She means well.

Check, m8. Tech, h8.

I have been unemployed since September 2017. I don't call it that, you see, because it would worry my mom and I weirdly feel guilty about filing for unemployment, even though I fit the criteria.

And while I am technically unemployed, I have managed to work a lot. I've contributed to open source projects, launched two of my own, and become a sponsored developer. I have helped massive Fortune 100 companies make more money, by improving and building upon their design systems and by concepting coherent campaigns from abstract technical concepts. Basically I can show you the stuff I don't get paid for, and can't show you the stuff I did. Neither can my bank account.

I've applied for hundreds of jobs, interviewed at dozens of companies, and shortlisted for onsites at all your favourite darlings in the Bay. I've been rejected for all your "Formerly @company" before you launched your own, which you won't interview me for because you haven't hit your quota of first-five white dudes with four-letter names. I want to be sorry about that sarcastic and sardonic soliloquy. But is it still sarcasm when you follow through?

I told you your interview process was abusive, and yet, you responded with requests for me to interview. While I love a well-crafted irony, I'm afraid that I must break the fourth wall to tell you that I'm officially no longer starting new interviews anymore. Not for roles, at least. I love being on podcasts, though, so I can work on perfecting my nuanced pronunciations, rasps.

I wondered if maybe it was me or something I said or did?

I contain multitudes, but so many of them don't fit into that little LinkedIn quip that's either your Role at Company or your abstracted identities reduced to 2-3 words. Designer. Writer. Speaker. And if you're proud of where you work and/or if you're drinking the KoolAid you're the former, and if you're not or you're unemployed like me, you're the latter. And then once you've climbed the ladder at the former, you can then safely return to the latter.

I've made you LOL and RT with shitposts about JS, CSS, HTML, YAML, and HAML in the thousand. I've made you unfollow me in the dozens with two words, 11 letters that isn't a slur, but because you hate being identified that way, you'll tell me it is. But now you're kinda mad I won't say what it is, right? Even though you don't want me to say it.

I write quite a bit of code and make things with grids and so much of it is display: hid. Cuz. You tell me what I make isn't real because it's experimental and not in real production so can you blame me as I leave it caged in staging? As my real good mate (who legit is never late to check, your hate, mate) would say, the C in CSS stands for Corporate Cogs. And when I leave the thought-I-was-safe-here-but-wasn't box-shadows, I get told by the Third-wave coffee-sipping Ranks of you that I write isn't real because it's not functional or even object-oriented (but it's not like you don't objectify object-oriented languages, too, bro). It's just markup, you tell me, but I'd really like to invite you to sit on that element of yours. It's not my fault that <divs> taped with aria-roles and computer-generated classes are sharper than soft sweet semantic <buttons>, bud. Just kidding, I know your name is Chad and the reason you don't have time to write semantic markup is because you're busy anonymously wheeling and dealing in hate on 8chan with your Klan.

I'm not really worried about Chad because he's the lad we've always had. Meet Becky and her '90s-monikered Friends of poorly-seasoned yet still salty serf and TERFs that fret more about me saying the "N-word" than Chad rapping the n-word along to Chris Brown, but like, I wanna know, you girls read that new Brené Brown? Purportedly I'm being <div>-isive.

And you'll stay out of my unecessary politics by seeing both row and reverse-row and yet dive deep into right field to the rescue when some of you make—what is it?—diving gestures?—on conference stages and in documentation pages and in mocked pronouns and it's fine until they're in town marching with their boys, proud.

But this canary had been racking up a storm with her fellow birds, but probably she's gonna spend less time crafting in coughing fits and instead more time smashing commits. Her wings are sore from carrying this ethical load (down the mine and assuring you she's fine, and floating the column-raft for dafts) so instead she's gonna be JAMStacking code or trying out Node. Maybe occassionally leaving some treasures for funny bunnies?

See you in ten or twenty or twenty or thirty or so out there on The DaVinci CodePen, then!