writer's block

i haven't felt productive in a while. i have two "statements" to write for job applications: a teaching statement and a research statement. all i can think of is

why does my research matter?
well, it doesn't.
rather, it doesn't matter very much.
very few things in life actually matter much at all.

why is it interesting?
well, why is anything interesting?
sometimes it bores me too, but not enough that i give it up.

what do i like about teaching?
um
..
still thinking.

well, sometimes research drives me nuts,
and it's nice to do something else for a little while.

i used to have no problem writing about mathematics. after all, how often have you readers been subject to my math-y rants? maybe it's the non-voluntary nature of this task, to write about math for mathematicians that is trying my wit and patience.

i don't know.

sometimes i feel like i've had far too few conversations about my work with other mathematicians. at this point, it might as well be a foreign language to them, and it's my own fault, really. i don't think anyone understood my talk last month and besides, i didn't get to anything interesting.

---

i'm constantly astonished at some mathematicians i know, and how much they love their mathematics. they will talk about it all the time, even at social events. forgetting social convention or etiquette, this indicates something.

it really matters to them: what they study, what they learn, what they want to know.

i wonder what that says about me.

timing and readiness.

someone once told me that to graduate in spring, it's best to have the math done in that preceding october.

i wonder when in october he meant. i'm still doing math, still working out what the thesis might look like .. not that i'm complaining, but the risk of not getting a job is, say ..

.. good motivation. \;


i just feel unprepared. i guess that's all.

isolation, and "translating" mathematics.

maybe there is a down-side to working at home most of the time. today i met with the adviser, and i felt like someone stumbling out of a cave, squinting at sunlight and rambling nonsense.

(never mind that today was actually cloudy.)

there is a drawback to working in isolation for too long a time. it takes longer to explain, because you have to remember how to communicate with others, how to find that conceptual framework which is compatible for your mind and their minds.


in other words, if math is a language, then it takes longer to translate what we want to say to each other.

me, i doubt i'm easy to understand; there's also the possibility that i'm wrong about something and it wouldn't make sense anyway. \:

having a look.

just to learn the enormity of what is soon to come, i looked through the ams job listings for postdocs, snobbishly chose schools which sounded nice, and came up with ..

.. 23.

wow. even choosing snobbishly, there are already 23. i think i'm in for a very long fall term ..

proto-(seminar webpage).

in an act of wasting time, i updated the SAnS (student analysis seminar) webpage. this is what it looks like now.

as you can see, there is a cute google.calendar thingie for playing around. other than that, it has no purpose: only for fun.

ah well. back to work.

the cycle of reading a paper, and subsequent research.

[first day, browsing paper]: "hmm. that is interesting. i wonder if.."
[second day]: "that's odd. why don't they just do this-&-that?"

..
..
[Nth day, rereading paper]: "oh."
[later, on Nth day]: "huh. so if not, then i wonder if, instead .."

when will people ever learn?

i think my plan of working away from the office has backfired.

because my time in the department is a rare thing, i think people are more inclined to stop by and talk to me when they see me.

this does not bode well. the point was to consistently disappoint people in a form of negative reinforcement; time and again, they would stop by my office, note my absence, sigh to themselves,

alas, janus is not there! woe is me.
i shall ne'er again call on him at his office.

and develop the habit of never seeking me out. so after a while, nobody would think to look for me, and i could return to the office, unsought and having all this time to work.

at any rate, that was the idea.

argh. LaTeX.

not much work done today. i thought to completely rewrite something that might someday become a research article, but for a silly reason:

it feels like it's taken a life of its own, and a complex one at that. every time i try to change one thing, i feel like i need to edit a dozen other items in those 22 odd pages ..

(for those keeping score at home: among others, i'm using the package fullpage and have set linespread to 1.6.)

.. and those pages don't even contain the full proof of a main lemma/theorem, yet, which is proven in three stages. only one stage is TeX'ed, so far.


at any rate, i have 9 pages, five of which were cut-and-pasted from that previous writeup. in retrospect i shouldn't have bothered; i didn't even TeX up any new proofs!

there must be something wrong with me: i am incapable of being productive, with a computer.

careful hope.

the conspiracy makes more sense now, though not complete sense. maybe i should say that there's hope.

it's been a frustrating few days. it finally feels like i'm done with "fixing an old error" [1] and rehashing old things, polishing them into good definitions and valid techniques in proofs. this stuff is in the same direction, but it feels new.

i don't know its shape yet, what form it will take. i suppose, and i toy with some nascent ideas of others, see how they fit together.

it's a familiar sort of frustration, but one i haven't felt in a long time. i mean the frustration of creativity and trying new ideas from old.

i don't think i'm making sense, but i'm feeling better. i think there's hope, and what's more, i'm willing to hope.


[1] actually, i never really fixed it in the literal sense. i acknowledged it, threw away what i thought was true, and kept the corollaries by using other techniques. in short, the ship sunk, i cannibalized the hull and cargoes, made a little raft, and found another ship ..

.. sailing for parts unknown, but interesting.

conspiracy

technically, it takes several people to form a conspiracy. if you have a crazy idea and nobody else knows it, that it's your secret, crazy idea, then it's not a conspiracy.

last week the adviser suggested that i think in a certain direction, about some ideas some other mathematicians have been talking about in the last few years.

after a week of "surveillance," i met with the adviser again, and told him a crazy idea or two. he listened and didn't disagree.

so now, we have a conspiracy on our hands. i wonder if it will work out.