1, 2, 3, 4 ... oh no, I missed again.
Let's try again,
1, 2, 3, 5 … yes, we are getting it.
7, 10 … oh, what? There it slips again.
This was me, nervously trying to count prime numbers during a hackathon to calm myself down , so I could remember a CSS style which i need to add in the code.
Meanwhile, my friend was working (wrestling) with the Java ,While I was forgetting the most basic CSS properties and stressing myself out and counting primes .
So why do i count primes on that situation ?
For me, counting primes is a calm down ritual which i picked it up from watching Foundation Series in Apple TV,in which a character called Gaal Dornick ,a Math Prodigy who counts primes to stay calm during uncertain and stressful moments.Whenever she is stressed or confused ,she go on counting primes ,not like 1,2,3 and all ,she used to start from some 6 digit primes ,maybe even 8 digits.Chitti from endhiran would feel her as a worthy opponent on that case .
And here I was , stumbling after 7.
After years of schooling in math, my "prime ritual" barely made it past single digits.
Still, I liked the idea of counting primes whenever I felt anxious or trapped in spirals of thought.
Sometimes I would start from 1, sometimes from some random number in the middle (dont start from 100 and all ,I used to keep my limit to 1-100) to anchor my mind in the present moment, trying to pulling myself away from the spiral of thoughts.
But ,
That counting primes doesnt work well during the hackathon I kept tripping after 3 and then 7.Instead of calming me down, it made me more anxious.
I figured couting primes adds fuel to the anxious thoughts than putting it off .And while I was spiraling over primes, my friend was spiraling over Java APIs. Truly, a comedy of errors.
With our Stress level this high , we both fumbled the hackathon and I have added additional stress on that day other than failing only in primes.
At the end of our hackathon ,we found 2 things ,the one is we messedup the hackathon with our poor coding skills and to learn a lot of coding and then i have discovered that counting primes was less of a stress buster and more of a stress multiplier.
After practicing (and failing) for a few months, I quit the ritual in the very same year I started it (2023).
Recently, when I met that same hackathon friend, we laughed about how clueless we both were back then. And for a brief second, I counted primes again and failed again.