Tag: bloganuary

What is something you want to achieve this year?

January 1st, 2023

The title of this blog post is the first prompt of this year’s #bloganuary challenge by WordPress. It is, at the same time, a very natural question to ask on the first day of a new year. It implies the promise that new beginings are possible and that wherever life has brought you, you can still change your path and achieve whatever you want. That is of course, if only you are dedicated enough and invest enough time into it.

If you think about this promise for a while, then it might even occur to you that every day of the year, every day of your life, every instant, every breath of each day offers that same opportunity to just begin again.

To me, at first glance, these questions always seem like an illusion, like a false promise. Sure, you can achieve a lot, you can invest a lot of time into becoming physically stronger, eat better, become a better cook or, if you’re so inclined, a better mathematician. But at what cost? What other things in your life will suffer from their newly won lack of attention? Your work? Your kids? Your wife? Your health?

My life, to me, always seems to barely work on a day-to-day basis. I always just have enough time to make a good job at work, as a husband and as a father. There’s hardly any time or energy for anything else really.

So in that sense, I might even decide to become more efficient at work, as a husband and as a dad. Maybe that’s what I want to achieve? But, honestly, that doesn’t sound very actionable. We all know that time is not something you can posses and store on a bank account (unless you happen to be one of Michael Ende’s Grey Gentlemen). It turns out, you can only take time away from activities by using it on other activities first.

Damnit, that brings me back to the original question: What is it I want to achieve this year? I didn’t quite manage to shake it off with my first attempt. So do I want to become a bit less addicted to food? Maybe a bit more physically fit? Probably a bit more organized as a dad and more empathic as a husband. Maybe finally understand the proof of the prime number theorem? I guess a bit of all of the above.
What advice would you give to your teenage self? #bloganuary

January 31st, 2022

tldr: Try things out and find out what you’re passionate about. Don’t cling to things you’ve started too much just because you think you need to finish them in some sense. Don’t think you’re stupid or others are better than you, generally try hard not to compare yourself to others.

I am pretty happy with where I am right now and with who I have become, but I think I should have cared less about what other people think of me and be more of myself as a teenager and as a young adult. I could have followed my interests more passionately and be less limited by what I thought other people saw in me, including especially my parents.

I started a degree in physics and I remember that it took only a year or so until I first started having this feeling that I don’t belong there. That the other students are smarter and better suited, better prepared for the job. There was just no passion about the project of studying physics. I think I enrolled for it because my best friend did and because I was good at it at school and I did not have many other ideas. And then I just kept plowing through to prove to myself and others that I can earn the degree.

I must add that I had no idea how professional scientists (physiscists, computer scientists or mathematicians) worked and partially that this job even existed. I was never passionate about physics at school, it was just not that hard to understand at school.

Before enrolling for my degree in physics, I was also thinking about studying computer science briefly during my last year or so at school. But for some reason, I think, I looked down upon the subject, confounding it with mere programming, and might have thought that physics is in some sense superior. I wonder what would have happened had I chosen to go for CS instead. It is quite ironic that I looked down upon another subject while feeling myself absolutely insufficient for studying physics. There’s another piece of advice here: Try hard not to compare yourself to others.

In the end, it all turned out well, I got a decent degree and was able to do a PhD. I felt pretty proud of the fact that I would be able to earn the first PhD in my family’s history (at least for the three generations I knew of). But along the way I had unlearned to look inside me and follow my inner compass.

One year into my PhD, I remember feeling the same feelings again, that had already plagued me early on in my undergraduate life. But again, I did not act on those feelings and just ignored them. Partially, I guess, for a fear of become an unsuccessful, failed existence. This feeling is probably fueled by the way my mother had told me how to live my life. While this sort of attitude certainly has advantages (don’t give up too easily) it also has a certain unhealthy aspect to it in that it does not allow you to listen to your feelings.

In hindsight, it would have done no harm to my life’s trajectory had I quit my PhD and done something else. But I did probably not have a really good idea, partially because studying physics had left so little time for exploring other things.

It is remarkable to me how certain decisions in life feel so important in hindsight. Like choosing a spouse or deciding which degree(s) to pursue. It is also interesting how I have this feeling, looking back, that I should have taken different decisions with respect to what to study (fortunately not with respect to my spouse). I wonder if the magnitude of that feeling is only a function of the person who’s having them, regardless of the decisions the person has taken. Is the wish to have pursued other topics a general personality trait? Or have I really taken suboptimal decisions? I guess I will never know. But I will hopefully continue to be able to encourage my sons to follow their passions and be who they are.
Write about something mysterious. #bloganuary

January 27th, 2022

Mathematics is something mysterious. To me at least. And by that I don’t mean the type of mathematics that most of learn at school, that was never a mystery to me. But most modern (and many very old) mathematical theorems are very mysterious to me. Take, for example, the famous Fermat’s Last Theorem, which was proven in 1994. The proof remains completely mysterious to me and I don’t expect to ever understand it. But the stories around the proof, in particular Simon Singh’s book and documentary “Fermat’s Last Theorem”, keep fascinating me.

As I have mentioned elsewhere, Andrew Wiles, who proved the major part of the theorem, likened doing mathematics to a mystery himself. And remember, this guy has worked on the theorem for around seven years, all on his own for the most part. And he likened doing mathematics to exploring an old, dark, abandoned mansion through which you stumble one room at a time and try to find the light switch to finally see what the room looks like. Every step in the proof was once mysterious to Andrew Wiles himself. It’s just a mystery that he took very personally and worked hard on de-mystifying it.

Don’t get me wrong, I would really love to be able to understand the proof, and I am in some sense trying to. I am trying to solve the mystery.
Where do you go when you need solitude? #bloganuary

January 27th, 2022

When I really need solitude, I think forests and mountains are the best places for me to go to. This can be a local forest near or in the city I live in. This can also be a dedicated hiking trip which might take a few hours to get to. In any case, hiking, the act of walking and letting the world pass by me, the silence in the forest, that’s what will usually help me.

But I think that occasions on which I really want to be alone are rather rare. There will be times when I might need to get time off from certain people, times when I want a specific person to just leave me alone. But in those cases it might even help to meet other people and go hiking with them or distract myself in other ways.

I think I have also learned how to find solitude while being with groups of people. It’s not that hard for me to shut off the world around me and let it just happen and just be with myself and enjoy not having to do anything and not having to talk. Sometimes this is possible without being impolite. Additionally, as a software developer in home office since 2 years, my longing for solitude might be somewhat satisfied. I guess this might change whenever I will work more with people in the future. Or will I?
Who is someone that inspires you and why? #bloganuary

January 26th, 2022

I think everybody who puts himself out there in some form or another. All online creators keep inspiring me.

Austin Kleon is one of the most prolific ones that I have currently in mind and his way of sharing so much of what he’s doing with the world is very inspiring to me. His relentless way of documenting, collecting, mixing and sharing is just great.

Then there are a bunch of Youtubers whom I really look up to because I would probably like to be one myself. There’s, for example, Richard Borcherds, Tibees, Nathaniel Drew, Math-life balance, Valerie Lin, Matt D’Avella and 3blue1brown, to name just a few of the channels I currently enjoy most.

Somehow, to me, the fact that people are brave enough to put effort into a bigger blog post or a decently written Youtube video is somehow inspiring. I would like to look those people in the eyes thank them for doing this if I ever met them in person. The fact that they share their thoughts, their personality, the fact that they are open about their thoughts and passions and accept that some people will not like it is great and brave and, for me at least, very hard to beleive.

And then there are also a bunch of mathematicians I look up to. Mostly famous ones though, because otherwise I wouldn’t know them because I’m not a mathematician myself. But the fact that they went deep into a topic and managed to wrap their head around very abstract topics, for which it takes months or years to understand them, is very inspiring to me as well.
What is something you wish you knew how to do. #bloganuary

January 26th, 2022
I wish I knew how to
- ~~found a company~~ (I know that already)
- find out what kind of company I should found
- find out what it is that I know how to do but other people don’t know how to do
- make money out of being curious and reading and learning things (much like Austin Kleon does but on somewhat different topics)
Write about the last time you left your comfort zone. #bloganuary

January 26th, 2022

That’s an easy one. I quit my job as a software developer 3 months ago. And I don’t yet have a plan for my next job. That was certainly not comfortable.

It was a great job (C++ database developer) at a great company (SAP) with a great team. But I had somehow gotten unmotivated about it. I want to find a job that will pose new challenges and hopefully provides better motivation in terms of the product and technology I’ll working on.

To be fair: I still have 2 months of paid leave from my current job in February and March during which I will be applying for new jobs. Plus: German unemployment insurance will pay me 60% of my previous salary for a year in case everything fails.
What is your favorite part about yourself? #bloganuary

January 26th, 2022

My curiosity. The ability to forgive. The ability to stick to certain activities and people over long periods of time. The ability to sometimes leave my ego behind and just go with the flow.

Why is it so hard to fully embrace one’s own self, by the way?