Tau Day coming up!

Image: on Lens we just found a suspiciously perfect clearing full of daisies and checked one for Fibonacciness. Phone cameras and doodling apps sure make it easier to check those higher numbers!

Update: I didn't think I would get to a Tau Day video this year, because I was determined to focus on Emmy Noether without taking another "this is taking too long lets do a quicker video" break.

BUT. Last week I was on vacation/staycation with family visiting, so since I was already taking a break, it's less like cheating. And I was hoping to do that Tau Day video we talked about earlier this year. There was a poll and everything!

I'll quote what I wrote about it in the Pi Day Poll:

"I accidentally ended up with a third script draft when I was writing what started as a blog post about my 2016 Pi Day video, which I thought was a pretty thinly-veiled allegory demonstrating the ridiculousness of divisive manufactured controversy between people who are fundamentally on the same side:  It's a parody of the politics going on at the time, containing lots of political rhetoric with the nouns switched out for "Pi" and other math terms.

As far as I can tell, no one picked up on that. But it's even more relevant now, so I thought maybe it was time to be more explicit about the history and intentions behind the Pi vs Tau controversy story, co-created between myself, other mathematicians and audiences, other youtubers and youtube algorithms, and how our participation in this low-stakes all-fun-and-games math fight could maybe help us be introspective about where and when we choose to exercise our suspension of disbelief."

So I already have a concept with some draft writing piles, and it is ever so relevant. 

But more importantly, I just got back from a week off, and while it was a great time with my family it didn't make much of a dent in my vacation deficit. I'm still badly burnt out on a lot of things, particularly trying to figure out how to fund deep work and long projects (in retrospect it was a bad idea to take on another ambitious takes-a-while video so soon after Peace for Triple Piano while still underfunded). 

A week off isn't going to fix that. Another two weeks off won't fix that. I know I should be working on merch and working on trying to get grants or partnerships and figuring out better perks and incentives and doing other fundraising activities. But after The Year of Fundraising Hell, coming on the heels of already being badly burnt out, every time I try to think about fundraising my brain become this strange blank grey fuzz as thought-free and inanimate as a stone, my entire body heavy as stone. There is only so much one can harden to working just a little longer, just a little more, before hardening entirely into this stone. I forget how to move or speak or think or feel. The wind is warm on my face and it smells gently of pine and I'm pretty sure I could sit here for two years doing and thinking and feeling absolutely nothing and maybe after those two years I'd start to get antsy and shift to brush a beetle off my thigh. There's lichen growing off my ears and the soles of my feet overturn to reveal ant colonies and pill bugs.

Fortunately, I'm not burnt out on Tau Day videos. In fact, I think it might be positively refreshing, with two weeks being the right amount of time to not be rushing and overworking. So let's get to it!