(ML looks like magic to me and involves lots of math, which I suck at).
Math is taught pretty badly in most American public schools from K-12. Many people have terrible math experiences in elementary school, in part because the U.S. actively encourages women to go into early childhood education if they can't cut it in other fields (a thing not done to men). So, there are a lot of women who are basically math-phobic who are teaching it to our K-6 kids and the primary thing they teach a lot of kids is that math is scary stuff and you should hate it. It's really terrible.
I pulled my two sons out of public school at the same time. At the time, my oldest was in sixth grade, and he hated math and had terrible, terrible baggage about it. My ONLY goal for him for math while homeschooling him was to teach him "math is your friend" and that was it. I didn't care if he actually learned any math. I just wanted him to stop having fear and loathing of math. He now sometimes does stuff like reads illustrated calculus books (which are over my head -- I dropped out of calculus in college, due to having had a year long math gap... it's a long story) when he runs out of other things to read at the library and is bored.
If you want some pointers on how to get over your fear of math and how to learn math comfortably, I and no doubt lots of other people here can give you some pointers. Because there are people here who think math is cool and fun and managed to get through the school system without becoming math-phobic, in spite of how hard the school system actively tries to make most of us math-phobic.
Math is taught pretty badly in most American public schools from K-12. Many people have terrible math experiences in elementary school, in part because the U.S. actively encourages women to go into early childhood education if they can't cut it in other fields (a thing not done to men). So, there are a lot of women who are basically math-phobic who are teaching it to our K-6 kids and the primary thing they teach a lot of kids is that math is scary stuff and you should hate it. It's really terrible.
I pulled my two sons out of public school at the same time. At the time, my oldest was in sixth grade, and he hated math and had terrible, terrible baggage about it. My ONLY goal for him for math while homeschooling him was to teach him "math is your friend" and that was it. I didn't care if he actually learned any math. I just wanted him to stop having fear and loathing of math. He now sometimes does stuff like reads illustrated calculus books (which are over my head -- I dropped out of calculus in college, due to having had a year long math gap... it's a long story) when he runs out of other things to read at the library and is bored.
If you want some pointers on how to get over your fear of math and how to learn math comfortably, I and no doubt lots of other people here can give you some pointers. Because there are people here who think math is cool and fun and managed to get through the school system without becoming math-phobic, in spite of how hard the school system actively tries to make most of us math-phobic.