EEvery day (most days) I get up, sit down at my laptop, and write texts. Usually they’re not terrible. Sometimes they’re even great. I type and type, only taking breaks to watch cat TikToks and eat yogurt from a tube.
In the beginning, every little recognition felt like I was standing on a podium. An editor’s polite rejection of my pitch? A retweet from another writer? Getting my work published without pay? Every milestone was life-changing. The mere idea that I might not be quite so terrible at the thing I was trying to do felt like a glitter bomb had exploded in my stomach.
Over time, I got better at it. I published a few books. I won an award. Editors came to me and asked me to write something. And of course it was wonderful. But the more successful I became, the less successful I was. I had learned to be a better writer than most people, and in doing so I had picked, eaten and spat out all the fruit that was easiest to harvest.
When you’ve become good but not brilliant, people stop saying “good job.” They expect you to be competent. No one celebrates your 300th article about how sad you were as a kid, but now that you’re an adult, you only cry for a few days. A sense of achievement comes only at the highest levels. Did you win money? No? Then stop whining.
As time went by without constant applause, I felt like the only explanation was that I was actually terribly bad at writing.
I decided to study economics, partly out of masochism, partly because AI is quickly taking my work away. But I also wondered how I could satisfy the desperate part of me that needs constant validation since I already have the maximum number of cats allowed?
Differential calculus, apparently.
As a writer, I approached my new life like I did everything else: by buying notebooks. Then I sat in front of my Zoom lecture, yogurt tubes in hand, waiting while other students tuned in. They looked smart. They probably had calculators off-screen.
The teacher began with pictures of different fruits embedded in curly brackets.
“Wow,” I thought. “I have no idea what this means.”
It was a wild, unfamiliar feeling. Not because I’m a genius, but because I’ve spent so many years in my writing bubble, doing what I’m already good at.
“These fruits are a set,” said the teacher. “They can all be described by conditions under which the set is connected, which is called a function.”
“Oh my goodness!” I said, slightly hysterical. “I have absolutely no idea what’s going on here.”
I wrote in my notebook and used different colored pens when I thought something might be a formula (y = x2). In the background, I googled basic mathematical terms (“integer”) and scribbled them on the lecture slides. I scribbled notes that I knew I would need later (“Because the flat side is at the top or bottom!”).
Even though it would have been a completely different language most of the time, I started to understand it. Linear, quadratic and polynomial functions. First and second order derivatives. Using the determinant of a matrix to find its inverse. Every time I sat at my desk, I learned something new – no matter how small.
I felt like the most powerful person on earth. A mere mortal – a middle-aged mortal, even – who had developed a passable grasp of 12th grade math. The low-hanging fruit lay on the forest floor and I devoured it.
During the day I continued writing. I formed sentences that would change the way people perceived the world and themselves, and I felt nothing. Then I settled in with my textbook, Introduction to Econometrics, and read. My brain expanded and contracted. Every time I recognized a concept or halfway understood a calculation, I felt a rush of success. It was invigorating to know that I was so terrible at math that my next success was always just moments away.
This morning I went to class prepared to do absolutely mediocre. I took notes as my professor described methods for economic evaluation of energy projects. Most of them were simply words I knew in sentences that meant nothing. Other students asked smart questions with complex answers that I may never understand.
But I got a glimpse of it. Enough to sense the small spark of human development.
I’ve had absolutely tiny wins for five weeks now. I may never be a great economist. But why would I want to be when I can keep being pretty bad at it and keep winning forever?
