Thank you Kate — this was such a wonderful message to read (you’ll already have noticed I’ve highlighted basically every other sentence).

I’m sorry to hear about your condition. Young Onset Parkinson’s is not, I’m ashamed to say, something I know anything about. You analogise well though, and I‘m intimately acquainted with insomnia, and so that I can wholly empathise with. I hope you manage to get some rest soon.

I’m glad you’ve found coding! It’s something I’ve been doing for a few years now, and I find it incredibly cathartic. I’d never really stopped to think why though (a mixture of surface-level “I’m building, therefore I’m adding value”, mixed with “this is working so I’d better not peak behind the curtain” — you know how when code works even though you think it shouldn’t, so you just sort of back away slowly and leave it to its thing?). Everything you’ve written makes perfect sense (love the linting analogy), and I think from now I will think more in those terms.

Thank so much for sharing.