showtime, before-&-after: slow to heal, some damage done.

// originally written: wednesday
// while tired/slightly irritable

ye gods, i (still) feel exhausted. i wish i could give my friday talk today, just to get it over with.

having another talk to think about seems to diminish my capacities. i know many people who take on such commitments as if they were appointments to the dentist; like those cases, there's little to no stress. one just brushes a little better than usual, maybe try out flossing, and make it to the office on time.

i've never been able to do that. i don't know why.

this reminds me of my days from school, where i used to run track-&-field. the tournaments where i was scheduled to run two events were always stressful ones:

when the events were too close together, then i'd inevitably run one of them badly. if i pushed hard on the first one, then i would feel dead during the second; if i wanted to do really well in the second event, then i'd have to throw the first race.

i don't know if other kids had the same problem. then again, i never seemed to heal or recover particularly quickly.

when the events were spread apart, say one in the morning and one in the afternoon, then it would just be a long, drawn-out affair. is it better to stay limber between events, or just "shut down" completely and then do a new, second warmup for the second event?

the time in between just seemed lost to me .. though that didn't bother too many of my teammates. again, i don't know why.

it must really be a matter of biology .. or maybe psychology. personality?

// originally written: thursday,
// while slightly less tired.

the same problems are recurring:

there's too much background,
the discussion is rather technical ..

i don't know how i'll say anything intelligible tomorrow,
and i mightn't get to the really cool geometry part at all ..!

/sighs/

on the bright side, there's no dearth of things to talk about. /-:

// written: friday (today),
// while noticeably more tired.

ye gods: i felt awful during today's talk. this is not to say that my discussion was too painfully technical (though it probably was) or that the results weren't well motivated.

i mean feeling awful in the literal, physical sense.

so last night a quick drink with friends became a more pronounced affair, and this morning i woke up feeling extremely hung over. even after the morning i felt the after-effects during the talk: my memory is that i felt drowsy and perhaps a little out of my mind.

perhaps this could explain that rather lengthy digression into the lord of the rings movie,
and the first film in particular from that series.

i have no doubt that the audience has now the new opinion that i have a completely unhinged personality!
then again, i suppose they would have found out the truth, sooner or later!

as the saying goes: Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.

so i suppose i feel awful, also in the sense that i felt a bit guilty. if one's been invited to give a presentation, then one should be professional about it. i wonder if anyone noticed the difference between my self today and my usual self.

that said, this time around i have no idea whether or not the talk was at all reasonable. when i think about it, in giving the talk i was essentially asking the audience to keep four things in mind .. which is a bit much! [1]

for indeed, i could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space ..

it seemed like every 10 minutes i gave a new definition, leaving little time or opportunity for the audience to digest what i was saying. maybe the talk was okay, but i certainly did not feel like i was giving my best.

oh well. the talk is over now, and the rest is silence. [exeunt]

[1] they were: (1) measurabΙe differentιable structures, (2) the Lιp-lιp conditiοn, (3) metrιc derivatiοns, and (4) tangeηt measures from 6MT.