43: Accessibility, Fiber Arts, and ADHD with Abbey Perini

Bethany (00:00) Welcome to the Overcommitted Podcast, your weekly dose of real engineering conversations. I’m your host, Bethany, and I’m joined by…

Brittany Ellich (00:08) Hey, I’m Brittany Ellich.

Erika (00:10) and I’m Erika.

Bethany (00:11) The three of us met while working on a team at GitHub and quickly realized we were all obsessed with getting better at what we do. So we decided to start this podcast to share what we’ve learned. We’ll be talking about everything from leveling up your technical skills to navigating your professional development, all with the goal of creating a community where engineers can learn and connect. Today on Overcommitted, we are joined by Abbey Perini, a mid-level view developer at Hygenia. Abbey describes her coding comfort zones

as all areas within the stack, is passionate about making the internet a better place for everyone through accessibility, and loves helping other developers through blogging and speaking. Additionally, she is a fiber artist and has consistently incredible nails, which you can see on Blue Sky. Welcome, Abbey.

Abbey (00:56) Thank you. I might use this as my new intro. were talking, or bio. We were talking about how we’re all terrible at writing our own bios and this is great. It’s much more succinct than mine.

Bethany (01:07) Amazing! No, I was having trouble not copying yours because I loved it so much and I was like, we need to tweak it a little. that’s a very cool thing. ⁓

Abbey (01:11) Thank you. If they ask for a shorter one, I’ll

give this one. That’ll be it.

Bethany (01:18) Perfect, perfect, sounds good. To kick us off, I’m really curious, what’s one thing that you’re currently building or obsessed with learning right now?

Abbey (01:25) So I have, I’m giving a talk and a workshop at CodeMesh in January. So I’m having to prep all of that content right now. And I think I finally found the narrative in my restoring lost work, Git talk. It’s.

The whole series of talks and blogs is titled hashtag get panic because that’s the inside joke that came up when I was learning. Get, you know, it’s, always trying to give you a heart attack. And so this talk is really near and dear to my heart because we’ve all like, if we’ve tried to do something fancy and get accidentally deleted a commit and been like, my life is over. Like this is it. It’s over. And I think this talk will give people a lot more confidence in knowing that 99.9 % of the time you can always get that commit back. And

that, you know, it’s really boring when you stand up in front of people and just run command after command after command and be like, you can do this, these are things you can do on your computer. So I’m glad to have finally found the narrative and I’m hoping the audience at CodeMash likes it.

Bethany (02:19) Oh, that’s awesome. I will definitely be watching that talk afterwards. Because I feel like doing simple things in Git is pretty simple, but anytime you have to do anything more complex, I’m definitely Googling, like, how do I rebase? How do I do this? So I’m excited for a better mental model there. Awesome.

Well, speaking of building things, as mentioned, you are a fiber artist and have been crocheting and knitting for a while. ⁓ my gosh, I didn’t even notice. For your listeners, Abbey’s background has so much yarn. That is amazing. ⁓

Abbey (02:47) Yep.

And then a

pile of unfinished projects as you do, you know?

Bethany (03:00) Of course, yes, that’s how it goes. So I really loved while researching reading your blog post called Knitting as Programming. And you mentioned that programmers owe it all to Fiber. That was kind of the subtitle. So since you’ve been doing Fiber since 2013, I’m curious when that connection really was established as you were learning to program.

Abbey (03:26) So I started learning the program in 2020 and I kind of timed it so that accidentally I committed to a bootcamp right when lockdown started. So I was in the staffing industry and nobody was hiring, everybody was panicking. So I basically was getting paid to learn to code for several months. And when I started doing bootcamp, obviously the learning curve jacks up and it’s like you’re drinking from a fire hose.

could not pick up a knitting or crochet project during bootcamp at all. Like I would just like stare at it and be like, nah, not today. Like the entire part of your brain that is used to figure out like a new stitch or like follow a pattern or anything like that is so similar to coding that after doing it for, you know, eight, 10 hours a day, I was like, that’s not relaxing to me anymore. That’s, I can’t do it.

So there’s a sharp decline in my fiber arts. that’s when, like right after I finished bootcamp, was like, how, that’s kind of like weird. Like I wonder if anybody else has made this connection. And then that article was just like the beginning of it for me. I have talked to, I was like at Netlify compose at the after party, being like, guys, what about like knitting and programming? And and two like researchers were like, you mean computational knitting? And I was like,

great, there’s another term. Awesome. And so,

I even, through some personal life stuff, met someone who taught fiber arts at the Chicago Institute of Art. And so I’ve got some new articles and stuff for my workshop at Code Mash, which is fiber arts and programming. So I’ll be talking about that relationship and also teaching people to crochet and knit. And the relationship is so interesting because people will just be blown away by the fact that MIT hired women to weave wire together.

to create ones and zeros to make little old lady memory for rockets that went up into space for them to work. So like the first punch cards were Jacquard Looms making textiles and like it’s it’s really it’s it’s more of a marriage than it is like two separate things that just keep influencing each other.

Bethany (05:28) Yeah, it was really cool to see

not only that like, knitting is similar to programming in terms of patterns and like repeating stitches and things like that. Like it’s similar to actual code, but actually, code is built on top of like the technical industry does actually owe a lot to fiber. And I thought that was such a cool connection.

I also loved the connection not only to that, but also just fiber artists leveraging online communities for connection and open source software to create. I’m curious if you have anything to add on what developers can take from those community building practices or open source usage.

Abbey (06:12) So, I’d say…

Knitting has been trying to figure out like the knitting community has been trying to figure out the best way to teach beginners how to get into these extremely complicated knitting patterns because especially I know some of y’all crochet I’m not sure if you’ve ever attempted to knit a sweater but like just trying to get the 3d shape to go to different sizes and like how the stitches work out and stuff like that is a lot of math and a lot of physics and at like a tiny scale often and

So.

they’ll have to have these very abstract charts and lists of stitches and stuff like that. Just for the crocheters, knitting charts and crocheting charts are two completely different things. And I’ve talked to like knitters who never crocheted and they’re like, what it’s like arcane magic. Like I don’t understand like the T’s going off of each what is happening there. And then I look at knitting charts and I’m like, I just can’t keep track of where I am in this grid. I bought

the things with the magnets that like help you keep track and like all that stuff and it does not help at all. So I often stick to just the written out like stitches and those I’m able to remember and that the way that at the beginning you get like the key for all the different abbreviations that they’re going to use and then

eventually your brain maps it to like essentially variables and then you’re sitting there with little like for and while loops like this is both knitting and crochet the way that People are taught these patterns is a lot more accessible often than the way that we’re taught for loops and while loops in programming especially like I I can do statistics I can’t do math and I have a complicated relationship and like to illustrate that I had to look up what the

the sum symbol was again, like two years ago. And my math friends are like, you’re kidding me. And I’m like, I knew what it was at some point, but like I tried to avoid math. So I don’t remember what the symbols are. And when people start talking about explaining programming with math, they’re not like, okay, so here are the symbols you’re gonna need to know. Here’s how, here’s like a few basic concepts before we really get into it. They’re like, surely you’re familiar with monotonic functions and that’s going to explain everything that I’m talking about in the rest of this article. And I’m like, no.

It really does not. So there’s…

an interesting overlap in like how the pattern communities have thought about communication and those soft skills that often are downplayed in like a technical standpoint. And there’s a lot to learn from them just for like teaching people how to do these crafts with their hands. And I love the point that it’s a great way to teach QA testing, because you have to sit there and you have to follow the pattern, you want it to look like the picture, and then you’re doing the you’re doing the process that

makes the output and then you look at the output and does it look like the picture and just that process like a lot of people haven’t thought through so when I started talking to QA people I was like yeah you’re brilliant this is great you’re thinking about the little steps that people forget and they were like she’s our favorite developer let’s let’s stick with her we’re doing it

Brittany Ellich (09:13) That’s amazing. I personally have never made that deep of a connection between them, but you’re so right. I feel like there are so many crossovers. I’m a crocheter. I cannot handle knitting. I wish I could. It’s so hard.

Abbey (09:25) You can. You just have

to find the pattern that gets you into it because I, for the longest time, was like, I think I’ve been crocheting like eight years before I picked up knitting. And I’ve been like, I don’t need knitting. I can make everything with crochet. It’s fine. And then I saw a pattern that was a scarf that had a dungeon map on it with charms for all the D &D monsters. And so you can play the entire adventure that’s associated with it on the scarf. And I was like…

Brittany Ellich (09:29) Yes.

Abbey (09:54) I’ll learn to knit. And the owners of the store were like, you’re going to have to learn to knit and purl. It’s double-sided. there are a lot of things you’re going to have to learn at once. And I was like, it’ll be fine. Best color work I’ve ever done. First project. Can’t do color work tension now. It’s horrible. Don’t know why, but that first project, beautiful, amazing. Got me into knitting. Yeah.

Brittany Ellich (09:55) Hahaha

Wow.

It’s the motivation to, you know,

for that end product. It makes a huge difference for sure.

Abbey (10:17) Yeah.

I know you and the Wubbles, you’ll find something eventually that you’ll be like, gotta make that.

Brittany Ellich (10:22) Yep, yep, it’s true. That’s amazing.

Yeah, and speaking of community, we do have an online community that is, I think we have Abbey, who shares her things. We also have Christina Martinez, who we’ve had on the show, who shares her things in our Discord, in our little off-topic Discord. And if you too, also out there, like to make things, we would love to share them and obsess over them as well. We’ll plug. ⁓

Abbey (10:31) Yep.

Agreed.

Bethany (10:47) Nice plug. I love it.

Brittany Ellich (10:47) Thank you, yeah.

I just want to see more things people make because it’s so fun. It is such a great community.

Abbey (10:49) Yeah.

It’s been, it’s had

Erika (10:52) you

Abbey (10:53) a glow up. I was just added to talk about fiber arts and now like sometimes the off topic channel, I’m like, when was the last fiber art? I gotta scroll back so far.

Brittany Ellich (10:59) Yeah, it’s true. It’s true. ⁓

Erika (11:03) you

Brittany Ellich (11:04) So I wanted to talk a little bit too about accessibility because I know that that is another topic that you are quite prolific and you’ve done a lot of blog posts and talks and everything advocating for the accessibility community, which is just awesome. One of the blog posts will link it as well is the about how web development is equal to

Abbey (11:14) Accurate.

Brittany Ellich (11:25) accessibility. I’m curious after looking through that, like, do you think that since you’re a full stack developer, like, is accessibility only a front end concern or, like, are there accessibility concerns that folks that you have to think about on the back end as well?

Abbey (11:40) So that blog is my like spicy hot take. That’s my like only spicy hot take blog where I’m just like, if you’re not thinking about accessibility, you’re technically incorrect. I don’t know how to explain to you that you’re not thinking about people and you should care about people. So I’m just gonna go straight for the nerd snipe, okay? And I finally did give that as a talk recently and I thought it was pretty fun. But…

Accessibility, a lot of people think, okay, so it’s the front end, it’s the buttons, it’s the color contrast, it’s what you click, can you click it, can you do keyboard, can you do screen reader, blah, blah, blah, blah.

But a lot of times people don’t think about like cognitive accessibility. creating these are archaic flows where you like… The thing that is driving me nuts right now is when you go to a forum and you type in your username and then it waits a second and then pops up the password box and then you have to click it again and autocomplete it again because I use autocomplete for everything because I have ADHD. I cannot remember anything and I am a web developer so I have to have random passwords.

I have to auto complete. it’ll be like, OK, why are we doing that? Is it because it’s two back-end calls? Do we need to deal with the back-end so it’s not that much? And then there’s also the data layer. I’m in another book club, not an overcommitted book club, I’m sorry, that’s reading like data-driven, designing data-driven, data-intensive applications. That’s the one by Martin Kleppen. And

It’s talking about the way that you structure data and the tools that you use for data and stuff like that. I find that especially developers often forget about things like documentation being about accessibility and equity and bringing in new developers and letting them get onboarded all in the same way and give feedback on the onboarding process and getting them up to speed in a way that isn’t sink or swim. So it can be everything from the tools you choose and making sure that everybody on the team knows how to use those tools.

as well as the way that you’re designing the backend to create the flows on the front end and the way that you’re designing your data structure for the developers because like I’ve had conversations where people don’t even think about it being an accessibility thing but like the data structure being the same in this app and this app in the same company is actually better for all of us from a development standpoint but also from an accessibility standpoint because if I can remember one schema and validation and stuff like

that I don’t have to remember that yeah this one over here has a slightly different tweak or like this one’s supervisor and this one’s trainer when they’re both have to be supervisors so we might as well just call them supervisors and stuff like that so it it boils it it boils over into everything once you start noticing accessibility fails it only keeps snowballing in your life

Erika (14:21) Yeah, it also feels like one of those things where like, there’s not, like, I often feel like there’s not like a ton in the world that I can like really tangibly, meaningfully make better for people. like building better web pages is like something that I can do. Like it’s free. There’s nothing stopping me from like making a better site, making a better page. Aside from you said like technical limitations or like, you know, company, company priorities or

something like that, but like it’s my own site and like I have any say in it, like I, that is something that I can do and make it better for people.

Abbey (14:51) ask permission.

Yeah,

I recently, when I joined this company, my one of the higher ups was known for saying like, I don’t care about screen readers. And I was like, I can’t wait for him to say this in a call with me. This is gonna be great. This is gonna be a great time. And then I wrote the densest article about Aria. Like it is…

75 people had read it. Like it was not like it’s so long and it’s only for the people who actually are like I need to know the answer to this or my fellow accessibility advocates who I had them read it multiple times to make sure that all the information was correct. And like, I don’t know why this was the thing that changed his mind, but all of a sudden he was like, well, you know, when you put it that way, like it really makes more sense.

Like if from a structural standpoint, you can provide all of this information with HTML. And I was like, what? Why was this the thank you for reading my article, but why was this the thing that you got nerd sniped by Aria of all things? Like that’s that’s the weirdest thing. And I think the other thing was, again, I don’t ask permission. And every time I made something more accessible, it worked better. And like our our whole thing is that the user with the least technical information should be able to use our website without like

having to ask for help without needing tooltips like ideally they should be able to look at it and know exactly what button they need to hit next which is a challenge but every time I tackled one of those problems and made it more accessible it was much easier to use and so I I don’t people have often been like how do you get accessibility to be more of a priority and I’m like it’s just a priority to me and I’m gonna keep doing it and like it helps that my direct boss that’s one of the reasons that he brought me on he was like she’ll she’ll

do it. He was out one time and he came back to a PR that had put back in all of the focus outlines on all of the interactive elements and I was like, I broke. He was like, okay.

Erika (16:34) That’s a good…

It’s a good point though. mean, like, it does, like, it can translate to things like page visits, like longer time spent on whatever screen, like, you know, the sort of like typical…

performance indicators that companies use for like, are we a good site or not? Are people visiting? Are they staying in our pages? If they’re more joyful and easier to use, the answer is probably yes. So you can probably find business, whatever, business justification for it. Yeah.

Abbey (17:15) business justifications.

And a lot of times it’ll be like, I can do this in one line with semantic HTML instead of 30 lines with like weird JavaScript. The other thing I wanted to say is like as people who are technically literate, we understand things more than the average person when it comes to interacting with technology, especially if you start learning about mobile accessibility, which I was lucky enough to get to do in my last job. There are so many things when like your parents get older, your grandparents,

people who come get something like a mess and start losing the ability to do fine motor skills and stuff you can be a resource for them talking about like you can you can just talk to your computer and it will type for you stuff like that they don’t even know that that’s a possibility they don’t know about it’s talk back on Android and voiceover on iPhone just like it’s voiceover on macOS and the day I knew that my dad actually understood my job was

when he came to me and he was like, you know, my my friend’s wife has advanced MS and she’s just asking Siri to use her phone. Is there something else that she could be doing? And so I and my coworkers at the time drew up this whole list of things and just like, you know, the fact that there are different ways that you can use your mouth to interact with the computer. You can have a stick, you can have a straw. There are like multiple different assistive technologies that you can use. And that kind of information, once you start to build it up, people really

need that because they that it isn’t like offered up. There’s no course teaching you how to use technology. And so I was in a I think a PT receptionist office. And I said something about like, yeah, technology is advancing very quickly, but we’re not making sure that everybody can use it while that’s happening. And she was just like, she almost started crying because she was just trying to operate the computer in front of her and the printer. And she was like, I’m so sorry, this is taking so long. And I was like, no.

We’re all figuring it out. As my P2 is like, Abbey, you might need to get back here. This printer is not, I was like, what? I’ll kick it for you. I did that in an IT job before, but like, no printers.

Brittany Ellich (19:11) Yeah.

Yeah, it’s amazing too how much there is to learn about accessibility. Like don’t feel like it’s very easy to learn. There’s definitely some good resources out there, but you like really have to dig for them, which is one of the reasons why I appreciate a lot of the blog posts that you put together because they’re readable and they’re very real too. So one of the examples we came across while preparing for this was your dark mode toggle.

Abbey (19:39) Yeah.

Brittany Ellich (19:40) and you have a whole blog post going over how you audited that and fixed it. Which one, I think that that’s, as developers, that’s often one of the first things we add to websites, whether or not that’s the most useful tool for everybody. And yours is gorgeous ⁓ as well. So I’m curious, what are your thoughts on blending that aesthetic vision for those things? And…

Abbey (19:52) Right.

Thank you.

Brittany Ellich (20:04) those with accessibility requirements as you’re building now. Like, is there anything you learned from that experience that you’ve carried forward since then?

Abbey (20:10) Okay, so my second

spicy hot take, really spicy hot take on this podcast, is that if you say that something can’t be pretty inaccessible, you’re not trying hard enough, or you need to get better, or one of those two. And shout out to Chris Bongers for the design for the Dark Mode toggle that’s on my portfolio site. And that series where I went and audited that toggle specifically because it came up was part of a six part blog series on auditing my own portfolio.

portfolio site, that is what got me the job at a digital accessibility company. Like I saw the post and I went, please, I have, I have blog posts. have so many, look at these. And they were like, okay, yeah, we need someone passionate. And that all started because of my friend who I am very lucky to know, Todd Libby, who is known for lobsters and accessibility. And he possibly in the other order, maybe.

he did a launch and learn in a networking group I was part of and he went through how he would look at somebody’s website when he was auditing it. So he went through all of the tools that he would use and then a lot of it after that was manual stuff. So there were also guides for all of the manual testing. And so I went through the whole process on my website and then identified all of the things that I wanted to fix. the drag mode toggle was one of those things. And I think the title of that one was

like

accessible dark mode toggle. And that’s how I met Graham, who really, he started with a comment that it had headings, like it was formatted. Like there, it was a lot. And I was like, buddy. And then we both thought we had insulted each other. It was a whole thing. We’re, good now we’re friends, but like, he was like, you can’t.

say that it’s accessible because it’s not 100 % accessible. And I’m like, but Todd Libby says that nothing is ever 100 % accessible. That’s impossible. Like you that’s how do we how do we do that? And so like through back and forth, I think I even added more stuff in either other blogs or like at the I went back and edited that one. But I had started with the beautiful thing. And it’s still a beautiful thing. I think the only thing that I would add to it now is creating an actual tooltip instead of using titles so that the tooltip would be activated when

and it’s focused with keyboard. Graham came up with things where I had the focus outline would come in gradually and he was like, you can’t see it for most of the animation. I was like, okay, yeah, that’s fair. But for people who are like, animations aren’t accessible. You just have to be able to turn them off. You can still have them. You just need an alternative where they’re off. So.

There are a lot of things now where now that I’ve been doing it for a while I’ll go to something and I’ll be like, huh I wonder how accessible this is and like start thinking about how I would make it more accessible and like what alternatives could possibly be there and sometimes, most of the time, it’s just like hey if I couldn’t see what would

want to know about this, which is why I think Blue Sky’s push for alt text is one of the most fun things that I’ve gotten to witness because I’ve been doing alt text for a long time on Discord, on Slack, on and it’s such a pain in the butt on Instagram. Not that I have an Instagram anymore, but there are a lot of times where it’s like really, really difficult and Blue Sky has the setting where it’ll remind you if you don’t add alt text to an image. And that has been so great because like I don’t have to remember that piece anymore. I just get to sit down and

describe the image and if you aren’t having fun thinking about the alt text for your image, I challenge you to go write alt text for a bunch of memes. Like a ton of memes. Because I use a lot of memes in my blog so I’ve had to do a lot of summaries that are like, you know, okay the stick figure sitting at the desk. What is the stick figure sitting at the desk trying to like describe? Okay, all right, maybe I don’t need to talk about his desk sitting. Maybe I just need to talk about this part of the image and then

giggling at my own description of the image and hoping that someone comes along and also giggles too. It’s more fun to include everybody is what I’ve found.

Bethany (24:10) Wait, can I go on a rant about alt text and Oatly, ⁓ the oat milk thing? All right, I’m excited to tell this story because it makes me truly upset. But one time I was scrolling Reddit and Oatly had an ad, like whatever, but they were using the alt text as like memeing. They were like, Reddit said we have to use alt text, but isn’t that boring? instead we’ll just like.

Abbey (24:12) Yeah. Yeah.

Bethany (24:35) Like basically make making fun of alt text and I was like, like people were roasting them in the comments. I’m like, maybe like somebody needs to know about this and that it’s actually truly like a terrible thing. So I emailed them, I emailed their like corporate communications. I was like, hey, this is really bad actually. Like these are the reasons you should care about accessibility, about alt text, like why it’s important, why it’s good for everyone. And they emailed back and they doubled down. They were like, no, don’t you think it’s like kinda dumb and kinda like unfortunate. So

To this day, every time I go to a coffee shop, I’m like, what brand of oat milk do you use? And if it’s oatly, I don’t. I don’t use it. I’m like, all right, whole milk’s great. I’ll take it. Exactly, exactly. So, oatly is terrible. That is my takeaway.

Abbey (25:10) Yeah, but with your wallet. God. ⁓

Yeah, so I’m a cancer survivor and one of the things that that involves is talking to a lot of people and going through lot of portals and doing a lot of things that can be very cognitively accessible.

murky is the best thing I can say. And there there was one time where I called a charity and I do think that they were trying so I’m not going to name them. But like when I call I like left this feedback and then I got this call and I was talking to her and she was like, well, we do have accessibility testing and I was like, okay, well, I think

You need to look at that accessibility testing because like an automated tool caught all of this. Like this is not… It’s like color contrast. Like I don’t… I don’t know… It’s really basic stuff and they were like, but one of the other things was…

So MyChart is a common app that medical institutions will use and you kind of get… It’s one of those things where I think they have a different implementation for each system. Like when you set it all up, like maybe you’re hosting your own backend or something like that. I don’t know. But all I know is I typed in a username and it changed my username without telling me on the backend. It took off a letter and made it all caps. And I figured it out because I know how to sit there and be like, forgot password.

What does it mean that username doesn’t exist? And like try different combinations and figure out what happened. And I was on the phone with one of their like, I don’t know if it was patient advocacy or like specifically to the setup of this tool. And I was describing what happened and she just went, I never would have figured that out. We can’t be doing that. was like, yes, you can’t just change the username without telling the person. They were like, I’m gonna put in a priority ticket for that one. I was like, thank you.

Or like just sometimes just sitting with like customer service people and they’ll be talking about like, I’m so sorry, the system is acting so weird. I’m like, you don’t have to explain anything to me. We’ll be here until the technology starts working again. That is totally fine. And the friends that’ll make you in customer service. those poor people.

Erika (27:13) On the topic of diversity, inclusion, you’ve been very generous in sharing about your experience with ADHD and specifically sharing about, you know, being vulnerable about the challenges and it definitely not being a superpower, but in some cases, it allowing you to do pretty amazing things like cram through an entire topic area in like one night if you really care about it. So,

Abbey (27:20) Thank

Erika (27:38) Can, would you share a little bit more about like how you kind of hold those two things in contrast of sort of the advantages and also the struggles and how you balance those two without diminishing either.

Abbey (27:51) Yeah.

the joke… You guys are bringing out all my spicy hot takes. I swear I have like three. And it’s all three of them. But anytime anybody tells me that ADHD is a superpower, I’m looking them in the eyes, maybe. And, I’m thinking…

So who is running your life? Is it a wife? Is it a partner? Is it a mom? who’s making sure that you make it to appointments? Who’s making sure you make appointments? Who’s making sure that you like have some sort of structure to your day? And like, it’s amazing how the difference between like going into an office and having that externally enforced structure and then having to do it yourself at home remote. Because I think a lot of people got diagnosed because lockdown happened and they were like, where’s someone telling me that I have to be so-

somewhere

by 8am. Like that’s I don’t have to do that anymore. I’m just pajamas all day. So I got diagnosed at 28 and I didn’t get diagnosed because I was failing at school or anything. I’ve always been good at school because of the externally enforced structure and the little rewards. you get an A. Okay, I’ll do anything for an A. Let’s do that. But like

once it came to like wedding planning was a really like I thought I was losing my mind during wedding planning and then remote work and

just getting so hyper focused on coding because I love coding and I want to be in the puzzle and like I’ll just try one more thing and then eight hours have gone by and I haven’t eaten, drank, done anything. Which one of the things I found through an ADHD coach that have been really helping with that is physical Pomodoro timers. So when it goes off, you can just flip it to set it to the next amount of time and

Even if I don’t get up, I at least know how much time is passing versus just being like, I’m full in. So the things, the reasons that I got diagnosed were more intangible than is usually the reasons that you go in. It was me being like, I feel like I’m bad at things. I’m so hard. I’m trying so hard all the time just to do the things that everybody else seems to be able to do normally. Like the grocery store is very difficult for me.

So it was really like, first it was a trickle of like memes. There was a meme about hyperactivity in adults that sounds, was like almost constantly singing a song, can’t sit still, likes to fidget with a lot of things, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And the fidgeting I had internalized to chewing my lips. So it wasn’t as like noticeable, but I showed it to my husband and he looked at the list and he was like.

Hmm. And I was like, yeah, that’s kind of sounds like me, right? And then he’s, he got diagnosed in college because he described what was going on with him to me. And I was like, that sounds like ADHD. And it turned out a doctor in like his, in like middle school told his mom that he couldn’t have ADHD because his teachers liked him. So we’ve come a long way in like the description of what ADHD is. But my brother got diagnosed young and we, we laugh now because we think and act so

Erika (30:13) Peace.

Abbey (30:37) similarly. So similarly. The signs were all there. The like complaints about how I tell stories. The fact that I couldn’t sit still. The fact that I have to try really hard not to interrupt people. And like taking struggling to take turns. I love running D &D. I love being a dungeon master but Baldur’s Gate.

you would have to bribe me to start again because you have to wait on everybody else’s turn. Like you can’t even, you can’t even make a dice tower or do anything with your, like you just have to sit there with a controller in your hand while other people are taking their turn. is the one thing that I don’t like about playing D &D. My friend who’s a DM like knows that I’ll just pull out knitting in the middle of D &D and then I’ll be, I’ll be better. I’ll be paying more attention if I’m knitting. It’s okay. And like when I was in school, teachers were like,

would you stop drawing and like would try to ask me questions to show that I wasn’t paying attention, but then I would answer the questions. So they were like, fine, you can draw, whatever, you be you. And there were a lot of things that were keeping me going during up through 12th grade.

sleep deprivation, caffeine, and then I got to college and it was just easier than my previous schooling. So I managed to get through that. But by the end of the college, like, I couldn’t finish a book anymore. Like, I was really burnt out on school and like trying so hard and all of that kind of stuff. So when I finally sat down, and I had gotten diagnosed with anxiety, erroneously, because that’s usually women are like, I’m struggling with all these things. You’re really anxious about things. It’s like, I don’t really think I’m that worried about other than like the outcome.

it doesn’t get done, which is normal. That seems like a normal thing to be anxious about. And so I sat down and I took the questionnaire that you can find them online. It’s what a psychiatrist will give you if you go to get diagnosed. And it basically asks questions like, you know,

Do you find yourself getting out of your seat in situations where you’re supposed to be sitting down like meetings? Do you find yourself struggling to not interrupt people? Do you struggle with this? Do you struggle with this? And I think like the max score is like 21 and I got like 17 or something and I was sitting there just staring at this piece of paper and I was like,

And because my brother and my husband had already been diagnosed a long time and we had looked at a bunch of different You know the Pomodoro method and this and that and he can’t do gamification if he knows it’s gamified He’s like no, I’m out So that doesn’t work for him But I was like I can apply all of these things to my own life People are like you’re so organized I’m like because I have 18 systems working in tandem and if one of them falls out then like everything spirals out of control and I have to go like integrate them back in and like add another tool like this one’s shiny it might be notion or obsidian

and then I’ve also got the bullet journal and I’ve got this and I’ve got that and they’re all of that is because I eventually just stopped expecting myself to remember things I stopped expecting myself to

act in situations like other people would act. I stopped expecting all of these things out of myself. I stopped expecting myself to be neurotypical and I was able to set a lot of things down and suddenly my life became a lot easier because up until then there would be times where I would be like on the floor just crying going like I’m trying so hard and my husband would be like I just wish people could see how hard you’re trying you’re trying so hard yeah you’re doing it you’re doing great but like

Once you sit there and start being like, okay, well, I’m going to have to sit still for a while. Let’s make sure I have a silent fidget toy near me. So that is not like making noise and people aren’t like disturbed by it. But I am able to sit there and not chew my lip and like try to focus on what’s happening and writing everything down instead of expecting myself to remember it. And all of these things, it really like more than feeling like

I am now labeled as disabled because ADHD is considered a disability, a cognitive disability. It showed me how many tools there are that I can have even without expecting my employer to like give me more time to do things or like having to ask for accommodations or anything like that. Just the small things where like, object permanence is hard. So if I want to remember something exists, it has to be like in a place that I go to regularly where I can see it. Like those little

things start to add up and suddenly you’re like wow my life is more designed for me. one of the reasons the best book is because it’s short, it’s easy, and it helps you set a lot of those things down.

And everybody was like, hey, honey, you have ADHD. She was like, what? And she had just found all of these accommodations. Like, you don’t have to unload the entire dishwasher at once. Blew my mind. I like, I can just do the glasses, and that’s 10%. And then that’s still progress. And so that carries over a lot into, you know, we talk about…

finding time to do the kind of content that we do and the writing and all of that kind of stuff and so like I’ll often start 10 % of a blog and be like I’m not feeling it right now and then suddenly I’ll be feeling it and be able to finish the 90 % later and when it comes to understanding that it can also be a boon this has really come full circle because I remember the day that I was like I’m not

gonna force myself to be boring anymore. I was like, what are you talking about? I was like, you know, like a lot of people are like, you need to be less impulsive. You need to be less this, but like…

The fun part of me is that I find I can find joy in this in the tiniest of things like I can get really excited about the smallest of things and then I’ll get invested and then I’ll be able to do it and a lot of the times what people are describing that they’re so amazed by like how what I’m able to do is me just being like I want to do that I’m gonna do that and not thinking about how hard it is and not like just because I want to I’m hyper focused on it and that is the core of ADHD like it yes it has its bad side where like it makes other things more

difficult, you know, like when I take my meds in the morning I should look at my to-do list for the day while those are kicking in, not, you know, start a video game. That could go wrong, but like…

The meds are there to help you build those kinds of habits. So like now when I go to eat lunch I think I should unload like the dishwasher a little bit and building up those little tasks with the help of medication has been really helpful. I also found help in a ADHD coach who really started questioning a lot of negative self-talk that I was giving myself and I thought I had like really cured a lot of that and I’m a big people who do negative self-talk in front of me and I’ll be like no no we are great. We’re dandy.

Do not say those things. you know, just like a lot of shoulds. Should I should be doing this? Why should I be doing that? Oh, I don’t know. Because, well, is it serving you? Like, we don’t need to do that. And then there’s a website called Ask Jan, J-A-N. And…

it will tell you all the accommodations you can ask your employer for. So if you have a disability or have been thinking, you know, like, is there anything that could make my life better at work with what I have ADHD, whatever, there is a list of things by disability that you can ask your employer for it legally. And so I find that helps a lot of people think about like what they need at work.

Mine has a lot of flexibility, which they’re willing to give me, so I haven’t had to ask for it. it’s definitely… You’ll find that when you’re the kind of person who knows that if you’re handed a problem, you’ll be able to solve it. That really opens a lot of doors for you as an employee, because if you become known as the person where like, this is really tough, Abbey will just figure it out.

then you, you know, you got a little bit of job security. the person, you know, you may get a couple of heart attacks and like prod bugs that you need to solve immediately, but like it helps when, you know, you’re having one of those neurodivergent days where you’ve done 16 hours of work and eight hours yesterday and now you cannot do work. So it’s a balance and

A study came out recently that was showing that ADHD does have some powerful strengths as long as you recognize that and also feel that that is a strength of yours.

It really felt when I was in Paris last year giving the talk at dot JS, about, coding and ADHD where we Excel, like it was a full circle moment for me because I had come so far in about four years from being like, why does my brain not work when I need to do things? Like, why do I get couch locked to? Yeah, I couch locked sometimes, but also I’m taking in all of the information that other brains don’t take in. And so I’m able to make all of

connections and I’m able to work on things that I’m interested in harder and faster than a lot of people. So it does, it’s a give and take. It’s like anything else in life where like, yeah, meat suits are great but you also gotta like feed them and water them and like give them sunlight and like, it’s how life is. So hopefully that answered your question. It was a long rant for sure.

Bethany (39:12) I muted myself. was such a comprehensive answer. And I was just nodding along. For anyone listening, I’m like, yes, this is awesome. I don’t have ADHD, but so many of the things you mentioned are things that are beneficial to me, like flexibility and having a remote job and chipping away at things. And I think this just kind of comes full circle to accessibility benefits everyone.

Abbey (39:13) Hahaha

lol ⁓

Bethany (39:38) that flexibility benefits everyone. And the more we can normalize that and making things work for people and meeting them where they are, like the better the world is, better the internet is and all that. And I think like just the core of that is employers having trust and like trusting you hired the right person and they will get the job done. Like it doesn’t matter if they do it the way that 90 % of people do it. It just matters that you give that trust and you convey like requirements and like.

that’s really all it takes. So I really, really appreciate you sharing all that. Also, yes, negative self-talk. find that I’ve noticed some colleagues, especially women, often like do negative self-talk. And it’s something that like frustrates me so much because it’s like you’re like you’re diminishing yourself in front of other other women, other people like who are younger. And it’s like, what what are they taking from that? Like, if you’re not good at this, am I not?

goodness and things like that. it’s like harmful for you, it’s harmful for other people, like build each other up, build yourself up and yeah.

Abbey (40:42) It’s so funny because when people do it in front of me, it’s not like I’m like, you know, like it would just be better if like we didn’t do it. I’m like, no, I think you’re awesome. You think you’re awesome. That’s not how this works. And so they’re like startled and then they’re like, you know what? Okay, fine. But I, I, I worked in high volume MSP recruiting for five years before I switched to coding. And one of the things that I tell people a lot is that people are hiring for, you do the job?

Bethany (40:57) I love that. I’m stealing it.

Abbey (41:09) That’s actually whether, like, can you get your work and then do the work and then hand in the work on, like, a deadline and can you keep track of that is really what people are hiring for. And when you can communicate to that more than anything else, that will help you get jobs. Like, I think a lot of people get distracted by, I need to have 30,000 tools on my resume and, I need to know all the languages. And it’s like, you need to be able to say that I can solve whatever problem you throw me and, like, I can learn if I don’t know it. And that’s…

That’s what people are expecting. So, you know, I say, but the market’s a little bit different than it was in 2021. So take that with a grain of salt.

Bethany (41:44) Absolutely, absolutely. No, I wish I could put on my resume. I get it done. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Well, we are coming up at time, but this has been such an insightful conversation. I really appreciate you sharing your perspectives on all these, sharing all the spicy takes. I love it. I mean, I think that they are very valid takes, honestly. ⁓

Abbey (41:48) I get stuff done. I get it done. Yeah.

Thank you.

Bethany (42:09) Thank you for sharing. So pivoting into our fun segment, I know like you mentioned that you enjoy coding like fun, little silly dumb projects. And so I figured we could take some time to go around and share maybe what the dumbest thing that we’ve ever coded was. So I can kick it off. It was tough for me to think of.

something because I am just not front-end minded, unfortunately. I feel, I’m trying, I’m trying. But I feel like it’s, if you code something dumb on the back end, it’s like a production issue waiting to happen or something. So, but the thing I came up with is, it’s still a thing now, but there’s a website called Battlesnake ⁓ where you basically program an API to.

Abbey (42:43) You

Mmm.

Bethany (42:54) play competitive snake with other people. It’s amazing. It’s awesome. so that’s probably I had a months long fixation on this project. And I was just like throwing everything at the snake. I’m like, how can I make it perform? And how can I make this better than everyone else’s? And it never was very good, but I was very about building the best snake that I could.

Erika (43:21) I feel like I’ve never finished any of my dumb projects, because at some point I realize that they’re dumb and then I stop. But I did get about like halfway through creating like an exploding kittens game, like an online exploding kittens, which I’m remembering now and like it actually feels less dumb now and feels like something I would pick up again. And yeah, that.

Fun- fun done.

Brittany Ellich (43:53) That’s so smart. I feel like any game you can play remotely, especially after all of the like crossword sessions we have had, like any game you can play remotely is great because remote workers are going to use that as their thing. you know, people are going to get together. I would love to play your exploding kittens game.

Erika (43:59) Yeah! ⁓

Okay.

Okay, I’ll pick it back up.

Brittany Ellich (44:12) Please do. Yeah, I think the, I’ve shared this before already on the podcast, but the likelihood of somebody listening to every single episode is probably quite low. So I think that the dumbest thing I’ve ever coded is probably my GitHub commit graph GAN website. Only because I thought this was such a great idea when I first did it. And now I am making the graph GAN and realizing

how awful it is to actually make this thing because I’m switching colors so often and that’s really hard in crochet. I mean, I’m sure it’s hard in knitting and stuff too, but like in crochet it’s terrible. And I’ve weaved in like a million ends and I’m like, this was such a bad idea. I’m still gonna finish it. ⁓ But it is definitely what I have been thinking about. was like, this is the dumbest thing I’ve ever made. Why did I do this to myself?

Erika (44:58) you

I remember the look of pure joy you had when you thought of this, It really is like a passion project.

Brittany Ellich (45:12) Let’s

go full circle now. I just need to finish it so I can get out of my head and be done with it.

Erika (45:20) Once you get to your vibe coding days, it’s pure emerald green.

Abbey (45:24) Yeah.

Brittany Ellich (45:24) Yep,

that’s true.

Abbey (45:26) I was legitimately mad the first time I changed colors in knitting because I was like, there’s nothing to this. It’s so easy. Why is it so easy? Compared to crochet. There’s still weaving in ends, but it’s not like a whole, like you have to figure out where the… Anyway, point being, I have two examples. And funnily enough, the finished one is a backend project. When I graduated bootcamp, I was like, I’m done.

these skills now. What do want to do? Create a discord bot that will send a dog picture to anyone who mentions a dog in my discord. My husband was like, you know, you have to put commands on that. You can’t just like have anyone mentioned a dog and a dog picture show up. And I was like, okay, so they can request dog photos, I guess. That was the thing. And then

My sister is engaged and this is her idea and I have to figure out how to make it happen and I’m sorry that I’m calling it Tom Sydney but it is a perfect example. So she wants on her wedding website for there to be a date, the fruit, the fruit a date and it’s gonna have a bomb on it. So it’s gonna be very concerned. It’s gonna be a very scared date and to save the date, the fruit, you have to type in the date of the wedding.

And I have to figure out how to make that happen. This is my job as sister of the pride. And I was like, I’m honored and I know about how to do about 50 % of that. So that’s going to be fun. ⁓ Yeah. Yeah. So at me, if you have tips, I guess I might have to buy the Josh Camo coins.

Brittany Ellich (46:47) This is amazing.

Bethany (46:49) Yeah, that’s truly incredible.

Honestly, All right, well, that is very fun. I’m so excited to see what you come up with there. Please post updates on the Save the Date. And super excited about that. So for wrapping up, where can folks find you?

Abbey (46:55) Yeah.

will do.

So if you can spell Abbey Perini, A-B-B-E-Y-P-E-R-I-N-I.dev.com.shop. got stickers. I got a digital garden. got… .dev has like my upcoming speaking and stuff like that. And then my handle is at Abbey Perini everywhere now, I think. So Blue Sky,

things. I’m in places. GitHub. I’m there. You can find me. The SEO is great for this name.

Bethany (47:36) Awesome, yes, props for having unique names. But thank you for joining, really, really appreciated our conversations. And to our listeners, thank you so much for tuning in to Overcommitted. If you like what you hear, please do follow, subscribe, or do whatever it is you like to do on the podcast app of your choice. Check us out on Blue Sky and Discord and share with your friends. Until next week, bye.

Abbey (47:39) Thank you.