fuck tensors

I'm in the beanbag in the sitting room, under headphones. Lemon cake. Tea. Debussy on headphones. Notebooks and index cards all over the place. Putting together the bones of this novel.

Last few days I have been conscious of the changing light. This time of the summer always feels poignant to me, because I know that in just over a month the year will turn over to the dark side and life will become much harder work. I have a stack of physics books by my bed that I intended to read or revisit over the summer in preparation for the new academic year. I look at them every day and try to make myself feel guilty for not having ploughed through more than a couple of chapters. But you know what? I'm glad I haven't got to them. Instead, I have actually recharged my batteries for the first time in a long time.

I am blessed with very good health. Yet at the beginning of summer I was falling ill with every little bug. Some of my exam revision was done in bed because I was knocked down by every ratty schoolchild-borne virus, and for several weeks after exams I was unwell off and on. On two occasions in July I had to cancel plans to meet friends whom I really wanted to see because I was running a fever. Me, a fever! What?

I have a tendency to behave as though energy is limitless and I'm always so surprised when I wear out. I know in my head that for many people--anyone with chronic illness, for example--energy has to be measured and conserved with microscopic care. But I forget how this works until some physical setback strikes me in even the tiniest way. And then I realise how much I have been taking for granted.

When we were on holiday I slept and slept and read stuff on my kindle (I particularly recommend The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Ngoze Adichie). Right now, I'm charging up for winter. I'm getting out in daylight as much as I can, 'resting the eyes' (as my grandmother used to say) on the landscapes of Shropshire, seeing people (Nine Worlds Geekfest was great) and I'm moving forward with my writing work. In October I will probably angst about all the physics I'm not doing. In my heart of hearts I know this is because I don't love physics with the love that a genuine physics person would feel. I really can't help that. I work very hard on my courses, but this analytical problem-solving is never going to come naturally to me. I'm a stranger in a strange land, and that's OK.

So by choosing to come home to writing for the summer, I will have forgotten how to find the moment of inertia of an ice cream cone, even if it's only one scoop and the density is uniform. And I think I need to learn tensors for The Relativistic Universe and my copy of Vector Calculus with All the Tensors in it is staring accusingly at me but you know what? Just for now, fuck tensors.