mathematics and holidays.

it's hard to concentrate now. in retrospect it would have been better to have taken a holiday this week and then go back to work next week.

then again, that would have been uncharitable to my family. i'm visiting them next week and though we're not religious, it is christmas-time and we have our own little rituals.

here's the paradox:

in the week or two before visiting my parents, i never feel like doing any math ..unless it's going REALLY well, of course.. and when i'm there, well..

.. there's nothing to do.

we mope around at home, albeit in familial togetherness. it's too far and unsafe to walk anywhere, because highways partition that suburbia; we don't have cable or high-speed internet, either. with six people under one roof, it's hard to have any solitary time, to let one's thoughts wander.

it's almost a counter-reaction:

there's nothing else to do, so let's do math.

meanwhile, i'm blogging and twiddling my thumbs in procrastination.

i've already scanned through the "headlines" (i.e. title/abstract/author lines) of recent posts on the arXiv, as well as the maths preprint servers at jyväskylä, helsinki, pisa (SNS), leipzig (Max Planck), and prague (KMA Charles Uni). i've done my "window shopping" for conferences in 2008, despite the fact that i'll be too busy to attend any between now and may.

then again, just because you can't 'afford' certain things, it doesn't mean that you can't look longingly at the sale exhibits.

every so often i'm tempted by honesty and i peruse a rough first draft of section two of chapter one of what-will-be-the-thesis.

maybe i'll find the willpower later, later today. maybe it's not so bad, to take a break now, and get back to it. that's the beauty of academia, right: to set one's own hours, for best creativity and effort?

i keep telling that to myself, but remain unconvinced.