Susanna Codes

Dancing into the new year  Quite literally. After dancing and singing I made it home - got a lift with two very nice ladies I met at the event - and now I’m thinking intentions/falling asleep I want to dance. I am lucky enough to have three dance classes a week in my style in Brighton. This is a total blessing and I want to attend all 3 weekly I want to meditate. The great gift of late 2025 was the return of my meditation practice I used to do a lot in my early to mid twenties. Having it back is a literal lifesaver. How did I wait so long? I want to do a related course. The more advanced level of this meditation practice (I did level one back in 2020 online in Colorado). It’s like £200 after a scholarship. I will have to find the money. Donations welcome  I want to do a special trip with my best friend in March I went to do a special solo meditation retreat in May I am going somewhere VERY VERY special on April (all will be revealed soon) And I am going to see my uncle in July...

Thunder Perfect Mind - „You who are waiting for me, take me to yourselves” There comes a moment in every woman’s life „when she must cry ‚freedom’” - Denise Linn said that. I read that when I was 13. I was only a little girl How could I understand? But I understand that now Me at 12 with my ripped and studded shorts and my bright green hat with a Metallica patch sewn on. With a Kurt cobain style open checked shirt at all times With my nirvana and led zeppelin T-shirts With my orange and black striped tights And best of all my orange spray painted fake doc martins that I picked up in Warsaw There will never be a cooler pre-teen than me  But then I had to grow up even faster than I already had done before. After anorexia I had a big awakening. I woke up to the feminine. The divine. The feminine that I would try and shut down again and again But it has come back to me The moon is mysterious And so is my life It’s time to heal. I will heal through my feeding your demons practice. I wil...

I find a place where I belong Reading Lama Tsultrim Allione’s account of Kathmandu, I am so moved by her accounts of how she found herself in the corner of a small Buddhist monastery and she felt a sense of belonging and there monks recognised her there with a sense of belonging too. I began to tear up a little bit in the train.  I wanted that kind of sense of belonging too. But I realised then that I do belong somewhere. I belong with renewable energy. When I see a pylon I belong. When I see a wind farm I belong I belong always and always with the renewable energy  Renewable energy is quite abstract and it is not a real place that I can go - or maybe is it - is it a place inside of me, inside of my heart? ❤️‍🔥 In any case there is a favourite place in Luxembourg in a village where I lived for 7 years where I can see the wind farms 

Why I Can’t Leave I am not like most of my friends outside of work. Most of my friends I have made in recent years are therapists or counsellors or mentors or work in mental health. A lot of my friends do very spiritual work. This is a good moment to remind myself that all work is spiritual when it is done with the right attitude. I am surrounded by dancers and dance teachers and a lot of very wonderful people who are support workers too - but I do something very different My two great inspirations are Gabrielle Roth, who developed my dance practise, and Lama Tsultrim Allione, who brought Tibetan Buddhist practices to the West and who created the meditation practice that I practise daily - adapted from an ancient Tibetan form of meditation (which I may learn one day too). Both mothers, both strong spiritual teachers who did the amazing and developed their own practices and pulled off the impossible And me? I am a software engineer. I work in renewable energy. I love my coding job. I fe...

I was in my new house placing daydreams I wrote a post a few days ago about getting really obsessed with my work and not putting myself first. It was a very personal post to share and I’m glad I did it. In between the countless people I had around me telling me how “lucky” I was at various points in my career was an unimaginable invisible amount of work. Not just working hard but working smart. Getting the most out of every available opportunity. Nothing can compare to when I got the late night train back from London with a principal engineer at a former company and quizzed him for 2 hours after a party in a cocktail bar and a pub. He was an amazing sport. As the train left London I asked “so what is software architecture?” I was very very new A transition like mine would have not been possible without obsession.  I did it very fast and if it doesn’t seem that way it’s because you don’t know how far away from software engineering my world was before I started this. Obsession was ok...

Thinking about first week of work in 2026 I am not supposed to be thinking about work on holiday and I get that however my mind is processing the crazy amount of learning I did in the last week. I have an unusual first week back. I am not focusing on a ticket per se. My lead is still scoping work and I have some very important learning work to do. One of my Frontend mentors gave me some incredible lessons about mocks and debugging tests. Now don’t laugh at me but I was never really taught mocks. Not properly. I obviously get the idea and I have used them before especially in backend. But learning them in frontend was quite different. The graphql returns a huge amount of data. And also I keep getting stuck on failing tests.  Now owing to the miracle where we all discovered that I love diagrams my mentor and I made some diagrams together. Then I set myself two tasks. Then she set me one more and that last one will be groundbreaking. This is the beginning of the rest of my career. It ...

Getting overwhelmed by all new plans This is such an embarrassing blog post but actually my blog post is the best tool for my memory. So here I am. Withstanding all the time, changes and seasons. Lots is going on and I am going home tomorrow. Going home can actually make things even more overwhelming and a slightly different setting can actually be a chance to take stock of everything that is going on. New journals  I got a new journal with stars on it for Christmas and I am gonna use it for tracking my meditation practice - I just finished my old one today. I also do use other journals here and there when I run out of the fancy ones I got a new navy blue moleskine planner for work - I will put in my appointments and things as well as an overview of each week I naughtily caved and ordered a moon planner - I will use it to track the seasons and the changes of the moon and to write down an overview of my meditation practice and/or this Tibetan healing video that I watch sometimes I g...

Crystallising one of the most beautiful days of my life  Today was so beautiful it almost breaks my heart. I like to keep this blog abstract and I should. I don’t want to over share about my day to day. Yes I share a lot of thoughts and emotions but most people don’t know what I am doing most of the time and that is a very good thing. And that is good for safety But I can’t resist sharing. Today was a beautiful day I went to Lincoln with some of my family. We went and visited the cathedral. I am in awe of its beauty. It was all so beautifully lit up on the outside as well. There were so many independent shops near the cathedral It was stunning We went to a favourite pizza place and I was starving cos it was quite late so that worked out well. Some of them went for a walk but I was too cold so I went into Waterstones and spent a beautiful 45 minutes choosing a book. 📕 in the end I got the amazing one on study skills by Tony Buzan - his mind maps for kids changed my life when I was ...

Why I have new found hope for my learning in 2026 and why I think everything could get better It has been incredibly hard for me from a learning perspective. Neurodiversity doesn’t quite do justice to describe the crazy level of uniqueness when it comes to my learning style and that can be very exhausting in this world. In fact after five years of working I’m only just beginning to breathe. Because work has been a lot harder than uni from a neurodivergent perspective - and uni has been an absolute nightmare. Basically if I am left to my own devices I can often make learning work for myself But what happens when I am not left alone? What happens when I have to work with others? What happens when I have to try and conform to another standard? I have passed the level where I can learn anything from a coding course (obviously new syntax and new tricks but not real professional skills). This is of course a great and massive honour But what do I do now? When learning real merge conflicts (no...

Why our mothers cook before long journeys Eastern European mothers and grandmothers do this for sure. I’m not sure about any other cultures? When you go on a journey They will cook a nice meal for you before They will pack you food for the journey They will give you food to take to your destinations Today, I understand why. After we all gathered at a relative’s for Christmas everybody left today except me. As my younger relative left I found myself really busy - I cooked a meal, I cooked her favourite dish for no reason as well as a side (I didn’t even know that I COULD cook it), I made some hot chocolate everyone after dinner and I made sure everyone had some snacks for the journey. This terrified me; I have never really had this side and I’m so glad that I do have it as it feels really healthy to have developed it after all (never a minute too late). I realised now why they do it too. It’s because you don’t feel so sad. Why sit around crying as they pack when you could be making a me...

How I got obsessed with my work and forgot that I was worthy of lots of love My journey into software was chaos. After a near perfect 18 months or so of coding in which the only real challenge was the somewhat rather inaccessible bootcamp that I did I got laid off suddenly. Then I came to a new job and I am not going to say anything more other than the environment wasn’t a match and there was a slight mismatch in levels and expectations  And because my work is meaningful to me and I love it I wasn’t going to let it go. And so in a year of that role (I was never meant to be a backend engineer anyway) and then moving over to Frontend I forgot I forgot that crying over your work wasn’t normal I forgot that if I was sitting on the sofa in my office having a panic attack That the priority wasn’t my code  It was me. Many weeks ago my mentor gave me a massive lecture at work saying that it was never worth getting as worked up as I was at that point and that I was always to ask for he...

The Witches Many years ago I did a walk with some people to commemorate the burning of women as witches. I don’t want to even imagine what they would have done to me back in those days. Or maybe I would’ve managed play along and hide all of my magic. That would be even worse  As we sat in the pub afterwards and I was so broke that I could just about order some chips with curry sauce (ah the student days) and one of my friends told me about the shell grotto in Margate. I don’t quite remember how but I made it there some days later. I think I walked around for ages before. I exhausted myself out and my most awful place I’ve ever had a seizure ended up being in the shell grotto. I made it up a flight of stairs from the cave to the museum at least although that was still below the ground. Looking back that flight of stairs I did climb probably cost me many tens of minutes of recovery time but I couldn’t bring myself to collapse in that beautiful place. I remember the paramedics and how...

SO WHY DON'T YOU TAKE ME DOWN, COME AWAY, COME OUT OF THE BLUES? Ending 2025's work on a slightly reflective note. I know a lot of people associate me with good vibes at work. I'm honoured. But first and foremost I am a technical person I AM A SOFTWARE ENGINEER. I might be a laughing, smiling, dancing, singing software engineer But I am a technical person. And therefore as a reminder to myself: I don't have to say yes to every request for a 1:1 or a coffee chat (I tried to do that and it exhausted me and distracted me) I don't have to do anything that is not my job e.g. participating in extra surveys or D&I work (just because I am an expert - I still prefer to CODE). 👩‍💻  I don't have to say sorry to anyone for my talent I GET TO TALK ABOUT MY WORK WITH AS MUCH PASSION AS A I WANT TO I GET TO BE AS BRILLIANT AS I CAN BE FOLLOW ME DOWN DEEP DOWN WHERE THE LOVE LIVES  MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM SUSANNA CODES 2025

The Only Song That Can Melt My Shallow Heart Something terrible has happened. I fear I have become a little bit dead inside. When did this happen???! This needs to be rectified immediately. I guess you can’t stay an innocent dreaming little teenager forever - or can you? I feel like I have become a jaded 30something (I am a 30something) and maybe it’s because I haven’t danced in a month I will not stand for this nonsense Only days ago I was throwing fake snowballs at everyone at my London office Christmas party and so it cannot be that bad and I ran a quiz for my team that made us laugh so hard other teams from the outside looked into our meeting room  And couldn’t figure out what was going on But still when did I learn to stop running and dancing in the forest? Tbf I haven’t even seen the forest since the summer… so sad  When did I stop believing in young love, when did I stop believing in love at first sight And most importantly of all when did I stop believing in magic and ...

All I want in the world is to dance again It’s been about a month since my last dance class and before then they were scattered. I was only ill for a few weeks but it’s left me so wiped out and so I’m doing the wise thing and recovering. I have a class on Sunday which I will almost certainly attend but it should be the only one before NYE. After that I’ll slowly hopefully go back to normal and look I won’t be greedy I won’t take dancing in Brighton for granted I’ll look out for workshops in London and Brighton if I can do them But I won’t go nuts and travel all across the UK for them this year I’ll not take my three beautiful dance classes a week in Brighton for granted Due to a long history of seizures I never took them for granted anyway but I could always appreciate them more  Thank you  Absolutely stunning isn’t it Because all I want to do is to dance dance dance but ironically that dream is so realistic for me so let’s seize it!!

Nothing can make me as happy as my diagrams can Nothing and I repeat nothing and I repeat nothing can make me as happy as my diagrams can.  To my miro boards I would like to say: marry me (I may regret saying this one day). Because everything is now a miro board and everything is now a flow chart And I could never follow through with processes before it took me years to learn them But now everything can become a process diagram Which I can easily enact on my own 

My Dream of Par Beach I get off the train at Par station or maybe I’ve slept there overnight in an Airbnb or something. I get on the bus or more likely I walk. As I dance more and more and as the barriers to being able to walk around outside freely dissolve so I can do the walk. I walk down to the beach.  It is absolutely empty. There is nobody there. Maybe it’s dawn or maybe the tourists haven’t found it yet But for some reason I am on my own Absolute peace Absolute silence  And I can just be  Not in Cornwall but in the Lake District  I doubt I’ll make it to Par this year. It’s calling me but how could I go? It would cost a lot of money, I tried to save for it but life is just too expensive these days

Give me more DIAGRAMS Seriously. I suffered through five years of my work. And then.  Bam. A plot twist. Diagrams make everything possible for me. My boss said to me today that she only wished we’d started making diagrams sooner. BAM. Diagrams I love them Need to make a decision tree? Diagrams. Need to learn the process for dealing with merge commits once and for all? MAKE A DIAGRAM. Need to learn all of the Vercel stuff  DIAGRAMS DIAGRAMS GIVE ME DIAGRAMS  GIVE ME MORE DIAGRAMS Phone booth inside of my hotel the other day

and the world thought I had it all but I was waiting for you How am I doing? Everything is threatening to overwhelm me thanks for asking. A trillion issues have come up all at once but bro I am not complaining I am always grateful when my issues come up it means they have been healing and issues are much worse when they are hidden When things have come up it means we can finally deal with them As I finally recover from 6+ weeks of flu and post viral symptoms I look forward to dancing again and to walking some more  I want to walk and I want to dance and then I eventually want to add back in yoga I really want to learn to make Tibetan cuisine too There is a book on my eye  Thanks bro Aight  All my demons have come up to greet me xx In all seriousness I am glad I have the techniques to help myself through times like these and to come out on the other side and to grow hopefully to grow on the other side and God if you are reading this I want to go back to Cornwall next year ...

The Miracle of Miro COME AT ME BRO. I love Miro and I recently discovered its miracle as a software engineer (I am ex-Product so knew its miracle then). It all started with my line manager. She asked me to make a decision making flowchart for certain scenarios. She really wanted me to do this. She asked me to prioritise it (for good reasons). With a clear calendar after the call I sat down to do my task. I loved it and it was brilliant. On our next call we made another miro board together for a different scenario and now my homework before my next call is to make one more. I immediately went: this is working well for me. I need to do this more. Now I have a technical mentor Who has been mentoring me all around but we recently have decided to go super technical  Today he taught me a process And I made a miro with every step of the process (still need to finish it off). Bam! I can refer back to this any time and I will also remodel how my brain works. Miros work 10,000x better for me...

The Reason I Don’t Give Up If you did one day and I mean one day in my brain and in my job with the barriers that I face you would quit your job. I have been working for almost five years. I’ve never had an easy day. Never had a day where I wasn’t out neurodivergent. And I’ve had days, but not months, that went by without someone judging me as special and sweet and cute and autistic (I am sweet and cute) (I am also an absolute powerhouse). There is a reason why I don’t give up as even now I am packing my bags to the Buddhist monastery in my head (you can’t join if you have debt and I have wayyy student debt). The reason I don’t give up is the people My GraphQL tutor who encourages me and believes in me every day. The lead engineer who devotes his time to me and who helps me to read docs etc. The other lead engineer who believes me me neverendingly The colleague who tells me to keep asking even if it’s a thousand times And the colleague who I told I was talented and who completely agree...

Hey Kitty, now I make my money being pretty and witty Hey, thank you for the lovely bouquet. There is something really special and beautiful that I am meant to contribute to the world. My divine destiny. It is delicate like a snowflake. That is why I keep on going with everything. This is why I never give up. Today one of my loveliest and most favouritest software engineering mentors  Did something that no one has ever done for me before. We looked at the documentation together and figured out why I couldn’t read it. And then we came up with a strategy for me to read it. And then we said we’d come up with a strategy or a framework for how I approach all other documentation in the future. What a beautiful day. To be actually listened to like this No one has ever taken the time to sit down with me and try to figure out why I can’t read things before  I am a double master of science. I transitioned from customer services to product to engineering within much less than a year. I d...

Magnet ❤️‍🔥 Today something really horrible happened to me. I was leaving my office quietly and then a man barged through the barriers behind me (tailgating me, without his own pass) and got up really really close to me and came up right behind me. He said „sneaking past, sneaking past” but I barely heard it but that was the only warning I had before he was basically pressing up against me and so on. I almost passed out because this is one of my greatest triggers and a colleague had to drive me home. Why am I talking about this? Because why would I not talk about this. I had to wait for a while with my head spinning and the world spinning sprawled up against a wall and in that moment or maybe it was after someone had firmly pulled me onto the bench I thought I did everything right I did everything right I did everything right I learned JavaScript I learned Python I learned react I organise my calendar every day like a madwoman And it’s still not enough It’s still not enough It’s still...

“Take me to yourselves, and do not banish me from your sight” One of my favourite poems was discovered in a cave in Egypt in 1945 along with many other manuscripts. Thunder perfect mind. I didn’t get it the first time. I have been addicted ever since I just still can’t stop listening to it omg. You want the Samaneri Jayasara version though on YouTube - the other ones feel strange. I have so much on my mind and I can’t sleep. So much happened today I raised a pr today but it was in the last minute and before a work social and that is because I had to do some family stuff unexpectedly this afternoon I am meant to be colour coding my calendar to make it easier to understand at a glance where I am spending all of my time - realised I can add tags to colours - nice I am still writing a Christmas quiz for the team and need to chase one or two questions from people I need to process the steps on four different tickets including qa process although one of the four is nearly done I am doing som...

We discussed something called compromise, a brand new concept that I never tried  I am not always a software engineer. I really really care about my work more than anything. My wonderful manager told me today that my frustration is a good asset and that it will be what sees me through it. Frustration means I care. What a beautiful and lovely thing to say. I have resolved to work more closely on problem solving with my mentors. And someone on my team seems quite keen to throw me into the deep end - arrrgh. But only in a good way though - the boat is going to be nearby But all of this is happening On the backdrop of being a real life person as well With traumas With needs  With very real things I need to attend to  The daily, the practical The mundane And sometimes I wonder How did I cram it all into my life Anyway thanks bye bye  Bye