Nice writing, Carl. I’ve added you to my “follow” list, and look forward to more articles.

I started out annoyed at you for not just reading the books. (I haven’t read them either) But the paragraph about reading them in the mountains with no electricity made me understand. There are some pure mental pursuits that while exciting, can take you to a lonely place.

I remember spending an evening once coming up with ways to classify knots. I had bits of string all over my apartment floor, and was working on ways to describe knots with a symbol system. Just doing it for fun — not work or academic reasons. And then I thought to myself… “How deep am I really going to get into this?” I threw away the bits of string, and that was the end of that project. I was not the right guy to go into that hole.