read, then write?

in more personal (read: mundane) news, i think i'm almost done with one section of my first draft of a research article. what remains are references, including one which serves the following possible purpose:

if i read it and if it says what another author claims it says, then i can write a remark in my own article. it would address somewhat the sharpness of one of my theorems.

translation: i'm not being (completely) lazy. it would mean that one can't push the result to a stronger version, because there are counter-examples.

i've tried reading this paper before and i couldn't quite get it. admittedly i was pressed for time -- making thesis deadlines and the like -- so maybe it's not so bad.

to really understand it, though, i'll have to step out of my element a bit, and entertain things like principle bundles over the Grassmannιan manifοld, which that author discusses in one of the last sections.

for some reason, i thought i'd never encounter vector bundles again. maybe i've grown too accustomed to being a so-called "geometric measure theorist" .. which i'm not.

..
actually, i don't know what i am .. except soon-to-be employed (and probably overworked). maybe some kind of analyst, some kind of metric geometer.

[shrugs]

maybe it's good for me to read it. i haven't been reading anything lately, and i feel like i have no fodder for new research thoughts. if i read, you see, then at least i can learn something and draw some conclusions; maybe that will amount to something.

if i've learned anything over the last year, it's this: it's amazingly useful to know how someone else's proof works. their theorems might not be readily applicable, but their methods might.

maybe i'll read it, if only because i should read, and read now. if what everyone tells me is true, then i'll never have enough time to sit down and read maths papers carefully.

anyways, it's half-past one. i should return to writing and preparing for writing.