I have always been terrible at mental math. Numbers are goop to me. I can create systems which process the goop, but when I try to play with the goop directly,

I have always been terrible at mental math. Numbers are goop to me. I can create systems which process the goop, but when I try to play with the goop directly, it's like the numbers are mentally "slippery" — I can't get traction. I did okay in math in college (almost completing a math minor in addition to my cs major), but I continue to struggle with doing arithmetic in my head. I also have a hard time memorizing and processing dates and times. I can't even quickly recall the order of the months! However, once I move up a level of abstraction, I'm totally fine. For example, I successfully implemented some relatively complex date & time logic (with timezone messiness) on a recent work project. I almost think that my lack of intuition around dates and times helped me there, because it forced me to logic my way through each and every part of the system. Just don't make me touch the goop directly!