Lately, I've been reading a book written by Adam Savage. You know, the Mythbusters guy. In it, he observed a thing about his life (and life in general):
Life stories always look like straight lines from the vantage point of looking back, but precious few really are.
I have to admit, I read this and was absolutely floored. It's been something of a theme for my life the last few months. Really, it's a truth about my own life I've been struggling to internalize. So if you'll forgive me the indulgence, I'm going to break one of my rules on speaking, and talk about myself for a while.
Before we move further, I want to provide a content warning. Some of you may have seen my talk Monkeypatching my Life, but for those who don't: My story is full of trauma. I've experienced things that terrify me to this day. I've also been struggling of late, and plan to talk about those struggles today. If discussions of suicide ideation, domestic violence, and transphobia will be triggering or upsetting, I encourage you to leave the room and take care of yourself. I will preface sections in which I talk about these concepts to allow you a chance to leave before they come up.
In the scattered paths of my last year, I got to sit down, and think about the idea of success. I'm on stage keynoting at one of my favorite professional conferences. I think we can all agree I've achieved something that could be called success. I've spent the last six month recognizing that word applies to me. It's been a difficult sort of processing. So let's start at a beginning.
As a child, I fell in love with stories. Not just listening to them, but making them. By the time I was twelve, I had cemented a dream that I wanted to be a writer. Excuse me, not a writer, an author. Young me put some magic into distinctions that I've carried to this day.
Some of my earliest memories of feeling successful were winning school writing contests. I threw myself into it. By hand in notebooks, on an old electric type writer my mom gave me access to, and eventually on my family's first computer.
Unfortunately, I didn't know how you'd go about being paid for writing, so at 15 I got my first job, working the backroom of a pretzel shop. It gave me money, which was cool, but because my family was involved in the operating of the business, I got to see another skill set that seemed interesting.
As high school drew to a close, I had to make plans, and the closest thing I had was "maybe run a business? Or start one?" It didn't happen. I ended up working backroom at big box stores, and then at a bunch of game shops. Would it shock you to learn I'm an unrepentant nerd? No, seriously, and I was a young teen when the Star Wars prequels came out. For a kid who wanted to be a writer, seeing her favorite franchise blossom back to life was fuel for some serious dreams.
But I grew up. I didn't go to college straight out of high school. I was one of those scrappy folks who kept applying myself to new things.
breath once
breath once
So this is where I want to pause. The next section is brief, but includes non-detailed discussions of domestic violence and depression. If you need to leave, now is a good time.
On screen I'm including a hotline for both suicidal crises and domestic violence. If you need help, please reach out.
I got married. It didn't take long for things to get bad. During it all, I was cut off from my family and friends, and I lost at least one job due to the control my partner demanded. We even had kids during all of this, and it was hard. Shortly after my daughter was born, we got out.
That reset much of any progress I had made in my life. I was now a single parent, living with my family again.
two breaths right here.
So I started picking up the pieces. I decided to lean into that business interest. And maybe, at the same time, pick up some tech skills since I'd always been fascinated with computers, but my family was poor enough that we had only one computer, and I was afraid of messing that up for everyone else.
So I entered a business program at the local tech college. My degree is in Management Information Systems, and I got to spend a lot of time in both the business department and the comp sci department.
During this time, I was rebuilding my writing interest. I'd never really stopped, but I was going to get serious about it this time. I started a blog. Was building up a following on Twitter. I even used my research projects during college to dig deep into the industry.
I was lucky, I was in college just as the Kindle was taking off, and the industry kept changing every semester. It was around this time that my first significant battle with my mental health happened. I wasn't a stranger to depression, though I didn't know that's what it was. But in college, I excelled in school, kept up the facade that was my online presence, but at home, I was left without any energy to keep things up. It caused no end of fighting with my family.
Eventually, I graduated with honors, and immediately imploded. I lost a job due to a business closing, and I didn't have the will power to find a new one. I put some effort into it, but I was looking for jobs to use my new degree, and most of those wanted more technical background than my degree added. It was also 2012, and places wanted half a decade of experience and a stronger degree for entry positions. Because even at my worst, I've got a need to be doing something I decided I'd keep working toward that analyst job I was hoping to get.
Enter Python. It just so happened that Python was the most popular answer on the internet for "I've never programmed before, where do I start." I'm glad it did. I dove into a couple of books, one of which was Al Sweigart's Inventing Games With Python and Pygame. It was around this time that I realized my writing dream wasn't helping. I formally quit writing. I told my audience I was done and walked away. The last blog post I ever posted was talking about Al's book.
I really threw myself into Python. I built a little prototype video game only months after my first "Hello World". Eventually picked up Flask.
Then there was the fight. I'm not discussing the details, but my mother and I faced irreconcilable differences, and it was then I admitted to the emotions I'd been fighting for years at that point: I wanted to die. My mother's response at that time was not compassionate, and I left home the next day.
Count to ten.
I want to be clear: I love my mother, and I am very intentionally sparing details because we have repaired our relationship from this time. But it is important to my story.
I ended up homeless. Couch surfed for a lot of it. Ended up working backstage at a local theater. Eventually, I made my way to New York where I had some friends. I did whatever I could to feed myself. Ended up freelancing a lot. Editing. Small web apps. Data entry. Hardware installation. Anything I could do.
It would be six months in the city before I found the Python community here. A temp company I worked with suggested I check them out. And I did.
I got so lucky. My first meetup, I met a recruiter who introduced me to a company that hired me. I had my first actual paycheck in over a year only a month later.
I was working on web apps, a place I found I excelled. It was awesome when one of our clients got a Star Wars app that was on our plate, and I got to spend over a year working on a Star Wars product.
It was at that time that Paul Logston first encouraged me to submit to Pygotham. I didn't expect anything to come out of it, but I gave my first technical talk the same year I entered the industry.
Between PyGotham 2014 and 2015, I realized I was trans and started transitioning. This story is getting a little long, though, but I gave a talk about my transition in 2017 here at PyGotham, which you can see on youtube. That year's PyGotham I gave a new talk on Pygame, a revamped version of my 2014 talk, but then under my new name.
Not long after, I started a little project called ppb. A game framework that evolved into an education focused game engine.
I think this is a good stopping point for this story.
So let's actually talk about success.
I grew up thinking success meant independently wealthy. I'm not even sure where I developed that notion, because my family is most decidedly not. But a thing I did learn from my family is that success is about moving forward. And from my Mom I learned the importance of building and supporting community.
I think one of my least favorite parts of society's definition of success is the lie that success means "the end." The problem is, it's not. Our stories keep going after we meet success.
So with that idea in hand, here's me moving forward:
One: I mentioned, I worked on a Star Wars product. For over a year! Young me is super impressed.
Two: I wrote something important. People care about ppb in ways I honestly didn't expect. Caisey Faist is talking about it in the next speaking block! The excitement has been worth all that effort. We just released 0.7.0 a few weeks ago, and I'm actually getting to take a break from the project during the next release cycle, and it's going to continue to see work and care. Watching my project take on a life of its own is super important to me.
Three: Through my awesome community (And a recommendation from Meg Ray, you'll hear from her later), I've recently seen books on the shelf that I helped get there. Back in November, I signed a contract with a major publisher to do technical vetting of a learn the program book written by a friend of mine.
Four: I have fallen in love with public speaking. I get to meet such cool people, and share ideas I find important. And this is my first keynote!
pause for applause
I've spent the last ten minutes or so talking about my success. My goal is to talk about the "accepting" part.
I'm going to be honest: I don't think I'm doing well with that part. What I learned while writing this talk is that that's still hard for me. But there's a thing I did figure out: I can affirm my success. And I think that's the first step on the road to believing it.
For as troubling as I find the concept of success, I think I like my own definition, it is starting to mean a lot to me.
So that's me: A domestic violence survivor, a trans woman, a game developer, and a book editor that struggles with suicide ideation and loves her community.
The title of this talk changed late in its life, when a friend of mine had a dream in which I read a poem called semicolon return. It was incredibly apt as I've been wrestling the last month with intense suicide ideation.
For those who don't know, there is a thing called Project semicolon, a suicide prevention project. It was first introduced to me by people who shared their story. The advertising tag they used is "Your story isn't over."
It's important to me that much of what I write when I get personal is not for myself. It's for the me of 10 and 20 years ago. The little kid who will be going through a world of hurt. It's for the friends I have now who haven't reached out. I stand on a stage and be vulnerable because I needed people to do that for me.
We, here, are community. You should recognize this quote by now, but if you haven't heard it, let me introduce you to my favorite slogan in Python: Come for the language, stay for the community.
I didn't get to stand here because I worked hard and made it happen, though I had to do that too. I had peers and mentors who helped lift me up when I was at my lowest. So I want to leave you all with a challenge: I'm going to ask you to give back. If you're new to the community: go find a local event and volunteer. If you've been around, think about what it is you do well, and help someone else do it to.
The easiest example I can give is most of the experienced devs in this room have contributed to open source before. If you're one of those, if you're willing to coach a newer developer to their first contribution, stand up. To anyone in the audience who doesn't know how to get started: Look around. Find one of these people. Talk to them. Ask for their help. And then, you should find someone newer than you, and help them.
I'd like you to go away with these thoughts:
Every one of us has something to contribute to our community. If you've been around, you should look for people you don't recognize and new faces and help lift them up.
Stop treating societal expectations as success metrics: write your own success story and learn to recognize when success doesn't look like you imagine.
If you're struggling with your mental health: you're not alone. Don't be afraid to reach out to those around you.
Thank you.