Writing pause and new plans

I have not written anything for a while—more than a month. I feel so bad about it. It was my writing challenge, and I could not complete it—I could not even complete half of it. For that month, I stopped doing almost everything. All my challenges and habits were put on hold: reading, meditating, the gratitude challenge, exercising, and writing. Even my final project for CS50 was put on hold.

What happened?

After the Latvian song and dance festival at the start of July, I was sick for about two weeks. It was good for a while because I was really tired and needed a break, but the problem started when I needed to start doing things again. I was so stressed about the things I have not done and need to do, that I did not do anything at all. For the next two weeks, I was not doing anything productive because I was just putting everything off; I did not want to think about how much I was missing and needed to do. At that point, I was behind in everything I had planned, like taking two additional courses on top of everything else I was doing. (Now that I understand that it was a bit too much for me, I needed to take it slow.)

I forgot the most important thing about challenges: if you slip up, you need to get back up and continue. No matter how much time has passed. This is how I am continuing—this is not really what I wanted to write at the beginning, but I want to publish something. I have been writing, I have rough draughts, and I have gotten some of my work deleted (I hate some of the text editors out there, ugh!). So many things have happened.

How to get up?

After a month, I was advised to just delete everything from my calendar and start fresh with new priorities and new goals. That is what I did. I let go of those two courses—a Harvard morality course and an AI course—and focused on the things that I had done before—reading, writing, learning CS50, and everything else. My new priority and goal were to learn high school mathematics in August.

So my new plan is to learn math and complete the CS50 final project (Finally! So much time has passed since I started it!) and return to writing and other habits. That reminds me, I will be writing more about this: why it is not a good idea to do too many habits and challenges at the same time. Learned the hard way.

So then the question is:

Why do I need to learn math?

This September, I will be starting my first semester at the University of Latvia, studying computer science. For one of my math courses, there will be an exam to see how much high school math you remember. From my understanding, if you get 7 or more, you pass the exam. Otherwise, you have to take a special course aimed at filling in the gaps in your knowledge of high school mathematics, after which you can take the exam again. I do not want to take this course. It would fill up my time and teach me things I already knew. It is not a problem for me to learn this. I like mathematics and was okay at it in school, and now I just need to refresh my memory.

New plan

Since the day that I am writing this (August 14, 2023), I have been learning for more than two weeks. I have 10 free days left until the start of the semester. I probably have a bit more time, considering that the introduction lessons will be in the first week, but that is mostly it.

My plan until a few days ago was to learn 1 unit a day from the Khan Academy Algebra 1 and 2 courses, but then I found out that I have to know geometry, statistics, and probability too. So starting a few days ago, my plan changed to two units a day. Mostly everything is not new information for me, but the last time I was studying math was for the exam in 2019—so four years ago. I am a bit rusty and have forgotten most of it.

At first, one unit per day took me about three hours. Now, with two units, it is about five. It may seem a bit excessive, but I like it. Sometimes it is hard to stay on track, but I push myself every day to complete the needed units and lessons. I like how Khan Academy teaches. It has short videos on the subject and many exercises where you can immediately use the knowledge gained. The exercises are very practical and on point. You need to think through them, and they give a more in-depth understanding. If at any time you are stuck, there are references to the videos and articles explaining or giving step-by-step instructions on what to do next.

Right now, I have already completed Algebra 1 and about 35% of Algebra 2. Geometry has never been my strongest subject, but I am kind of excited to learn about it, knowing how good the courses are.

So that is my plan for the rest of the month.

Conclusion

I am restarting writing again, exercising, reading, and learning. My days are filled again, and I am not running away from the things I need to do. I know that I can return to writing whenever I want. Next time, I will be writing about the writing challenge and my experience.