
For most of 2021, I felt defeated as a disabled woman in tech. Sexism and ableism were in every part of my life at a level I'd not experienced before. I'm very used to seeing both on the internet, but even that became too much. [In a job I held for most of the year, I suffered pay discrimination, biased treatment, and sexual harassment](https://ashleemboyer.com/blog/speaking-my-truth). When I escaped that situation, I knew I'd have a lot of healing ahead of me but I had no idea how much.

One thing I've learned about what I went through is that far more people than I thought have a similar experience. What we went through may not have been very similar, but the effect of the trauma was. I think it has something to do with being in a survival mode, where all you can really think about and focus on is making it through. I think this is also a reason it can take so long to fully realize we're in traumatic situations.

As soon as we're out of immediate danger, the full gravity of a the situation can set in. We can slow down and think about what happened because we're in a place that is safer than before. In the first several weeks of my job I currently hold, I was anxious _all of the time_. The list of things contributing to that is long, but here are a few things that are top of mind:

- **Pressure to do well in a new job at a well-known company in the industry I work in.** I would consider this a normal pressure of being a working person.
- **Waiting for the other shoe to drop, because it always has.** If you don't know what this phrase means, I think [the explanation on gothamist.com](https://gothamist.com/arts-entertainment/the-phrase-waiting-for-the-other-shoe-to-drop-was-born-in-nyc) is good.
- **Expecting toxic behavior and having a guard up ready to protect myself.** In the past, I've been called names, gaslit about facts clearly backed by documentation and timestamps, bullied into changing my mind (or caving into pressure, rather), severely under-leveled and underpaid, held to different and unexplained standards than men on my team, not taken seriously when reporting issues, ignored in team channels whether asking for help or proposing a discussion, and more. These things didn't just happen at my previous job, they've happened in many places. But the level of toxicity in that environment is the highest I've experienced.

---

I've seen the same therapist since right before the pandemic started. We have talked _**endlessly**_ about the occupational dimension of wellness. We've talked about it so much, we also talk about overwhelming that dimension has been for me over the years.

> Skipping ahead in my story a tiny bit, we joked last time we spoke that we have nothing to talk about now since my work stress is very low now.

When I told my therapist about the struggles I was having, where I felt anxious immediately after sending messages in team channels, was spending a lot of time figuring out how to word messages in what should be easy conversations, she asked me if I'd heard of Brené Brown's marble jar metaphor. You can see her explain the metaphor [in a talk on her website](https://brenebrown.com/videos/anatomy-trust-video/), but the gist is this: when people do even the smallest thing that improves your trust in them, it counts as a marble towards the marble jar. The more the jar fills up with marbles, the more you trust them.

The lesson is that trust is built over time with seemingly small and insignificant moments. After taking some time to think and process the metaphor, I decided I wanted to make rebuilding trust a prioritized and visual experience. So I decided to get a jar but fill it with buttons instead of marbles. Dropping a marble in the jar would've been too noisy of an experience, and this endeavor could double as a cute and fun button-collecting journey. I picked up some regular-sized colorful buttons and some much larger diamond-looking buttons. I designated the extra special buttons for trust-building moments that made me feel incredibly valued and grateful.

---

So far, this experience has been exactly what I need. Looking for all the good in my days had a similar effect to gratitude journals, I assume. I am looking more towards the good things than the bad, but not in a way that subscribes to toxic positivity. I'm still keenly aware that some bad things might happen, but I'm not expecting them to. I'm retraining my brain to look at situations in a more balanced and healthy way.

Examples of moments that are button jar worthy:

- **Getting thanked for vulnerability from multiple managers on my team.** Many of my previous experiences involve being told that I'm too emotional. Vulnerability has been the main thing that's brought me closer to the majority of people I know, so it's a relief to know that vulnerability is so valued.
- **Teammates engaging in discussions I start, and doing so in genuine and authentic ways.** In previous experiences, I've often gotten silence or dismissive responses. When teammates engage kindly and with interest, it shows we have a mutual goal to learn together and teach one another.
- **Getting asked questions about accessibility.** This is the first time I've been asked about accessibility regularly at work. It is so refreshing to be asked questions about my area of focus that is so deeply personal to me as a disabled person.
- **Having normal conversations in code review.** Code review is one area that I have a hard time in because in my experience, they either weren't a part of the development process or they weren't done in healthy ways with the right intentions. Seeing teammates regularly give each other compliments, share resources, discuss pros and cons, and being treated with all of that same kindness... it's hard to describe how valued it makes me feel.

To add to the very last point, I even found myself putting buttons in the jar for things that had nothing to do with me directly. Seeing teammates treat each other with kindness and respect showed me how they would likely treat me as well.

---

In the new year, I plan to keep doing what I'm doing. I don't really subscribe to annual resolutions. I'll do this until it's not valuable for me anymore, which I hope is far off because I'm excited to see the jar fill up with buttons and become a really beautiful item on my desk. I want it to be a constant visual reminder of how far I've come on this journey to healing.


Workplace trauma broke my trust. I'm working to rebuild it.

What a Jar of Buttons Is Teaching Me About Trust


## In General

2021 was a difficult year, but I'm so grateful I was able to end it with a new job on a healthy team and a lot of space away from projects and social media to reflect. I'm looking forward to approaching 2022 and my projects in healthier ways.

## Posts Published

I didn't get to publish as many posts as I wanted to, but I still published 10 different posts and I'm very proud of all of them.

- [Build a Blog Site with Next.js and Firebase parts 1-5](https://ashleemboyer.com/blog/series/nextjs-firebase-blog)
- [My Writing and Planning Process](https://ashleemboyer.com/blog/my-writing-and-planning-process)
- [How to Create Your Own Next.js RSS Reader App](https://ashleemboyer.com/blog/create-your-own-nextjs-rss-reader-app)
- [How I Added an RSS Feed to My Next.js Site](https://ashleemboyer.com/blog/how-i-added-an-rss-feed-to-my-nextjs-site)
- [What the heck is "web a11y"?](https://ashleemboyer.com/blog/what-the-heck-is-web-a11y)
- [Speaking My Truth—I Did Not Leave for Personal Reasons](https://ashleemboyer.com/blog/speaking-my-truth)

## Speaking Events

I was hoping to do more speaking events this year, but a few were canceled or postponed due to the pandemic. Here is a list of the speaking events I did get to do, three of which were live streams on Twitch! I had so much fun on the streams and it's interesting to see how far I've come in public speaking. I _hated_ it in high school and most of college and used to be terrified to speak in front of groups of people.

- ["Getting started with accessibility" interview with Kevin Powell](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qr0ujkLLgmE)
- ["Debugging Semantic HTML Elements for Accessibility" SomeAnticsDev Twitch stream](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vAo0-puheM)
- ["Accessibility August 2021 on Dev Roulette LIVE" with Stephanie Myers](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWpj7t8I6SM)
- ["Build a Dark & Light Mode Switcher in React using Context", React.Indy meetup](https://github.com/ashleemboyer/react-indy-20210922)
  - _Note: I'm realizing I still have to upload the finished code from this event! I'll try to do that as soon as I can._

## Books

I am really good at starting new things, especially books. Part of my difficulty with finishing books is ADHD. It takes me a long time to get into a reading focus if I'm only reading. If I use an audiobook or speech-to-text in addition to reading, however, I have a much easier time. What's difficult about that is being deaf. If I don't have headphones to listen while I read, then I can't really listen. I've found that I can also read/listen better when I have a simple knitting project. I didn't finish a ton of books this year, but what's great is I'm learning all of these things about myself and working on carving out the right space for myself to read more.

### Books Started

This list is currently all the books I could find with my Goodreads account (I read on a Kindle). I'm 100% sure there are more books that belong here because I purchased multiple from people that self published. When I find them, I'll add them to the list.

- [It's About Damn Time: How to Turn Being Underestimated into Your Greatest Advantage](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/48927823-it-s-about-damn-time)
- [Sissy: A Coming-of-Gender Story](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41646234-sissy)
- [Real Life](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/46263943-real-life)
- [Their Eyes Were Watching God](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/37415.Their_Eyes_Were_Watching_God)
- [Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40651827-burnout)
- [How to Live With the Internet and Not Let It Run Your Life](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/57000631-how-to-live-with-the-internet-and-not-let-it-run-your-life)
- [Conflict Resolution Playbook: Practical Communication Skills for Preventing, Managing, and Resolving Conflict
  ](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56164760-conflict-resolution-playbook)
- [In the Land of Men: A Memoir](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/45730112-in-the-land-of-men)
- [Brag Better: Master the Art of Fearless Self-Promotion](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53105899-brag-better)
- [Sorry I Missed You](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52951550-sorry-i-missed-you)
- [Women in Tech: Practical Advice and Inspiring Stories from Successful Women in Tech to Take Your Career to the Next Level](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25852961-women-in-tech)
- [The Beginner's Guide to Stoicism: Tools for Emotional Resilience and Positivity](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52085903-the-beginner-s-guide-to-stoicism)

### Books Finished

- [Changing the Conversation: The 17 Principles of Conflict Resolution](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24751306-changing-the-conversation)
- [Such a Fun Age](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43923951-such-a-fun-age)
- [Help for Women with ADHD: My Simple Strategies for Conquering Chaos](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30248423-help-for-women-with-adhd)
- [Weird in a World That's Not: A Career Guide for Misfits, F\*ckups, and Failures](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33913476-weird-in-a-world-that-s-not)

## Projects

Like I mentioned already, I didn't get to finish as many projects as I wanted, but I'm really looking forward to getting back to all of these!

> _Note: I can't remember all my projects right now so I'll have to update this post as I remember them._

### Projects Started

**Knitting Projects**

- Socks in (yarn I can't remember the name of, I'll update ASAP)
- Triangle shawl in Cascade 220 Superwash Merino, color number 86

**Coding Projects**

- StaySemantic.com, a web accessibility resource that will have demos and explorations of various components, their properties, and how they sound with screen readers. Check out [a preview of the Disabled Button Demo](https://staysemantic-com-git-dev-ashleemboyer.vercel.app/demos).
- "Build an Accessible Blog with Next.js and Semantic HTML" course for egghead.io, which will get into the importance of semantic HTML in regards to accessibility, how to navigate documentation, and how to identify accessibility issues. I have [a GitHub repository that will get updates](https://github.com/ashleemboyer/egghead-accessible-nextjs-blog-course) as I work on the course.

### Projects Finished/Shipped

**General**

- 25-cube IKEA KALLAX shelf
- IKEA BEKANT standing desk

**Knitting Projects**

- Plain hat in Boss Kitty Hand Dyed DK Weight, Rock-A-Doodle-Doo colorway

**Coding Projects**

- What Can I Plant? For determining what you can plant in Stardew Valley and make the most money off of. _Last updated January 2021._
  - [Link to code](https://github.com/ashleemboyer/what-can-i-plant)
  - [Link to site](https://what-can-i-plant.netlify.app/)
- The Golden Girls Quotes API. Just for getting random quotes from The Golden Girls. _Last updated October 2021._
  - [Link to code](https://github.com/ashleemboyer/the-golden-girls-quotes-api)
  - [Link to site](https://the-golden-girls-quotes-api.fly.dev/)
- [React, TypeScript, Less/CSS modules, Jest, and Enzyme boilerplate.](https://github.com/ashleemboyer/webpack-typescript-jest-less) I did this for the learning experience and don't use it as a boilerplate. I mainly use Next.js for everything these days. _Last updated May 2021._
- [Discord bot for eventually doing cool things in Discord!](https://github.com/ashleemboyer/ashleemboyer-discord-bot) I like the idea of having a cool Discord server for engaging with folks. Maybe it'll happen this year? _Last updated August 2021._
- [Discord bot API for custom webhooks.](https://github.com/ashleemboyer/ashleemboyer-discord-bot-api) It currently sends various notification message in channels only I can see about my new newsletter service and subscribers. I'm hoping to have that newsletter live soon!


2021 was a wild ride. Here are some details from my year.

2021 in Review


I spent weeks deliberating whether or not I would write a public statement about what happened to me at my previous company. Then I spent days deliberating what exactly I would write. The time leading up to publishing this post was agonizing as I tried to figure out the balance between saying too much and not saying enough.

What it all came down to is two main things:

1. The full truth has not been shared with my previous colleagues, many of whom I developed incredible connections with through Accessibility Required, a Neurodiversity and Disability employee-resource group I co-founded in February 2021 and co-chaired for the rest of my tenure at the company. I cannot stand for my truth being misconstrued.

2. There are countless other marginalized folks actively suffering through the same, similar, and worse situations to what I went through. I hope if any of them come across this post that it helps them to feel less alone and encourages them to come up with a plan for survival as many posts like this one have done for me. We should not have to suffer in silence and isolation.

---

I worked at All Campus, LLC (headquartered in Chicago, Illinois) from November 18th, 2020 to October 1st, 2021. My offer letter specified that I was joining as a "Front End Developer". There was no level in my title and I was told that levels were not official in the team. If you're not familiar with how levels work in the tech industry, the gist is that they are used to convey the experience and responsibilities within a person’s role. All companies do this differently and the number of levels can range anywhere from a couple to even a dozen.

_A person's level has an enormous impact on the salary they are given. Check out [levels.fyi](https://www.levels.fyi/) to see how level and pay roughly look for technical roles at many companies including Google, Facebook, and Microsoft._

When I joined the company, there were two main developers on the team that I was to work with closely. One of them would not work with me. They were condescending when I asked clarifying questions and would say things like "I think the description is perfectly clear" when all a task’s description contained was a screenshot and non-descriptive words. They would talk over me during calls and force me to make changes to my code without discussion. They often reached out to the second developer to have them take their side in reviewing my code and even called them in from PTO once to review their code as if I was incapable of reviewing very straightforward and minimal code changes. The second developer took the person's side even when they disagreed with them. How do I know? The second developer told me so.

Thankfully, that first developer left not long after I started. They created an extremely hostile work environment and I would not have stayed in my position nearly as long as I did if they had not left. I later found out that they would obsessively complain about my Twitter feed to the second developer, so not only was my work environment unsafe with this person around, so was my personal environment. How do I know about this behavior? Again, the second developer told me so. It’s another example of how my work environment was still unsafe even after the first developer left. The second developer staying silent multiple times about such awful behavior enabled the other person to continue harming me and it conveyed to me that they weren't bothered by me being mistreated.

---

Things went okay between me and the second developer for a little while, but we were inherently considered to be the same level as far as I knew (even though levels were supposedly unofficial on the team) and there weren't any other experts in our work on the team. When we came to disagreements during code review (which became more and more frequent over time), we did not have someone of expert authority to make a final decision. These weren't petty or personal disagreements. They had to do with the other developer not being receptive to code review feedback I had to repeat over and over, them not writing their code to match specifications given by the design team, and them not wanting me to make some changes to foundational code because they were afraid something would break.

I raised the issue of growing dysfunction to our manager for months in a row but nothing changed. Our manager would chime in on code review when tagged in by one of us, but seemingly did not monitor our correspondence despite knowing there were issues. The manager took the other person’s side in most cases I can think of, even when the other developer was clearly in the wrong. In one situation the other developer said they didn’t build their code to design because “there were no designs,” and despite me linking to the designs that had timestamps pre-dating the developer’s work, they pressured the designer multiple times to accept the code work because it was “already done” despite still being in the code review stage.

In a one-on-one with the manager, I brought up specific behavioral issues that concerned me in code reviews that would spiral into hours of unproductive and unnecessary back and forth. Instead of focusing on the behavior issues I mentioned, they focused specifically on the code in the review and said "I don't see it as that big of an issue," implying that I was the cause of unnecessary hours of back and forth and implying that I should've never made the review comment in question in the first place. I tried to bring the focus back to the behavioral issues, and they said we should have a meeting between the three of us to get the other developer's side. I found that reasonable, and added that I was burning out from the unhealthy dynamic going on. The manager did not acknowledge this statement at all.

When the meeting about the code review process between the three of us was scheduled, I suggested that we form an agenda for the meeting beforehand to ensure we could all prepare and that we would each have equal time to raise topics or concerns. The manager never reached out to us to build an agenda even though they said they would, they were 20 minutes late to the 50-minute meeting, and as I anticipated I did not get to raise any of the concerns I had raised one-on-one for weeks. The other developer got to raise several concerns, kept diving into technical specifics of past code reviews when the purpose of the discussion was to talk about process, and the manager was quick to blame me for resolutions not being reached fast enough without even looking at timestamps that showed I efficiently facilitated resolutions in just a few hours.

---

A few days after that meeting would be my last one-on-one with that manager. I expressed my frustration with them not following through on their promise to build an agenda and with me not getting a fair chance to speak on the concerns I'd been telling them about for weeks. My issues were completely unaddressed, and I told them it felt like they didn't take my issues seriously, especially the ones I'd raised 2 weeks prior that prompted the group meeting. Then they became visibly frustrated by that feedback and told me their priorities were the big backend code problems.

I asked them if they saw big human issues as important, and asked them to consider my perspective after being told that code is more important than issues I'd been raising for weeks on end. They told me they couldn't solve all my problems. They actually had solved a very small percentage of issues I'd raised. I told them that I didn't feel like I was being taken seriously, and that they still had yet to acknowledge or validate that I told them I was burning out 2 weeks prior.

After repeating myself several times and them still not acknowledging it, I finally said that I was having a horrible time, to which they said it was "strong language" and that it is a problem when employees "hate their job". I told them not to put words in my mouth, because I never once said I hated my job. I tried to get them to recognize "burnout" as strong language, especially when sharing something so vulnerable to a manager, but I still didn't get the sense that they understood or cared. They mischaracterized what I called burnout as "overwhelmed by too much process" which is never something I said—I said there were specific behavioral issues that were causing frequent problems during code review.

When I listed the behavior issues about the other developer, they angrily told me that the other developer had problems with me too and that it sounded like I just wanted the manager to take my side on everything. Not only was this plain instigative and a dangerous thing for them to do, it also proved that they were very aware of dysfunction and let it fester for weeks. It was clear evidence in multiple ways of how they allowed and perpetuated a hostile environment. They continued to center themselves and claim they were under a ton of pressure from above.

Within hours of this one-on-one, HR became involved and I told my story to them. I told it to the manager's manager the following week. I told both parties that I did not trust the manager to accurately represent me or my work at the company when it came review time, mostly due to their blatant mistreatment of me and also partly due to their poor support and previous efforts to review me (I had an informal review in February 2021 that was poorly researched on the manager's part and I was given no time to review ahead of time or provide feedback). I also requested that we no longer have one-on-ones together. The manager's manager became my and the other developer's manager, to start working on the issues we'd been having for months and the hiring process started for a new person to manage all developers.

Shortly after this, the other developer left and I became the only front end developer and person managed by the skip level. During this time, I asked about what level I was. My expectation was that I was mid-level (AKA the second of three levels in the supposedly unofficial team career ladder) and I wanted to make sure that the situation with my previous manager was not going to affect my efforts towards getting promoted to senior. I told the skip level that despite requesting it numerous times from the person who previously managed me, I never had a session for discussing professional goals in my role and I was never told what they thought my level was according to the supposedly unofficial document.

When the skip level got back to me on that question, they told me that according to the previous manager and HR, they thought I was between a level 1 and a level 2 (which translates to between entry level and mid-level). I expressed my strong disagreement and the skip level effectively threw their hands up and said that the eventual head of engineering would handle figuring out my level. They should not have reached out to the previous manager, especially after I expressly stated I did not trust the person with my career. Many issues I raised to the skip level were being brushed off as culture issues the new head of engineering would have to fix.

These issues include:

- Not being invited to group coding sessions to solve problems I spent hours researching and reporting on
- The same people who excluded me from the coding sessions constantly dismissing my input and telling me I was wrong before actually digging into what I was sharing
- Being called a micromanager by a teammate after trying to collaborate with them on about a task they both misread and then didn't test their code for two days in a row

---

When the head of engineering finally started in late-mid August 2021, I was at the start of a two-week period of PTO. I was mentally, emotionally, and physically drained and feeling defeated, unwelcome, and very undervalued. Even still, I was optimistic about the new manager. I was casually interviewing with companies at the time (meaning I was only talking with a couple at once since that's what I had the capacity for). I wanted to make sure I had a contingency plan in place. I'd spent months being patient, but I needed to prioritize my health.

I was still the only front end developer and the only person working on that codebase. I took on paring down technical debt, writing tests and documentation, planning and scoping features, coming up with strategies for getting years-out-of-date dependencies fixed, and was involved in decision making for the rest of the year's roadmap. I was the expert on the codebase and invested a great amount of time and energy into things that were often neglected in previous years despite being the only person working on it. In my last week at the company, I wrote an extensive 22-page document transferring all of the knowledge I had about almost every folder and file in the codebase and all in-progress and planned initiatives. I gave everything I had to give for my entire tenure.

The new manager proved to be a great hire for the team from my perspective. They were receptive to hearing about how I felt unsupported previously, clearly cared about my opinions and ideas, and were prioritizing fixing major pain points in the development process that caused a lot of unhappiness even beyond developers. I felt valued by them in my work and empowered by their leadership. In the end, they were a huge advocate for me and truly tried to turn the entire situation around.

---

Towards the end of September 2021, I was entering sick time in the payment system and because it was the first time I'd done that since the new manager started, I checked the organization chart to make sure it'd been updated in the system that I reported to them. What I found there was completely unexpected. Other developers had levels in their titles and my title was Software Engineer (AKA level 1, AKA entry level). I was speechless. How did we have levels if levels were supposedly unofficial on the team? How was I hired at entry level when this was my fourth full-time job post-college, I had a degree in software engineering from an incredible program, and had worked 3 summer internships during college?

What I found out is that I was given different information than other people on my team. They were actually aware of their levels whereas I was told levels weren't official. Even someone hired at essentially the same time as me was treated differently despite us having the same job responsibilities and at the very least, the same amount of prior working experience. Because I found out people were aware of their levels and that was clearly something I was being treated differently on, I dug deeper and found out that they were being paid nearly 18% more than me despite having the same responsibilities and past experience. I also proved time and time again that I was absolutely not an entry level developer in any sense, so there were endless opportunities for this disparity to be corrected. I collected extensive data on the work I’d completed up to that point and tried to present that and the pay disparity to HR but was met with no sense of urgency despite my claims that I was significantly underpaid for going on 10 months. I was told to speak with my new manager about it, which implied to me that they disagreed with my claims.

Not getting similar pay when doing similar work is the definition of pay discrimination. Treating one person differently than everyone else is the definition of bias. Treating someone differently based on sex to the extent that it creates a hostile environment and preventing them from progressing in their career is the definition of sexual harassment. I did not leave for personal reasons. I left because I was discriminated against and traumatized by a biased manager and psychologically unsafe environment for months. I could no longer trust leadership to value or protect me after endlessly prioritizing a hostile employee and manager over any of the people that person traumatized for years. When that person directly harmed me, they were eventually replaced as a manager and given a promotion and new job title.

People directly involved in this incident were able to remain part of the Accessibility Required employee-resource group for months, contributing to feelings of uneasiness and anxiety within the ERG. All the while I was left to carry the work of several people as a lone front end developer with no real recognition—just empty words with no action behind them.


Speaking My Truth&mdash;I Did Not Leave for Personal Reasons


A few days ago, I came across a tweet thread by my e-friend, [@TheCodePixi](https://twitter.com/TheCodePixi), who's working on making [#SpooniesWhoCode](https://twitter.com/hashtag/SpooniesWhoCode) a thing, so make sure you join in if you're a spoonie who codes!

> Looking to connect with more [#SpooniesWhoCode](https://twitter.com/hashtag/SpooniesWhoCode)! Or maybe I'm already connected and don't know it? Leave a reply with a little about yourself and your tips for other [#Spoonies](https://twitter.com/hashtag/spoonies) (IE: Me!) on how you keep coding when you're low on spoons. Gimme all your tech self care tips 👇
>
> _[link to tweet](https://twitter.com/TheCodePixi/status/1166495789658624000)_

## But wait, what's a spoonie?

A spoonie is someone who deals with a chronic condition that frequently or randomly takes away their capacity to live life how they want to. If someone says, "I'm low on spoons," it means they probably don't have the energy to do something specific. This doesn't mean they don't have energy for _anything_.

Being a spoonie is a balancing act. We have to be picky about what we spend our spoons on. This is where the tweet comes in. It's **hard** to figure out the balance of what you _want_ to do, what you _need_ to do, and what you _should_ do.

You may _want_ to go out to dinner with your friends because you cancelled the last time. You may _need_ to do the dishes or some laundry because it's piled up over the past few days.

But what _should_ you do? Are you in pain? Are you tired? What are your limits?

## A little bit about me, a spoonie

I haven't always been a spoonie.

For 13 years, I played soccer nearly all-year-round. I quit after my first year of college. Rose-Hulman is an extremely fast-paced school, all the time, and I couldn't keep dedicated 3-4 hours a day to soccer and not get any playing time in return. This was a really hard change for me, emotionally and physically.

That last season, I was in my second car accident. The impact passed from my foot on the brake, up my leg, and into my SI (sacroiliac) joints. This is where your spine connects to your pelvis. Since then, I've had a lot of inflammation and pain in the area.

Two years prior, in my first accident, the vehicle I was driving rolled on its side after spinning out on ice. I never really got a full diagnosis from this, but had back spasms on the lower-right side of my back briefly treated by a chiropractor.

Just last year, I found out I have a slipped disc in my lower spine. It was a relief finally having an answer to all my back pain, but I was still sad about all the time I'd lost to the pain preventing me from functioning. I'd gained a lot weight because I couldn't exercise (and lots of college stress).

Aside from my back problems, I also started getting migraines very regularly my freshman year. I was taking "as needed" medication every single day. I ended up going to the ER for the first time due to a migraine a couple of years later. (2017, I think?) That's when I finally got _real_ treatment for them. I saw a neurologist and a found a GP experienced with treating migraines.

I took a lot of medication after that which, thankfully, slowed down all the migraines. Not thankfully, I had about every side effect in the book for some medications. I couldn't hold conversations, my face and fingers were going numb, and I felt like a zombie.

This is when I truly realized I couldn't keep doing all the things. Something had to give. It couldn't be school; I was already past the "normal" 4 years. I just needed to finish college. So, I stopped doing anything else. Some days, it was literally all I could do to drag myself to classes and group project meetings. I ended up missing a lot of classes. My grades in some of them suffered beyond repair. (I made it out though, woo!) My mental health suffered greatly too.

If _anything_ good has come out of these experiences, it's that I've learned a lot about self care.

## How I keep coding, or doing anything

_This is a summary of the tweet thread I made in response to the one above._

I usually have no idea what a day will be like until I wake up and get moving. Sometimes, I'll wake up with a migraine. If I have it all day and fall asleep with it, I will probably wake up with it the next day too.

My back doesn't bother me as much anymore, but I'm usually pretty stiff when I first wake up. The chronic pain typically is in my legs. On the bad days, it feels a bit like growing pains I guess. Like a heavy ache from my thighs through my toes.

My advice is to know your limitations. I'm pretty upfront with employers about the conditions I have. Some are judgy about it, some are fine. My current job has unlimited PTO and I can also work from home from time to time. Both of these are super helpful for me.

For example, if I have a migraine, it's helpful for me to work from home so I can minimize my environment as much as possible. Driving to work, walking through the city, and working in an open office layout with fluorescent lights only exacerbates migraines. At home, I can find a comfy spot to sit in with my laptop, turn off some lights, and close curtains to block out more light.

As for the unlimited PTO, that mainly eases my fears of being judged for "needing a day." Whether that's for resting because of pain or taking a mental health day.

> Spoiler alert: you probably won't need as many mental health days if you work in a supportive environment.

But let's talk about the other times where these things aren't applicable. If you _have_ to go to work, try to express to your team if you're not operating at 100%. I hope they understand that. (Is anyone ever at 100%?)

Once you're home, use your remedies! I have 3 or 4 things I try before declaring my migraines as "impossible." After that, all I can do is lock myself away and sleep. That seems to help some of the other conditions too!

### Moral of the story

[Just take a break](https://ashleemboyer.com/don-t-forget-to-take-breaks). You are one person and can only do so much. Don't overextend yourself. You and your work will suffer.


It's hard to code when you deal with chronic illnesses or disabilities. Here's what I try to do when those things start to get in the way.

How I Keep Coding When I'm Low on Spoons


I started college in the fall of 2013 as a Chemical Engineering major at a small private engineering school in Indiana. That first quarter ended very poorly for me and had me questioning whether or not I could make it at the school. From what I could see, everyone else was so smart and doing so well! (In reality, I think a ton of us were struggling silently and alone.)

The next two quarters went much better. I loved my chemistry courses and had to work really hard in my math and physics ones. That spring term, I had an Excel programming course. That was my first time ever writing code and I loved it! It was probably the first time outside of the chemistry classes that I really felt like I knew what I was doing. So, I decided to take the introductory programming course the next fall.

They taught us how to program in Python. (I highly recommend Python for learning to code!) It was amazing to me. Having power over my computer and telling it exactly what I wanted to do gave me such a feeling of accomplishment. For the term project, we had to program an iRobot. I learned how to program a _robot_! What a rush. I felt so smart until...

I got my final grades for all the other courses I was taking. I did terrible in my Chemical Engineering courses. I could handle chemistry and physics individually, but I couldn't seem to put the two together. I did decent in organic chemistry, but I really didn't love chemistry anymore. I had a decision to make.

1. Take the classes over either in the summer or fall, depending on when they'd be offered
2. Switch to a different major
3. Drop out of the school altogether

The third wasn't really an option for me. I'd moved out of my parents' at this point and was completely independent. There's no way I'd be able to pay off what loans I already had if I didn't get that degree. The first option was terrifying: there was no guarantee I'd pass the second time around. The material just didn't make sense to me. With how well I did in the introductory programming course, and how much I enjoyed writing code, I went with the second option.

The journey from then until I got out of college felt like actual hell, but it wasn't because of the courses. I enjoyed almost every single Software Engineering course I took. I even took some of them twice. 😉 Being on my own was really hard, and there were a lot of things that got in the way of my education.

When I look back, I wish I had known about all of my options and not felt so pressured to hurry up and graduate college. I'm not sure I'd recommend the college route to everyone. Especially in the last several months, I don't see why someone who's self-taught can't be as successful as someone with a heckin' expensive piece of paper. It's all about hard work, which you can't see at surface level. The same thing is true about GPA, something that might as well have not existed for me.

Hearing everyone's stories over the past few days has really opened my eyes. There's a ton of talent in this industry coming from all backgrounds. Let's continue to build an inclusive culture in tech! So much possibility awaits.


A lot of people have been telling their stories. Here's mine.

My Journey Into Software Engineering


I made some shouty tweets on Sunday. [Here's the first one](https://twitter.com/ashleemboyer/status/1135403356506198017), and the one I want to focus on for this conversation.

You can go read the other tweets and think whatever you want about them as a whole, but I'm here to elaborate a bit on what I was (and still am) feeling.

Side note: if you have any inclination to make excuses for the boss in the tweet or anything of the like, please hop out now. This is not a debate. How I feel about being minimized as a disabled person is not up for discussion.

Another side note: this topic goes beyond people who sign the paychecks. Everyone should know about the identities of their co-workers, but those people way up in the hierarchy should _especially_ know the people they expect to do a good job.

So, why should we get to know the people we pay?

# You can lead them better

Knowing how people tick makes it easier for you to lead them. You'll know what they can and can't handle, when they can handle it, and how to get them where they need to be to actually handle it. Leadership isn't just about telling people what to do.

# You'll have a chance to understand their perspective

It's not really possible to know \*exactly what someone else is going through unless you've actually been through it yourself. Even still, every single person is different and copes with life in their own ways. Your best chance at knowing what someone else is going through; however, is by listening and remembering what people tell you.

# You won't make them feel isolated

Going back to my above-mentioned situation specifically, it's hard to describe how it felt to learn that my boss didn't know for 10 months that I have hearing aids. I am a disabled woman. It's the biggest piece of my identity because it affects my quality of life in every possible way. It's not a difficult fact to learn. I talk about it daily.

I keep trying to write the next sentence and they keep coming out wrong. It's a really strange feeling to know I was sitting for months on end putting in so much effort, and the simplest effort wasn't being put back into me. It feels lonely and isolating.

Bottom line, just do the right thing. Don't let your employees feel like that. All it takes is a few conversations and a little bit of effort towards remembering facts about people. Make the people you pay feel important.


Know who you're sending your money to, especially when you send them a lot.

Get to Know the People You Pay


Not that I feel the need to explain myself, but I want to share that I'm hard-of-hearing. It's genetic and just about everyone on my family's maternal side suffers significant hearing loss. I've had hearing aids since I was 10 years old, and as I've grown up, it becomes more and more clear to me how little people understand about the importance of accessibility.

This post is a bit of a rant since all of the below have been said to me personally (all in one conversation, actually 🤦🏼‍♀️). These are all the things I wish I could've said at the time, but you don't always get to speak out when you're like me. It's exhausting, and I'm writing this post as an ask to **please be more aware of the things you say and how you say them**. You might mean well, but your words can still be incredibly hurtful.

## "It's low priority."

That's pretty clear at this point, but why is that? What's your excuse? Is it too hard? Do you not want to spend the time learning about it? Are there not enough of us that exist for you to be concerned about our needs?

## "We need to beat competitors to market."

Based on my experience in this industry, I wonder if _they_ are even concerned about accessibility. Consumers value companies that value them. You should be trying to stand out beyond having a large number of software features.

## "I get it, but..."

No, you obviously don't. If you did, you wouldn't be saying any of these things to my face. You either think you're super woke _or_ you completely forgot that you're talking to a disabled person. I'm kind of afraid of how you talk about disabled people when you're away from us.

## "There's no point if no one is using it."

So, when people start using it, how do you plan on figuring out how many of them need a more accessible tool if we can't actually use it to tell you? We don't have the time for you to play catch up. We'll just go somewhere else.


I'm a disabled woman and have a few thoughts about how able-bodied people speak to people like me about accessibility.

Posts Related to the "about-me" Tag

She's written 7 posts

What a Jar of Buttons Is Teaching Me About Trust

2021 in Review

Speaking My Truth—I Did Not Leave for Personal Reasons

How I Keep Coding When I'm Low on Spoons

My Journey Into Software Engineering

Get to Know the People You Pay

Things You Shouldn't Say to a Disabled Person About Why Your App Isn't Accessible