Well, I know it has been a long time since I've written to the novocin.com journal... It has been an action-packed several months and I haven't been mentally free enough to sit and write in a long while. I've been on a long stretch of talks, lectures, and workshops while trying to manage a job search for next year. In the background has been an ever growing pressure that I'm not writing enough papers while doing the rest of these things. So at times I've been under a lot of pressure, and I haven't developed a large set of tools for dealing with it. This month there was only one set of talks which was last week here in Montpellier. It's the first extended stretch of time at home in a while.
In the meantime, I think it's an instinct of mine to only want to broadcast my thoughts when everything is great. Call it a fear of showing weakness. So, in fact, today is a great day. In an effort to be less macho I'll share some of the insights that the stressful months have brought me.
A big body of water is one of only a handful of things that can shut my mind down. If you look at our pictures of Marseille there's one that is the moment I realized that. We were on a day trip to meet some friends, both of whom were science-minded. It was a wonderful day and we spent most of the time talking about lots of interesting pseudo-intellectual things. The thing is that there is a certain pressure for me when socializing, similar to being in a play. I'm always aware of how I'm being perceived and perpetually trying to not let it effect me. It creates a struggle to shut down your mind while still being engaged, and it's all centered around some old desire to always be liked. This is the aspect of life that made me realize I had a lot of self-realization to go before I could be a good actor, if ever. Yada Yada Yada, we ended up at this dock and old guys were playing some French version of bocce ball, and I sat down by the rocks and bam... mental silence. The clouds were dark off in the distance, I remembered a lake house at Kingsley lake, and felt totally at peace. So I took a picture to remember the feeling, i realized somehow that I wanted to bottle that feeling to use anytime I'm too stressed. This made me feel really connected with Monet's Impression Sunrise, which is in Paris, and I would like to see in person before too long.
I was an only child for most of my young life. I don't really know anyone else who was. I think that the last paragraph was all about this fact somehow. Socializing, while enjoyable, is draining. If I need to recharge I am likely to do it with a jigsaw puzzle or game. In fact board games are great for me because I can think of them like a puzzle and drift off into my own world, while being mildly sociable. I've done 4 jigsaw puzzles in the last year. We bought a DS. I downloaded Nintendo and Super Nintendo emulators. All tools for trying to destress when I feel too much pressure. On the flip side, normal kids, with siblings and such, probably thrive from social interaction. Where it actually gives energy and doesn't take it. I've done a lot of thinking about what aspects of my life are shared by lots of people and which are not. I think that the two biggest differences between me and most of the people I know are this only-child realization and my hyper-focus. Casey also has my hyper-focus. You can tell when we talk on the phone, whichever game is most interesting that week will dominate everyone of his sentences. I am the same exact way but with a few extra years of social super-ego to tell me that I have to ignore those thoughts during conventional conversation. This hyper-focus is what makes me able to succeed in a highly analytical job. On the flip side it's what makes the thinking about a new idea much sexier than the writing of a good idea.
Ideas are extremely powerful. A concept or a perspective can completely alter your energy level or motivation level. Everything is internal. Sometimes being on the internet makes me realize directly just how virtual real life is. Worlds can exist on the internet that do not physicaly exist other than on some disk drive, but can inspire the same sorts of feelings that an actual experience can. There is little difference between the way you process something real or virtual, making everything virtual in a way. My friend here in France made me feel really great the other day with a sentence. I'll tell you the story:
There was a two-day conference that was hosted by my lab. I was supposed to give two talks. The first day was so passionate that my talks got pushed together for the second day. I took a chance and went with a response topic rather than my more prepared slides. It was a little nerve wracking but I wanted to get some real dialogue more than present some alternative topic. I presented my perspective on problems that these people had studyied for a long time. It was simple to work with and intuitive. I presented a quick proof for a fact that was not so obvious. At the end of the proof everything worked, but there was one assumption that I had made which they did not accept. I was embarrassed, and a little broken. Later, I thought about it and I can find lots of interesting classes where my assumption is true, but it won't be true in general. Later I told my friend about the way it made me feel. He said that he admired my strength and that real genius requires a sort of lonely perseverence because a new idea will always be rejected until it bears fruit better than the idea it replaces. The pioneering aspect of North American personalities leads to a try try again way of life allowing for more bravery overall. As I took this idea and thought about it I felt so much better. Thinking of myself as a creative math-artist with brand-new perspectives that I have to cultivate because no one else will believe in me until it is done, makes me far more motivated to write than the perspective of a guy who doesn't know as much as the other mathematicians already do. From one perspective I'm struggling to catch up on the career path, from the other I am learning a craft which will alter the way other people look at their own work. Nothing changed outwardly, but all of a sudden I was more jazzed about my work, and not so beaten up.
So I've learned a lot about myself, about Sara, about motivation, and
about stress. It's been a really nice time, and we've had lots of
interesting experiences, I hope I can have another academic job next year.
I have no idea how I will be if I end up in a 9-5 job. I'll post some
time! Thanks,