maybe there's a more direct causal link between the ascension of the star of mathematics in my sky and the degradation of my personal writing. in mathematics, as with most vocations, the purpose of writing is to get content across. you don't make up the content on the fly; you already have the content, and so inevitably the writing comes out more functional than when the thoughts evolve symbiotically with the words.

when i wrote my research statement, i was consciously aware that i needed to not sound like a buffoon. i preserved my individuality to some degree, but working under these constraints may well have had a medium-term effect on my writing in general. i'm giving a talk at mit on february 12, and if any of you have seen the abstract they're putting up, it's certainly the expurgated version, painstakingly culled from among my actual words to resonate with the key demographic.

or maybe there are other causes. life is easy, real easy, for me right now. applying for jobs, which is supposed to take up all of my time, has been a breeze; i'm not exactly sure what the hard part is supposed to be. answers just come to me. maybe they're wrong, but they're always on the tip of my tongue whenever anyone asks me a question, or whenever someone unveils a situation they're puzzled by.

i think certainly part of what's going on is that i know i'm going to be leaving this life, and so i'm saving energy for a more permanent life. i'm going to leave the people here in around 15 months, and i don't plan on keeping in touch with any of them in any sort of meaningful way. (these plans could, of course, change.) it doesn't really feel like that with regards to my writing, but this could be just one application of the general theory.

it's possible, although this seems awfully wrong, that i need to stop hanging around with people who are younger (life-wise) than me. i always thought that this was good, that it showed me a beacon of youthful attitude that i could aspire to, but as time has gone on i find myself increasingly frustrated at a cultural disconnect, and at the same time jealous because i can't be that unknowing any more. it's not that my experiences have scarred me and that i can't let them go; it's that i've become too good at figuring out what's going to happen, removing some of the mystery from life.

no one else seems to think this, but i think my behavior over the past two weeks borders on the dangerously depressed. i've been reading -- escapist. i've been doing mathematics -- an addiction that i don't have to think about life while doing, the equivalent of drinking to forget. these things are innocuous on the surface, but no one seems to understand what they mean to me, what they reflect on my mind when i do them, as opposed to when others do. i think i've met only two people in my life who cared enough and who were smart enough and who knew me well enough to intercept this individualist disconnect, and both are many thousands of miles away.

i sort of wonder when i'll go back to procrastinating. the fact that i've stopped, in many ways, epitomizes my new lifestyle: pragmatic and calm and totally unstressed. it's obviously a worse me, and yet i can't seem to find my way back to the illogic of leaving everything until the last minute. just today i made up five manila envelopes, ready to be mailed, for applications whose deadlines aren't until november 30 and december 1 (in quadruplicate.) i'll presumably mail them tomorrow.

maybe not procrastinating makes life too easy.

back to the weblog