It’s been so long.

What can I say? What can I write? How do I start?

After taking almost 2 weeks off work—my first real vacation since I was a child—I’ve been trying to get back into the groove again. It’s actually quite difficult.

Mathematical research tends to proceed in cycles of highs and lows. After a while, you start to recognize the onset of another ‘low’. And you stop fighting it.

Here is an excerpt from Women in mathematics by Claudia Henrion:

I’ll be taking a page from Claudia’s book (heh) and over the course of this oncoming ‘low’, I’ll be getting back in contact with old collaborators and contacting some potentially new ones. I’ve been in negotiations with a colleague on how we want to arrange some publications, and so I’ll also be putting aside the current work so I can begin to write and arrange the forthcoming articles.

I also have some potentially fantastic plans for revamping the teaching at Oxford (circa 1096), which arose from my experiences with the students this year.

All very random work thoughts, though.

Have you noticed that I’ve slowly permeated my blog with more and more work-related posts over the course of the past year?

It’s not that I don’t have personal thoughts to share. It’s just that it’s been getting harder and harder for me to arrange them in any coherent form.

I do miss those days when I was a teenager, and when my little personal anecdotes and streams of angst-ridden whinging would naturally pass from my brain to the keyboard.

Is there a reason why it’s gotten so hard to share?