Python Migraines & the Pursuit of Optimal Workflows

Welcome to the Book Club! Unfit Parent: A disabled mother challenges an inaccessible world. A Guest Article by Jessica Slice.

In January, I published Book Recommendations for your 2025 Reading Goals and innocently asked if anyone would like to start a book club. Well, someone did! Our first book is Against Technoabelism by Professor Ashley Shew, and the second book will be:

Unfit Parent: A disabled mother challenges an inaccessible world

Unfit Parent, examines the obstacles that disabled parents face, the societal beliefs that undergird those barriers, and the political and economic systems that hold it all in place. Unfit Parent explores how disability culture and the strengths inherent in having a body like mine would, if included in parenting culture, make contemporary parenting more sustainable.

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Before you read

A little terminus explanation before you read:

• POTS: Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome is characterized by a sudden increase in heart rate when sitting up or standing.

• EDS: Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome is a genetic connective tissue disorder, characterized by overly flexible joints, joint pain, stretchy skin, and abnormal scar formation.

Guest Article by Jessica Slice: Python Migraines & the Pursuit of Optimal Workflow

There was a long period after I became disabled when I didn’t do much. My only job was to take care of my new body and learn what it needed. But that left time for other, smaller pleasures: reading, journaling, doing the crossword. My then-boyfriend, David, was a software engineer, and he wondered if I might enjoy learning to code. “You could do it from home,” he said, “and you’d be good at it.” He was self-taught. He showed me a site that he thought would be a good starting point: Learn Python the Hard Way.

The philosophy of the site is that you learn by doing. You type what the author types, and gradually build up the muscle memory to understand programming in a visceral way. The approach made sense to me. I breezed through the exercise. I understood the Python language. I felt my brain turning on.

And then, I crashed. Migraines, vertigo, nausea — all the symptoms that I had become, frustratingly, accustomed to since I became disabled flared up. For almost a week, I couldn’t read, let alone move.

My disability came relatively late in life. While taking a hike in Santorini at the age of 28, I experienced heat exhaustion. This triggered a syndrome known as POTS, caused by a latent neurological condition called EDS. For me, POTS means that I spent most of the day reclined in bed. When I stand, my heart rate speeds up, and my blood pressure drops. After 30 seconds, I start to feel faint.

By the time I tried to learn programming, the idea that POTS could slow me down physically was not surprising. But the idea that it could have mental consequences was newer to me, and disquieting. One common caricature of disabled people is that we spend all day at home in front of our computers. Even this felt out of reach now.

I abandoned the Python course. In reality, I was never going to be a software engineer. I had already been accepted to an MSW program. What I didn’t know is that my research in grad school would lead, with the encouragement of my mentor, to a career as a writer. However, there is one similarity between programming and writing on thorny topics: they can both break your brain. When I was researching topics for my book Unfit Parent — such as the forced sterilization of disabled parents — I felt those same Python migraines returning.

Many programmers know about the Pomodoro Technique: you focus on a task for 25 minutes, then take a 5 minute break to rest, then repeat. In my professional life now, I take a similar approach, except I often don’t repeat. I let my body and my brain tell me what they are capable of, and I stop when I reach my limit. A good work day is one where I am able to focus for one hour. In total.

There is a well-known, and growing, body of research that says pushing yourself past your limits isn’t healthy, or productive, or “optimal.” What I learned from Unfit Parent — both the content of the book and the process of writing it — is that there is no optimal process. You do what you are capable of. You rest when you need to. You ask for help. You rely on the people in your network to help you. And you help them, too. Any task, be it programming or parenting, cannot be done in a silo, at breakneck speed. We must go at the pace that we can tolerate, and we must take the journey together.

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About the author: Jessica Slice

Jessica Slice is a disabled author, speaker, and essayist. Her forthcoming book, Unfit Parent: A Disabled Mother Challenges an Inaccessible World has been shortlisted for the J. Anthony Lukas Prize.

She is the co-author of Dateable: Swiping Right, Hooking Up, and Settling Down and This is How We Play, as well as the forthcoming This is How We Talk, and We Belong, which was co-authored with the late Judy Heumann.

She has been published in Modern Love, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Alice Wong’s bestselling Disability Visibility, Glamour, and Cosmopolitan. She is a frequent and highly requested guest on podcasts, including Slate and The New York Times.

She is a graduate of Davidson College and Columbia University (MSW) and is represented by Jill Marr at Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agents. She lives in Toronto with her family.

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