not surrender, but a retreat.

i think i've lost another few days. last night and this morning i was tempted to throw away the notes and scratch work i've jotted since last saturday.

to clarify that: i'm a packrat. i never throw anything away, least of all written ideas .. that is, if they contain any value at all.

blame it on paranoia.

the last thing i'd want to happen is realising that an old idea of mine will work, only i can't remember the argument and i threw away the paper. i don't think i'd forgive myself.

for similar reasons, when i think about a problem, i start with the most obvious, 'stupid' ideas first [1]. it's the safest course of action, i think. if the 'stupid' ideas don't work, then fine: usually there is some lesson in why they don't work.

now what if the 'stupid' idea works, and you never tried it?

anyway, i've been thinking about a problem lastly and nothing's working. i feel like i've been arguing myself in circles to the same impasse.

i can never reach one particular step, and coincidentally, i can't seem to apply one particular hypothesis in that step of the argument.

i've concluded that i don't know enough to solve the problem. there's something i need to know, or discover, before i can tell whether this argument will succeed or fail.

but as of now, i'm not ready for this problem,
and that is a VERY frustrating thing to say.

it's not quite a surrender, but it's an order of retreat. it still feels like giving up .. and i HATE giving up.

more than that, i hate being unproductive. so now it's a matter of switching gears, and starting work on something else: picking battles, so to speak.

it still feels .. wrong, but i can't afford to lose any more days without learning anything. picking battles, and living to fight another day.

[1] i must be getting thin-skinned or something, but these days, words like 'obvious' or 'trivial' or 'stupid' bother me, when used mathematically.