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A fairytale about software engineering and mental health
Welcome to my tiny corner of the internet. I’m Jaid, neither famous, nor particularly special. I work as a software engineer in Cape Town, South Africa, and this blog aims to merge my experiences in the tech industry, as well as my personal interests in mental health and storytelling.
It is rare that I come across a software engineer who speaks openly about their mental health. Granted, it’s a very personal thing, but there is also somethig to be said for the stigma surrounding mental health in the tech industry. We’re developers, engineers, programmers. We focus mostly on facts and logic, and not so much on abstractions - unless it’s related to the creation of an abstraction to handle complexity and reduce overhead in software. Only through recent conversations and personal interactions with various people in the industry, have I heard stories about depression, burnout, and the software engineer’s go-to mental affliction: Imposter Syndrome. This blog aims to bring light to these issues, through the compassionate lens of my own experiences.
I myself, suffer from various mental health issues. The most pressing issue I deal with as of 2023 is an eating disorder, coupled with depression and PTSD. I also have a chronic physical illness, rheumatoid arthritis. These things often make it difficult for me to function on a daily basis, and it is only through two-plus years of various forms of ongoing treatment, have I been able to get a handle on the interesting mess that is my life.
Posts you can expect are stories of my mental health experiences, my knowledge and perspective on various software engineering topics as I learn and grow within my career, all told through fairytales. I also do my own drawings and graphics for this blog.
It’s a journey to an enchanted world, and you’re invited along for the ride.
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