I never cooked anything beyond instant noodles till I was about 30 years old. I did try at a younger age, but I managed to mix up cooking oil and lemon cordial. Don’t ask me how. All I remember was the confusion I got when the ‘oil’ turned sticky.
Later on in life, I gave cooking another shot, opting for fried rice this time. Again, I managed to screw that up by getting everything to stick to the pan. A non-stick pan.
Since then, I gave the kitchen a wide berth, thinking that cooking was reserved only for the select few who’d been blessed with the magic knowledge of spice and fire. The people who could effortlessly turn a slab of chicken meat into cordon bleu.
Then the pandemic happened.
COVID, a blessing in disguise
I almost went down the baking rabbit hole—just like everybody else seemed to during quarantine—but then I came across cooking yet again. I figured I’d get more mileage out of daily dishes than desserts so it was back to the stove. But knowing my abilities, I restricted myself to just cooking eggs.
It was just an experiment, really.
But you know what? My scrambled eggs turned out all right. So I tried the sunny side up. Then the omelette. Then the French omelette. Chinese steamed egg.
As my confidence grew, I started adding other ingredients, like spring onions, tomatoes, and cheese.
I went out and bought a cast iron pan. Then stainless steel. I still honed my skills with the humble egg until I got used to the pans.
Soon, I could estimate how hot the pan was, and I was getting good at preventing food from sticking, so I graduated to meat and veggies. I even started blending my own belacan mix.
Today, I still can’t cook very well, but I can confidently feed myself with the pantry staples.
Why am I telling you this long-winded story? Because I’ve learned that it’s not the subject that challenges you sometimes. It’s the way you learn. And no matter what you pursue, whether or not you have a talent for it, you’ll need to find a path that sings to you.
So don’t be so quick to judge yourself, or a certain vocation.
Eggs taught me everything I know about cooking
Come to think of it, eggs really can teach you a lot about cooking. They teach you about heat control, how to use a lid for steaming, how to scoop and flip, how different pan materials handle heat differently, and how to salt your food.
Similarly, what I know about writing, I’ve learned through the informal act of blogging. Sure, there’s my day job which also involves writing, but I only consider it real writing if it’s something I create without receiving a brief.
I’ve chosen to practise my art through blogging because it’s the medium that best unleashes my true voice. And it will be where I’ll continue to hone my craft as long as I write.
You need to find your own way
I’ll give you another example of me finding my learning path.
Besides cooking, swimming has also been a skill that had escaped me for most of my life. I only learned how to swim properly, again, during the pandemic.
As a kid, my parents always advised me to learn the breaststroke, which I just couldn’t get. And my well-meaning friends always had a drill of some sort whenever they learned I couldn’t swim—hold the edge of the pool and practise kicking, or learn to float on your back.
But you know how I finally got the skill to stick? By focusing on my breathing. So I’d just bob across the water, then turn my head to breathe as if I was swimming freestyle.
Turns out, freestyle feels so much more natural to me, and it took me just a couple of days to learn. That’s after a lifetime of struggling with the breaststroke.
Want more examples?
Language: When I was learning to read Chinese, I made literal connections to the characters for easier memorisation. For instance, 刚 means ‘just’. To me, the character looks like a board and a knife. So I imagine the knife having just scratched the ‘X’ on the board, and that’s how I remember the word (it probably makes more sense to me than to you, lol).
Directions: Tell me to turn left at the gas station and then take a right at the lake and I’ll probably drive all the way from Malaysia to Singapore and still not find my destination. I realised pretty early on that the only way I remember directions is by travelling there multiple times. Waze has done away with this, but back then, if I needed to be somewhere new, I used to drive back and forth just to get my directions down pat.
Drawing: I can’t draw for nuts, but I can draw shapes. And being good with 3D shapes allows me to assemble a dog’s body, a car, or an arm. So while I still can’t draw a helmet from imagination, knowing how to draw a sphere helps a lot in that regard.
Always be aware of self
I guess the more important question here is to always ask yourself: “Why do I want to learn this?”
Because the answer will come in particularly handy when you find yourself browsing Instagram instead of learning that new language, or painting a figurine instead of writing.
Also, should you opt for one activity over the other, ask yourself if perhaps what you think you ‘should’ do is just an optional ‘nice-to-have’. Maybe it’s your other chosen activities—like the aforementioned figurine painting—that are your true calling instead.
And knowing that difference is a valuable lesson on its own.
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Stuart Danker 
I’d love to hear your thoughts!