Sometimes, I wish I had any skill at all for operational math. But then I think if I did, I would’ve had a really high chance of going into academia.

With apologies to friends in academia, but it pays poorly and chances are I would’ve become an adjunct and have hated my life.

So I dodged two bullets. Avoiding academia because of complete dyscalculia and inability to do anything beyond basic algebra* was the first.

The second was journalism. Even though I was a journalist and was offered a pretty good civilian journalist job at Charleston’s main daily paper in 1999, I turned it down simply because I was tired of journalism.

Being bad at math helped me make so much more money than I otherwise would have.

Being sick of journalism also saved me from a life of probable penury.

So much stupid luck involved in living.

*Though I can easily understand the concepts behind any math, and understand 100% the solution to a problem when it’s explained, just can’t work out anything myself.