Idk what the hell my problem is

I’ve been having a lot of trouble with math recently. I’ve found it really frustrating to keep trying to get through Spivak/Munkres for analysis. I feel like I’m stuck. Maybe I need to reformulate my attack plans.

I tried to narrow down the books I will focus on for the rest of the semester. I have Stein and Shakarchi for complex, Dummitt and Foote for Algebra, do Carmo for DG, and Munkres/Spivak for analysis. Although I feel like narrowing to this scope has probably helped me focus a bit, I still feel like I’m kind of helplessly drifting right now. I’m going to try to get a good night’s sleep tonight, and hopefully tomorrow will be more fruitful. It’s entirely possible that I’m just getting worn out. I find myself trying to read, but I end up just getting bogged down in proofs and unable to make any significant progress toward understanding the material.

I’m even getting kind of frustrated with algebra. It’s supposed to be the place I can go to for solace from all of the analysis that I have coming up, but it seems like even looking at that frustrates me. I feel like everything I read I either know or is over my head. I just need to focus and systematically work through D&F, making sure I get everything, even if that isn’t what I find most interesting.

On a more positive note, I think that I at least finally gained some insight into what differential forms actually are, although I’m not sure if it’s an entirely mathematically sound insight. Either way, it helped me at least a bit in my continuing studies, because the notion of differential forms had been a large barrier up to this point for me.

whatever. hopefully this week will end up better than it started.