defeat, for now.

i spent most of today depressed and hating myself, and it was all because i couldn't prove a theorem ..

.. rather, a claim that i want to be a theorem.

of the last three people to whom i told my ideas, two of them said to focus on the 2-dimensional case first.

but now it's done; it will go into my thesis.
now there's only one big N-dimensional enchilada (for N > 2).

i've thought about it in all sorts of ways .. but obviously not too many, because i don't have a theorem or a counterexample.

nothing is working.

the most frustrating thing is that i get ideas all the time. none of them have worked.

if i think i have a proof, it usually takes six hours before i find the flaw, and a few more hours before i give up trying to find a patch.

you know what?

i have another idea. i'm not sure it will work, but if it doesn't then i still want to know why.

but there's not much time. i need more sophisticated machinery and it will take days to work with it, probably a week or two in order to understand how it really works ..

.. and that's before i try out my idea.

---

i'm running out of time.

there are still thesis chapters to write and revisions of chapters already written.

argh.   arggggggggggghhhhhhhh.

sometimes i wonder if this is all going to fall apart. i wouldn't be surprised if it does.