Girl and Python drawing by Fox Larsson - from Some Stories Squared series

Girl and Python — Some Stories Squared

I am usually not this literal, but yup, this is a Python pic.

For the past 54 days, one to fifteen hours of my day each day have been dedicated to studying Python and things connected to Python.

It’s not my first programming language. I’ve done some PHP and some JavaScript. And I use PHP in my daily work. But Python is special. It’s a language that feels right.

The whole thing about me and programming is that programming makes me feel safe. Here’s the thing about writing code: when something’s not working there’s always a very particular reason. It may be a dumb reason, like making a typo or missing a space or a colon somewhere. Or it may be something more complicated, like getting something wrong in the logic of your code. It might even be several things, but they’re all specific things, and they’re things you can find and fix.

That’s something that makes me feel in control. With life, things can be just screwed up, with no rhyme or reason. With code, it always makes sense, even if it’s a screwed up sort of sense.

I started learning Python a few days after a car crashed into the side of the taxi I was riding in.

It wasn’t too bad of an accident, as those things go.

One moment I was heading for lunch with my boyfriend after sculpture class, somewhat zoned out and listening to an episode of Darknet Diaries. And then everything was dark, the world slowly coming back into view, nonsensical and blurred, me trying to process the loud thud I must have heard a while ago and that was only now starting to register, and the stingy ringing somewhere inside the suddenly giant space of my head.

I brushed it all off at first, but I ended up being more shaken than I anticipated. Maybe, in part, because the concussion kept making me nauseous and giving me pretty bad headaches for a minor eternity. The moment just kept playing through and through in my head, and it always ended with the thud and the ringing in my ears.

The way I’m trying to write this story is really wrong. I am trying to write it as if it made sense when it doesn’t. Nor does it really have structure. But written text should.  Nor should it sound like a pity tale. But it does.

I don’t know a right way of telling it, and there probably isn’t one. It’s just that the world stopped making sense for the third time in the span of less then half of a year. And I needed it to.

Python made sense. Python was magic. The stream of beginner exercises and simple projects I found on Hyperskill gave the world shape.

I love code. Code soothes my anxiety. It makes me feel in control. Even when it’s eternally frustrating, I know that there’s a reason for something not working, and it’s usually something very specific. And it can be fixed. It’s a big relief for my inner control-freak.

And for those of you who do code, the DRY principle has sure as hell not been applied to this text. You’ll have to forgive me that and enjoy the pic.

I really appreciate you sharing,
Fox

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4 thoughts on “Girl and Python — Some Stories Squared”

  1. Your feelings that you have and your thoughts that circle in your head and all the confusion, which I also find in your beautiful picture, reminds me so much of myself. It was an accident that also changed my life massively in the last half year and left me with all these questions and all this emptiness. Far too early my youngest sister was torn out of this world, was torn away from my family and me, a piece of our life. The grief is still deep. Some days I seem to be standing beside me, just like your model’s eye is standing beside her head. In my search for stability and structure, I went further and further into the world of code, a world where truth truly exists, because true is what we write in code.

    But I also began to rediscover the world, myself and what has happened. The question of purpose, of why, I may never be able to answer with 100% accuracy, but I can see a path, a line that runs through so may thins in my life. I like to tend to focus on the bad things: Why did my sister have to leave? Why did all this have to happen?
    But when I leave this bad behind and widen my view, I see the good things. I found a stronger access to myself. I learned from my sister, who had a life so much harder than I did, I learned that I can go further, that I can achieve more if I only want to… and I have been allowed to learn and realize so much more.

    There are many gifts in this life, even if there is much suffering. We only have to look and accept those things.

    Cordially
    A friend

    1. Thank you so much, friend! It meant a lot to me to read your comment.

      I am so sorry about your sister, that’s such a terrible loss. I’m happy you’re slowly finding a way, and that my pic resonated with you. My biggest hope for the art I make that it makes somebody feel less alone and a bit more understood and seen.

      Sending you my warmest,
      All the best,

      Fox.

  2. Please keep up that good work. You have no idea how people ask updates about your pieces on a daily basis.
    We need a vernissage for you.

    Your fan,

    Ben

    PS: Your snakes are Amazing!

    1. Thank you so much, Ben!

      I’ll be sure to put together a show when this season of square pics is complete, but if all goes well that’s six or seven more months of drawing from now, they do take a while to draw. 🙂

      I try to share work in progress on twitter and instagram, though probably not as regularly as I should.

      P.S.: still thinking about the right direction for the snakes. 🙂

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