How I started cubing
Before the age of eleven, I had never held a Rubik’s cube, let alone try to solve one. I had seen Rubik’s cubes before, but never had I had one and tried to solve it. I had always thought to myself for my whole life, how hard could it be?
When I was eleven, me and our family took a trip to Seattle to visit family. My aunt was telling childhood stories when she started upon the tale of how she would trick her siblings into thinking she could solve a Rubik’s cube. I told her I had always wanted to try and solve one and she went into a closet, and pulled out a Rubik’s cube. I struggled with it past nightfall and could never get past solving one side. Next day I gave up and decided to pull out the tablet and search YouTube. I ended up watching an easy to follow video that explained the beginner’s method extremely well. After learning the beginner’s method, I trained and trained to try and get myself as fast as I could. And after weeks, the joyous moment came when I got sub one minute. But I didn’t know where to go from there, how to get faster. Then, I found CFOP.
Two weeks later I had learned the basics, but was questioning the switch to CFOP, as I was now going slower than I could with the beginner’s method, but after keeping at it, persevering through all the memorizing and working through the slow F2L, I finally realized a dramatic change. I had beat my Personal Best, and then beat it again, and again! I progressed until I could get no better, I tried different methods, but soon lost taste, and fell out of cubing.
Six months later, I picked up my speed cube, and wondered why I ever stopped. I picked up again, started using a metronome, and cut down on my time drastically. To this day, I am still improving my game, and never will the struggle to become faster stop. It took me time to realize that no matter where you’re at, you can always become faster, and to stick with it, even if it seems impossible. There might always be a cuber better than you, there are loads better than me, but that doesn’t stop me. The reason we all love cubing is that thrill that goes through you during mid-solve, the spike of energy when you see that the F2L pair is already matched up, the satisfaction of achieving a new personal best. These are what has kept me going, and should keep everyone going. No matter if there are always bigger better cubes, or newer faster lubes, just keep on cubing, believing that you can achieve that personal best, and you can get there, to the elite of the elite, the fastest of the fast, if you just keep on cubing.