know. Reality came crashing in almost exactly 18 months in. Then the next eighteen months were really hard. And then things have perhaps levelled out. However I feel so tired. There is a level of tiredness that I can’t get over. It’s a great lesson to never overwork. But I also need to balance my life more. I’ve been running. I can’t stop. I can’t stop. If you read my last blog post then you’ll know that I’m doing a lot of healing stuff. And this beg...

Five Things That Are Healing Me Right Now It’s the middle of the night and I’m listening to beautiful Sanskrit mantras. Lately I’m obsessed with Sanskrit mantras.  I have always been into them but it’s definitely taken off a lot recently. Good. So here are five things that are really healing me. Sorry I am going to have to be vague. If you work with me or actually know me and you would like to know more then please do reach out to me. I would be more than happy to tell you Working with a private doctor. I have a really amazing private doctor. I am speaking to him on next Tuesday. He is always really amazing at coming up with solutions. Thank you I am starting private trauma informed yoga. I need to do it alone at this moment. Maybe when it gets easier I’ll do it in a group. Trauma informed yoga helps survivors of extreme trauma to make choices. Choices that were taken away from us at the time - we learn that we can once again be in control of our bodies I don’t want to say too much...

How It Feels To Be At One With The Pylons Cambridge, March 2024. I was supposed to have my final interview with the VP Engineering of another tech company. But he was ill. Dressed up and full of adrenaline I hopped on the train instead. I will never forget this day. There happened to be a seminar on AI in renewable energy that day. I just made it. Just made the train. Just made the bus. Didn’t know about the seminar til I was on the train. I hadn’t packed for a trip so all I had was my ancient Egyptian goddess journal. I was wearing crap shoes and an interview outfit. At this stage I was getting worried about my redundancy money. It was really running out. I was worried about a lot of other things too. I was trying to do a cleanse but I ended up having a bubble tea and Thai food (probably for the best). I went to a book shop and got a book but made the wrong choice. (I still regret it til this day!). I also went to the museum of computer science history. I imagined my face among the ma...

Narration I took a sick day today. It was for the best. I kept falling asleep. I even missed my dance class. But after some sleep and a gentle walk and some food I feel a bit better so let’s see how I am tomorrow. Nevertheless my brain can’t switch off. My brain is processing something really big. Narration. The narration around my work! The narration around my software. I can’t stop thinking about it. How I narrate when I write a ticket. I narrate when I write a verbose git commit. I narrate when I leave comments for myself on my own stories. I also narrate when I give an update in standup. How could I do that a bit better? I could give  bit more context eg “I am working on adding a button for the X,Y,Z. My next steps are…” I noticed that the best leaders keep it not too technical. They just say what they are going to do. Where else could I add narration into my work? Well I still think I could do more around how do I write my PR descriptions  P.s. I guess that some of my nar...

Another day of putting absolutely everything into it I don't know everything but I can say one thing for sure: I put absolutely everything into my work. And I love it so much. I love having the opportunity to put in absolutely everything every single day. I wouldn't have it any other way. That's why I work from an office; I am so much more focused and productive like this. Here are some of the amazing things that I did today: Raised a PR for something that I did today and put it out for review Got a lesson on how to handle some merge conflicts (VSCode specific) Paired with a mentor on how to solve an existing problem Wrote up a really nice summary of what we learned with her and what my next goals were Pushed my code with my comments in it to my self to git hub and wrote out the next steps for myself Thank you!!!

Dancing through the Exhaustion Real life is exhausting. I’ll tell you that much. Work is hard. Cooking is hard. Living alone is hard or at least being a unit of one - washing, cooking and cleaning for yourself with no one to split it with sometimes. It’s hard right? But I love to dance. Sometimes we want life to be perfect. Half an hour of dance before work every day. I wish. In my dreams. But this evening I was in my kitchen and collapsed on the sofa have made so much food and etc. But then a song came on and I let myself dance. Every time I let myself dance I am amazed. My body wants to tell a story. My hips want to tell a story. All of those parts of myself I trapped  They all want to tell a story And when I dance  I express what I am I am the whole universe  Thank you 

When All Is Said And Done I had a great day today. I worked on Jira tasks. I wrote a parent ticket and I scoped four child tickets which ended up being five. I love being given the power to write my own tickets. I can write them really clearly and accessibly for myself. I can also see how difficult it can be and appreciate the efforts that my ticket writers put into writing theirs.  But as I always have said - giving me more power, and more responsibility - can make things easier for me. This is often the case for people with ADHD. We just need to be trusted. And believed in. And so on. And so by giving me the power to write my own tickets - I am already halfway there to understanding them. As so much of my work goes into processing and breaking down tickets. Like this, I feel empowered. I have written my own ticket (with help from someone explaining the issue). I have written user stories on the parent ticket and acceptance criteria and use cases on the child tickets.  Strong...

In the Nighttime We Are Found I found another staff engineer book today. It looked so fascinating. I picked it up. I have another great staff engineering book at home as well which I still need to read. In a world where I find all books boring and where I can only read children’s fiction - I find staff engineering books fascinating. The topics speak to me so much.  So I should probably read them. I can never give up on my dream. It’s been my dream for such a long time now. One summer in Brighton I had a really bad seizure. Got me down to no end. And then I thought of one of my amazing staff engineering friends - such a beautiful kind kind person whom I aspire to be like and love so much. Someone from an old company. I thought “would I have been as sad as this if I had been him.” And I had decided probably not. I don’t know why it has been my dream to be a staff engineer but it always is Follow your dreams as they are whispers from the universe 

In London, My Favourite Friend Comes To Call I don’t know what it is about London that just makes me think about Alan Turing. Suddenly, I can feel him close to me again. I don’t know what it is. Is it all the times I got the train from here up to Bletchley park? Is it that I am nearer to Bletchley than when I am in Brighton? Or is it all the times that Turing would’ve been down here himself - am I feeling the lingering ghosts of his presence in the city. Or maybe: When my work was at its hardest and I shudder to think of this when I was the most out of my depth then I was coming up to London a lot. And the only thing that got me through all of that hard time was Alan Turing. I’ll repeat it and I mean it seriously: people ask me what got me through the toughest year of my life. My love for renewable energy. And Alan Turing. Obviously. My love for Alan Turing got me through the year when I worked seven days a week and for twelve hours a day. Never again I am very much still recovering. I...

The Places You Take Me To At 4 am I have to conclude: I am not allowed to drink any more cups of caffeinated tea in the evening. It was a terrible mistake. Nobody ever believes me when I tell them how hypersensitive I am.  Yet here we are now. There are too many things going through my head at once. I watched the film materialists and I am in love with the soundtrack. There is just something so incredibly healing about the soundtrack and some of the restaurants they film in. And the fairy lights in the wedding they crash at the end. Materialists as a film seems too good to be true. The unconditional love he has for her at the end is a great lesson though To be unconditionally loving of everything. Of nights spent awake, the night before an extremely intense dance workshop starts, AND a trip to London begins, due to an overly strong cup of black tea (it could’ve been the black chocolate too). Of longings Deansgate, Manchester by night from 2 weeks ago

A Light in the Absolute Darkness I was having the worst night ever. I could not sleep I was absolutely in pain. And then a miracle - I remembered my favourite luxembourgish folk music band. And I decided to check if they were on Spotify. And lo and behold they are. They recorded two albums - one from 1992 and one from 1975. Both before I was born. Now let me make one thing very clear. I absolutely love Luxembourg. I am so so proud to be Luxembourgish. And I never feel more loved and held by nature anywhere than I do by the nature in Luxembourg. It is my home. It is my place. It is where I am from. And much as I love my life in the uk. Much as I belong here. I always always miss my nature back in Luxembourg. As this is where I am from Anyway so I can now dance to these folk songs and add them to my playlists. And this will help me to heal I am sure. Because Luxembourg is where I am from I looked up the Luxembourgish folk music to help me to connect to these magical lands back when I was...

How Life Looks Like On The Other Side Of The Greatest Adventure Of My Life I get it now. Now I understand solo travellers. Solo women travellers, and otherwise. The magic of what I went through in the last two weeks is unrivalled. And I am struggling. To be honest. I am struggling, I am having a major comedown. I somehow made it through my first day at home. Ironically I am back on the road tomorrow going up to London for a couple of nights. I am also starting an epic new dance workshop tomorrow spread across six months. So it’s hardly really a comedown is it. But it feels this way. Getting back to ordinary life. Back to cooking (although to be fair I cooked a fair bit while I was away). Getting back to working. How could anything ever really feel exciting again? But then again how could anything not feel exciting? I will never forget how it felt to arrive at a magical youth hostel in the middle of nowhere with wooden interiors. Never forget how it felt to dance with the Cumbrian Earth...

The Long Walk To The Middle of Nowhere  Little old me. I channeled my Eastern European roots. I cooked up a bunch of Polish cuisine dishes. It’s never too late to be who you might have become. Susanna, the software engineer. Also now cooking green beans too. And kasza and cebula and pomidor pokrojony all combined with Turkish marrow and tofu and Italian spicy aubergines. If I can cook a meal like this then there is hope for everyone yet. I even boiled some potatoes and now I have enough for the next three meals. I can’t believe  That I have been to Fletcher Moss park again. That I hiked to the middle of nowhere. That I came to an unknown part of the woods. That I found a hidden building. That I sat there and I healed and I cried. I can’t believe any of it. I don’t know who I am anymore. I have changed so much And it breaks my heart. How can I be here at home on my own. Because I don’t know who I am.  I don’t know who I am after I danced for five days in the Lake District....

I Wanna Know What Love Is A life-changing adventure  I came back from my travels overrun by every emotion in the world. I have never felt so many emotions in my life before all at once and that is saying something. From the way it felt to go back to Fletcher Moss park to let it heal me. Shortly after I wrote my blog post in fletcher moss park I got really unwell and I found myself on the floor of a gp surgery, recovering. At least there was a gp surgery there I suppose. To how I went up to the Lake District on the same day. Pretty crazy, huh. There were two men working at the youth hostel at the bus stop at the middle of nowhere with me. They helped me with my case and they took me to the hostel. Life savers. The way it felt to see those beautiful green hills. I mean I just hadn’t expected to see anything so beautiful. I mean wow. Oh my God. I was enveloped in those beautiful green hills immediately. I was held by them and healed by them. Dancing I felt love immediately. I loved my...

A Place That Promises That It Can, But Not Only That It Can, But That It Will, Heal You I got home to my room after almost two weeks on the road and the have never been happier to see ANYWHERE in my life. My giant purple dragon Harmony waiting for me on the bed. My new orange blanket. My Tibetan prayer flags. I missed home. Even walking down from the station I realised I loved it here. It’s not the Lake District but it’s home. And I love the pylons round here and the openness. For the last 9 nights I have shared - the youth hostel in Manchester where a girl woke me up in the middle of the night and I started screaming (long story), the youth hostel in the middle of nowhere in the Lake District where I made friends with all the staff, and two nights with my dear friend in her bed. The concept of having my own room and my own bed seems like the ultimate luxury. I have been sitting on this post for a while. When I was 23 my mum ordered herself a book on yoga to my place. I stole it and ma...

The Compassion That Only I Can Give To Myself I’m here in my favourite park in Manchester. Fletcher Moss Park. I came here once and begged for healing when I was 25 years old. But more importantly my mum once brought me here for treatment to a private clinic when I was seriously ill at 13. And I never knew the link between the times. I’ve been coming back here ever since. I came here once for my 27 birthday. I came here when I got fired. I came here when I got my new job. And I’m here now. And finally the healing that I begged for is here. It is within reach.  I can feel the compassion that I always needed. I searched and searched for compassion in other people. But I was the one who really needed to give it to myself. Because only I know what I went through. Only I was there. And so now I give it to myself freely. This compassion. I can give it to myself freely. I have to run. I have lots of trees to hug. Because feeling pain and feeling grief is hard. Opening my heart is harder. ...

The Dream and the Broken Fantasy, At The Natural History Museum Earlier this year I went to the natural history museum in London. I’d stayed overnight in London; I think I was singing and chanting at Kirthan the night before. I then went to an ecstatic dance class - not my thing, which surprised everyone. The dancing I do, 5 rhythms, though freestyle, has much more structure. That’s me then.  Freedom and structure. I need a bit of both.  I’m currently reading this book by Jacqueline Wilson and I’m crying my eyes out. Picture Imperfect. That woman just gets better and better. After ecstatic dance I made a new friend who mysteriously was travelling to the area right by the museum. We got the bus and then she paid for uber across London when the bus was too slow. It was nuts. I felt like a millionaire. Then I went to the museum. I don’t remember much. Like most of the museum trips I spent the whole time trying not to pass out. Museums always make me seize/collapse/whatever. I alm...

Once Again: the Bigger Picture Something compels me to keep on writing. I want to chill but there’s just work stuff I need to process. Like: one of my favourite colleagues taught me how to do git commit verbose. And now my whole life has changed. I can do verbose commits. I can write. Can’t you tell I love to write? Writing my narrative has set me free. It has given me wings. Writing is my liberation Writing comments on my own PRs to write down what my next steps are Writing comments on my own PRs asking myself questions Answering my own questions on those comments Writing great verbose commit messages Writing not only great titles but great pr descriptions  PR descriptions are the world They have been saving my life Thank you AND MORE IS BETTER! Finally someone likes my verbose descriptions thank you