Tag: Magic

chalkboard with written equation for math lesson

Math Is Magic

I love math! To anyone who hates math, I ask you to recognize how often you use math every single day. Do you snooze your alarm when it goes off in the morning? You actually use math to determine how many times you can snooze & still have enough time to get ready before you’re running late. Do you love to go shopping? You use math to identify the best sales & optimize your ability to get the most items based on how much money you have in your bank account. Do you like to go out to restaurants or order food for delivery? You use math to decide how much you can afford to order, how much to tip, or how to divide the check among your friends & family. You use math without even thinking about it because math is magic.

Math is a Language

To me, learning math is similar to learning a language. After taking many math courses in colleges, I learned how as long as you understood a mathematical theory, you didn’t even need numbers to find the correct answers. My boyfriend in college would often watch me do my homework unable to understand how I could start with a long & complicated math formula with no numbers to still reach a numerical answer, such as 7.

Math proficiency is actually a superpower that runs in my family. My father is a civil engineer Dad, and my great-grandmother is the first female chemical engineer in the Philippines. Math & Numerology have always been a topic of conversation during family dinners. We discuss Life Path Numbers of different members of our family, as well as the meanings behind each number.

My Math Journey

In grade school, I finished my tests within minutes then spent the rest of the test time drawing on the back. During high school, I was a math tutor. In college, I was the nerd in Calculus who aced the exam without the curve. In college, I almost switched my major from Psychology to Mathematics. But after taking a Game Theory class, I fell in love & decided on Economics instead. My final project evaluating the Game Theory that the Joker uses in The Dark Knight is still a memorable favorite of my time in college.

Even though my primary career history has never involved analytics or too much math, I still proactively find ways to use math a lot. As a bank teller, I mastered my 10-key, & I can still count out cash & make change with ease. As a manager, I’m a fan of giving my team members performance metrics, so they can see how their work fluctuates week over week. And any opportunity to pick up a side project to improve the greater team’s current analytics, I jump at it.

In terms of my blog & social media channels, I’m also obsessed with looking at my insights to see the performance of every single piece of content that I post. I’m incredibly data-driven because numbers don’t lie! I always make note of my daily, weekly, & monthly metrics to create my baseline performance metrics & create new goals for myself over the next week, month, & year.

Why Math is Magic

Nearly everyone around the world uses math every day. And as Cady Heron put it in Mean Girls, “it’s the same in every country”. Even if you don’t speak another language, people around the world are easily able to convert currency, because, despite varying exchange rates, the mathematical conversion will ALWAYS be the same.

Scientists around the world use the same mathematical equations whether it’s a natural science, engineering, medicine, or finance. Determining the success or failure of a company is math. Math is magic because it brings the world together without even trying.

XO Denise

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star glitters with magic text

Do You Believe in Magic?

I spent the majority of my childhood wanting to have magical powers. Despite my ex-boyfriends who insist that magic & alternate universes only exist in movies, I do believe in magic. I dream often about being a witch, flying, & conjuring anything I want. For a long time, I would tell others that if magic does exist, & I never get a letter of acceptance into Hogwarts, I’m going to be pissed. Last year, I even wrote in my bullet journal: “Can I please have magic?”, under the heading Questions for the Universe. This past January, during the week of my birthday, my magic finally found me.

The Beginning of 2021

Every year, in December, I do a Life Audit. Last year, COVID-19 stay-at-home orders took a huge toll on my mental health. I set new goals for 2021 to positively transmute my emotions. I use my creativity to stay productive & work toward my longer-term life goals. After an angry couple of months, I had a lot of pent-up energy to transmute & write about. Beginning on my birthday, I woke up every day for eight days straight, ready to write a new blog post. Ironically, when I stop trying to be strong & let my guard down, the magic inside me emerges & shines.

During that week & in the weeks that followed, I thought I was going crazy. Every single day, I cried on & off. I had so many headaches & sporadic pains in my chest & stomach. The old me was officially dead because one of my spiritual gifts is being an empath. I spent the majority of my life blocking out my emotions. I believed that it made me “better” or “stronger” than others since my emotional state never affected me. But in reality, closing my energy & separating myself from my emotions made me weaker & prevented my gifts from blossoming.

Once I finally let myself feel my emotions, I knew that I could never go back. I also began to hear voices, telling me to clean to feel better. I grew up being messy, & I usually only straighten up my spaces when having guests over. But I suddenly found immense comfort in spiritual cleansing & cleaning my spaces regularly.

Psychic or Psychosis

It’s completely ok if you think I’m crazy or lying. All brilliant & creative people from history were a little crazy in my opinion, but I know my truth. My dark night of the soul in January completely shows my signs of psychosis. Luckily for me, I have a loving & supportive family. I chose to confide in my family members, & they understood that I was going through something. But instead of sending me to a mental hospital, judging me, or insisting that I “get help” so they didn’t have to deal with me, they let me work through my emotions. They supported me in my dark state & allowed me to self-heal at my own pace.

Almost everything after the week of my birthday began to trigger me. At times, I still can’t watch TV or listen to music with lyrics, so I find comfort in sitting at my windowsill with my AirPods, listening to Lofi music instead. Being bombarded by emotions that I know aren’t my own is heart-wrenching. Despite starting xodenisejoyce, I sometimes feel compelled to uninstall all of the social media apps from my iPhone.

For a while, I found peace by working out every day. But now, most days, at the gym, I immediately turn off the TV, because commercials, the news, & even screensavers feel triggering. I also mute the music & my spin instructor during Peloton rides. In January, I spent the majority of my booked gym time working out while crying & reflecting on past trauma. But with every tear shed & trauma from my past re-examined, I heal my heart, end toxic cycles, & become happier.

Sadness Leads to Joy

Like the Pixar movie, Inside Out, you need to be sad in order to be happy again. The old me that chooses to block out emotions & prevent myself from feeling any negative emotional baggage that still needs to be healed is finally dead & gone. My gift of magic found me because I was finally the best version of myself, & ready to take it on.

I began teaching myself how to read Tarot in November, but it wasn’t until January that reading energy became exponentially more clear. My heart was still closed in those early months. It also wasn’t until December that my Dad finally told me that my grandmother & he both also read cards. My magical gift is generational, & I know that it finally found me when the timing was right.

Do you believe in magic? Does magic run in your family? Let me know in a comment below.

XO Denise

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