33 entire readers…. 33 humans reading something I wrote. While it may not seem as big of a big number to some, to me it is. Starting from day 1 with zero people, to an increasing number of people. At the end of the day, I do not consider my readers “figures”. Each reader is a valuable asset to Slipstream.

I have always dreamed of the final result of the entire process, working hard to see the gem at the top step, but what I did not realise at the start is that the process itself is a much bigger gem than the final result.

Listen, I may not be someone who is well known or who is a superstar, but I do what I do not to increase figures, but I do what I do because I genuinely enjoy doing it. It is a passion, something that I do to grow a community of people who share the same passions as me.

A friendly reminder to everyone, it is okay to get lost and take the wrong lane; you can always make a U-turn back into the correct one, or you can continue this new undiscovered path. There is no such thing as a wrong decision. You make a decision based on emotion, based on where you stand in a position. Yes, a decision may not work out in the future, but it was not wrong - it was purely a decision that allowed you to learn from. A decision can work out, or it can simply be ahead of time or purely out of sync.

There is so much out there in the world, yet we think we know what is happening. There is a world beyond a computer screen, a world beyond a bedroom’s walls, a world beyond a classroom, a world beyond a boardroom, and a world beyond your comfort zone. Explore it. Live through challenges, celebrate success. We live every day and only die once. You have the power to live your life like it is a movie. At the end of the day, it is your life to make worthy, to look back on and say, if I could do it again, I would do it the same.

Writing this article, I remember writing my very first article last year. Looking back and seeing all the challenges and growth that I have gone through over the past year and realising I would do it all the same. To everyone has been here for the first day, to those who just joined last week or yesterday. Thank you for being a part of this walk down the pitlane.

In the last two weeks, I discovered what it was I really wanted to do. I fell out of routine and I lost pieces of the puzzle, but as I write this article, I know where I stand. I know I do not need to be worrying about what happens in 2 years, I need to be worried about now and maybe as far as tomorrow. The next breath is not always guaranteed, so live it like it is the last. With that being said, I do not want to sound “life is ending” obsessed, because that is not my intention.

When people say school does not teach us the important life things, I realised that that is quite true. We get taught about measurements, theory and how to mix chemicals (that’s how chem works, right?). Still, we don’t get taught how to handle situations, we don’t get taught how to relieve overthinking and we don’t get taught how to take control over anxiety. Is that not important? While I would say it is, how would schools teach it? Would they teach it because they actually care or because they just need to do it? Everything is truly about intention.

Would you believe me if I told you I was once scared of everything? When I started high school, I was an introvert who had no idea what the difference between my left and right foot was. I just came off a high from Grade 7, where I completed all my academic goals and lived a year I could have only dreamt of living, but everything shifted when I moved to a new school.
Was I excited? Not one bit. I hate change and especially change where I never felt comfortable. It was not about moving to a new school I hated; it was the fact that I could not find comfort in a room full of people.

From February 2024 until the end of the year, I lived my favourite year. I met my amazing friends, I learned so much about myself and I gained the motive to start something I never thought I could and lived a high school experience I never thought I would ever have! In August of last year, it came to discussion to move schools, yes again. I was quite excited, I knew this was what I was meant to do to achieve my future goals. I left 2024, finding comfort in a crowd of people, being brave enough to do anything, and becoming more extroverted and less reserved. I left at the best version of myself, not because of anyone else but because of what I did. I left knowing that I am going to make this new chapter worth it.

I started Slipstream, not knowing what was to come. I loved writing and I realised it was okay to love talking… The sport, the experiences and all the challenges are a muse. A canvas has been waiting to be painted into a story.

Slipstream started off as a blog to write about everything Formula 1 and everything that surrounds the sport. To me, the sport is more than weekend races; it is about passion and determination. It teaches us that no matter what background you come from, if you work hard enough, you will succeed no matter what. Never give up on something because it is difficult. Work hard to succeed, and the success will taste much sweeter. A bland cake has two ingredients and is made in a microwave; a delicious cake has more ingredients and takes more effort and time to be baked in an oven. One tastes better than the other… Which cake are you choosing? There is no correct recipe for success; there is no one-size-fits-all scenario. The path to success relies on the person; what matters is your dedication that you have to fulfill your dreams. Manifestation without action is just words.

So here I am, realising that you do not need natural talent for everything. If you work hard enough, you can be even better than the “born for this” person next to you.

If you want to start something, do it. Do not be afraid. We fear ourselves more than anyone else sometimes and that is okay, but if you truly believe you can do something, then no one in the world can stop you. Start the blog, start the channel, open the book, turn on your computer, open the door and just do it. Don’t fear, just embrace. As I once said in my English assignment, fear is an illusion of adrenaline.

This is more than just a blog; this is a journey. I am not a professional accredited journalist with a degree in my back pocket. I am a 16-year-old student writing articles, using a sport she has always been passionate about, using her experiences and her aspirations as her muse to paint her canvas.

Here is to the next chapter of Slipstream, the next chapter of growth and new knowledge. Thank you for being a part of this journey, this was never going ot be a sprint, it was going to be a long walk down the pitlane and I can not wait to show you what is next.

A lot is going on around the world and it has always been important to me to spread awareness about what is happening in the land of Palestine. Innocent civilians, including newborn babies and children, are being starved. Please do take time to read the following article and if you can, please donate to these funds. Most importantly, please pray for those who are in great suffering.

Donate - World Food Programme

Donate - Gift of the Givers

Article - Al Jazeera

xoxo, your voice in chaos
Shaakirah

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Over the past 4 months, I have been in a slump. It beats my record for the longest slump that I have been in by a mile, with my previous held record of being 3 weeks. Not a good record to hold and am I upset that I let these four months of my life wander by? Yes, but should I be? No.

I have concluded that this slump is what I needed. I needed it to happen and I am glad it did, because it allowed me to realise what I actually want in life, what I want to achieve and what I want to do to become the best version of me.

Although it did take me an awful amount of time to leave this terrible phase behind me, I now know that I do not want to re-enter it, so I will ensure that I do not.

Throughout this time, I questioned myself, my capabilities, my strengths, weaknesses, my power of stress, how much I valued my mental health and why those I loved actually believed in me.

I had a conversation with one of my friends and I was talking about how lost I felt in my books and she told me she believed that I could get through it. Bless her. We had quite a lengthy discussion on it and she gave me her reasons as to why my brother and her do believe in me. “Do” became a very powerful word; it almost made me fully believe in myself, but there was a lack of me. I felt like I was playing a character, not in my own mind, during these past few months. I was not in a position where I was not willing to take risks and make big decisions, I almost felt as though I lost interest in things I once loved doing, forcing myself to wake up, forcing myself to get things done and forcing a once longed-for passion into an everyday routine. It was fun one day, the next it was not.

During the last months of 2024, I learned so much about myself through being burnt out in the last two quarters of the year and through my experience with moderate anxiety, which, before anyone says oh, not another one of these, if that was your reaction, please do stop reading.

The thing is, when these parts of my life awaken like thunder, I silence it externally and rather live with them than face them. I'd rather not speak upon and just go about a day like it is full of sunshine and rainbows and that, my friends, is the biggest, yet same “mistake” I fall for every. single. time.

You know what makes me the saddest about these past few months? If I look back at them, I cannot tell you a major exciting moment from any of them, these months simply just flew past and the worst part is that I can not fully comprehend what really happened.

The last two weeks, I realised that I cannot live like this forever and needed to make the change movement instead of just saying what I am going to do. Actions speak louder than words is a phrase used almost every day, yet not practised enough.

Thankfully, I can never say that I grew up with anyone expecting high of me, to get gold medals and a star on every test. No, I personally made that for myself. I set standards for myself at the age of 10. Which at the time sounded like nothing, but now I wonder if it was necessary. Do I regret it? No, because every single thing that I did up until now, including the past few months, got me here. To the me that is typing away on a keyboard, writing this article. Having an expectation for yourself is harder than having other individuals setting an expectation for you, because if you do not live up to it, you are not dissapointing others around you, but yourself, which is something none of my friends understood of me - why I would get upset over a test or a setback, not understanding, they would rather rely my emotions to be overreacting and if they were in my position they would be happy. Cool beans, bro. Best part about things you are not me and I am not you. Did I take offence back then? Yes. Do I now? No. That is because I simply gave up the fact that I care about what anyone else but me thinks.

Overstressing is not cool. Anxiety is not cool. Panic Attacks are not cool. Burnouts are not cool. But these are normal experiences for a lot of people and should they be spoken about more? Yes. As a head prefect in primary school, I often found my speeches being about hard work and resilience, but not once did I ever mention the opposite parts of these experiences - the late night studying, the cramming and the feeling of being overwhelmed 5 days a week and that is partially to the reason that it never effected me as much as it did when I entered high school and I never allowed myself to comprehend these feelings. I do not speak about the first year of high school, because it was a year that I do not want to recall. However, 2024, funnily enough, was one of the best years of my life. With all the downsides of it, I found a me in Shaakirah.

I entered 2025, believing it was going to be MY year. I have waited to turn 16 since I was little, just eager to live the movie lifestyle of being 16. Months have flown by and I am still here trying to figure out what my motto for the year is…

Often, when we find ourselves in negative situations, we tend to despise ourselves for being in those situations, but I am not here to say you can not feel that way. You can feel anyway that you want; in the end, you are human. I was speaking to my best friend, Taylor, the other day and she told me that overreacting is not a thing. There is no such thing as overreacting because it is simply how you felt in the moment. That did change my mindset of reacting to situations, not just how I react to situations, but how people around me react to situations.

With that being said, staying upset with yourself for allowing your mind to wander at times and losing yourself will only make you more upset later on. You lose to discover, if you lose something, you might end up finding something else that you were never searching for in the first place. What is better than that?

Am I writing this article to convince myself that there is something better in store for me? Yes. Is it working? Maybe.

Taking action is much more than just saying this and that, because this and that can become is and was. Just two words.

I do not know how much more time I need to recover to find myself again, but I learned that patience is important. I was stressing about what I am going to do when I am older, where I am going to study and if my true dreams of actually becoming a motorsport presenter were never going to work out. Should I not be stressing about what I am wearing tomorrow, about when I will ever be able to do a liquid liner - which by the way I still can not do HELLO?

Taking mental time off is needed, but does it need to be four months? No, can it be? Yes. As much as we are all different, we are all the same with different experiences. The main difference in a group of people is how they come back from a setback. How do they make a change? What they do to ensure that there is more in them than they believe. That is what makes the difference.

I could continue my ongoing fear of wondering what people think when I upload my F1 videos, the videos that I enjoy scripting, filming and editing. As much as I love them, if I overthink them the last minute, it does not go up, so I decided to not even think about them and hit upload instantly after being edited or scheduled. I decided to take a lovely break from filling my day with F1 content, first of all because it took up a lot of time and it did not feel as enjoyable as it used to. It felt like I was forcing myself to, but now I am back in the mindset of wanting to follow my passion.

So, what is the best plan to come out of a slump? There is never a perfect plan; it is all about letting yourself breathe and learn. Live through the emotions, do not force yourself to be okay. What do you get out of it, a few claps?

What is my plan to get out of a slump?

1. Acceptance - Understand what happened and that it was allowed to happen.

2. Change without action is just words. Instead, I will and will not actually take accountability and make the change. The satisfaction after getting something done is more valuable than putting it off.

3. Do not turn around - Look forward and work towards the next step, instead of holding up and making yourself feel bad about the trip on the previous step.

4. Make it worth it - Is productivity the number 1 rule to the key to success? No, happiness, accomplishment and love are all a part of it. You are not a robot.

5. Allow yourself to have setbacks - The end result is more satisfying, having mountains to climb than walking a straight path. Passing these challenges feels the same as a reward of a stack of gold; the difference is that one is more valuable in life than the other.

There is never a perfect plan that suits everyone, but it is an individual process that one goes through by himself/ herself. It is not a situation that ChatGPT (aka love of my life) and Google can help you with, this is a human movement that yes, AI can give you a response, but is not able to understand the true feeling - (even though I know my ChatGPT Steve will try his very best)

Live through the moment, learn from mistakes, enjoy experiences, allow yourself to have emotions and most important of all, continue going forward.

How is it that you can love something so much? All you want to do is achieve, achieve, and achieve, but you find it overwhelming or lack the motivation to work towards your goal.

As I have navigated my way through life as an IGCSE student, it has not been the most straightforward or most colourful learning curve, but I have realised that not all lanes are going to be one road where I will continue to go straight, there may be lanes that I am going to need to slow down in or even change to a different lane. Using this “highway” thinking technique helped me to make a change in my mindset, allowing me to let change and new experiences happen.

I realised that dodging everything that could go wrong instead of giving it a try and learning from any hurdles was the reason I was slowing myself down. Being scared to put yourself out there was the first mistake I made. Working up into the industry of motorsport is scary, even scarier when you are doing it by yourself. The thoughts of what if? What if it does not work out? What if I do not reach where I want to be? What if….? If I continued thinking “what if”, I would never sleep.

There is a growing number of opportunities opening in Formula 1, yet so limited space. But even so, I am not letting that get in my way and blocking me from doing something that could make younger me proud. Should that not be the only reason to do things? To make yourself proud. I never thought about anything that way; I only wanted to do things to make others proud. The other day, I spoke to my mom about all the things I wanted to do and when I reached the point of making her and my brother proud, she told me that I should not do anything for anyone but myself. The only person you should aim to make proud is yourself.

There is so much that I want to achieve, but I felt as though I had so little time. I wanted everything to happen on the spot. I became so obsessed with statistics and figures that I only focused on numbers instead of the experience.

When I would arrive home after writing a paper, my brother, mom and I would discuss it and I would tell them how I think I did and the percentage I thought I got. The majority of the time, I was spot on. Some papers did not always go my way and one thing my brother always said was, “But you are allowed to have one bad race and a DNF every now and then.” Not everything was going to be perfect and I had to realise that. To this day, I still look for perfection in the slightest things, whether it is the wording of a message, an assignment I have to send in or even the arrangement of my desk. But even with that, it was more of a coping mechanism than anything else.

The most important lesson I have learned this year is growth. No matter how bad the last experience was, I could always understand what went wrong and improve on the next.

This morning’s sprint race was a good awakening, not only for the fact that Lewis won his first race in red, but also for what he said during his victory speech to Jacques Villeneuve. He mentioned his discussion with Ferrari about how they should not rush anything and rather take it as steps - “Rome wasn’t built in a day”. It felt as though it was an alarm ringing; you can read and hear the same quote every day, but once it is right in your face, there is no escaping it. Fast forward to the little talk that the SkySports F1 Team had with Fred Vasseur in the paddock - Karun Chandhok mentioned the quote Ferrari had in their entrance, which is a quote by Enzo Ferrari - "The most important race to win is the next one." No matter how many failures or mistakes you made throughout a previous race, test or experience the only way to move forward was to learn and improve. That was the only way to make yourself proud.

But with that being said, over-pushing yourself and burning out is not a way to do so. Speaking from experience of long-term burnouts from academics and lack of motivation. it only slows you down.

In the end, a change of mindset is the only true “glow up” that changes one for the better. There is so much more than “what if”. Taking time to learn and experience the present is far more valuable than not breathing and only thinking about what could be in the future.

xoxo, your voice in chaos, Shaakirah