Changing Your Direction
Roses are red, but life is not blue…
So this is my first, not math-related topic but I am pretty sure that it is not the last. How can I be so sure? Because I changed my direction and adjusted my life a little bit. As a result, this story will tell you how you can do it as well. Now, let me start with my case. I sharply changed my mind a week ago and am glad that it happened before the new year because the year wishes give me the motivation to keep going with this change. But, a fun fact, I absolutely do not need any motivation with what I want to do because I do want to achieve this goal which is a pure decision made by and only by me without any external factors.
The story starts here…
Ok, enough with the preface. Here starts the story: I was very good at maths at secondary school and thanks to my family and relatives I wanted to become a math professor. Thus, I shaped every opportunity according to this plan. I rejected so many joyful clubs in my school and also so many activities outside the school in order to focus on studying maths. Well, there was a price to my studies and it was either a medal in math olympiads or money but I didn’t gain any of them but that’s not the point. The point is that I was so focused on studying maths at university and in high school that I was even scared of thinking other career opportunities that might suit me even better than maths. I was so blind that I thought I cannot be anything but a mathematician. As you may predict, this led to complete failure. There is something I am so much proud of though. And it is me learning Python and Flutter by online courses. I learnt how to build an app by using Flutter during the quarantine by Angela Yu’s courses. And I learnt Python from Udemy, I forgot some of my skills but I am now taking Angela’s course for Python too and I am sure I will commit it to my mind because I AM LEAVING MATHS AND TURNING MY FACE TO COMPUTER SCIENCE, BLOGGING, YOUTUBE, AND HEALTHY FRIENDSHIPS. That, my friends, is a huge change in direction for me. And yes, it was hard to admit that I do not want to study maths at university but the reason for its being hard is my blindness about the world around me. I was driven by the desire to gain a medal and money for 2 long high school years. Opening my eyes did not happen in one day. It took time to fully observe the opportunities I reject every time I close myself to my room to study maths.
But I can tell you something about the first day of realizing my situation. The penny dropped in my head when I actually accepted that I had no friends. Everybody around me was just a student and I was not willing to bond with other people. I felt alone and trust me loneliness is not good, it IS bad and harmful for your mental health. The good thing is when you realize the problem that bothers you, you dedicate yourself to solve it, you try to make yourself happy. And that was what I did. I bonded with people around me and had my beautiful friend and I can say that she is the best, for real. Then I had a gang, I now have 3 besties. I care for my besties, I give from myself, I sacrifice things in order to make them happy. And happiness is reciprocal. Your real friends do realize that you care for them and so they are. My birthday was actually celebrated by my besties for the first time in my life. I used to celebrate it with my family but having friends to share your life is AMAZING. I cannot find words for that.
Now comes the math part…
I was listening to a seminar about studying abroad and future jobs and realized that being a mathematician was not exactly the thing I thought it to be. It required cathing up with the news in the math world by reading magazines and following blogs and, I am gonna be honest, it was too damn hard and I just did not want to spend my life catching up the news every day and trying to find the right topic for students. I put aside all the 9 hours study I made every day to earn a medal in olympiads and gave a straight decision that I was not going to study maths. Instead, now I want to pursue my interests in coding, blogging, and starting a YouTube channel. Even the thought of it makes me feel less concerned and less stressed because I know that I do want to do these things. It is not a decision that is shaped by my family, relatives and school like my math career was. It is decisions shaped by my interests, my thoughts and my observations. Now, I choose what to do without any expectations.
Final words…
And you, my friend, can also make a change in your direction at any time. Your direction is your destiny so to change your destiny you should change your direction and accept that you can miss a lot of opportunities and you can be in a wrong or unhealthy mindset for a long period of time. The important and the hard part is realizing what is going on with yourself. After realizing, you can always find a way to fix your life.
