{∅, {∅}, {∅, {∅}}} : Rage Against the Meat Grinder

From my own personal experience, I would suggest you keep your relationship with mathematics as a secret mistress as opposed to wishing to parade her around the way some men of means parade around a trophy wife.  I know you only long to have the opportunity to study alone in peace, but all your energies are drained from your obligations to your employers.

Look how long I went drinking so much booze that my hands would shake for days even when I was too broke to buy even a couple beers.   

Who knows when you might have more time to take your sweet time, approaching the subject however you damn well please, where you don't have to impress "operations research" instructors or jump through the hoops of a "business-oriented" Industrial World?   It's cool to study the applications and see how theories are implemented in the Big Bad Real World, but it is even more cool, I think, that someone like Descartes liked to sleep until 11AM; meaning, he was up all night, most likely manic over some mathematical idea.

I sympathize with your inner conflicts.  My theory is that what you expereince as "sleeplessness" is just a part of your mind which is so radically dissatisfied with the work-a-day Ligottian nightmare world of "reporting to the office" that it tosses and turns at night.  Were the demand to report to the office removed, you might experience wide-awakenesss at night as something less oppressive, since it would not matter when you slept, you would sleep eventually, and when you did, it might be a more genuinely rejuvenating kind of rest.


Now, it is possible, even without such employment, you would still suffer from "insomnia."  Cioran suffered from insomnia, and he was a work-dodger par excellence.   


I'm just saying that you would find insomnia more bearable were it not for the anxiety over having to report to the office in the morning.


Of course, I'm not telling you anything you don't already know.


Please feel free to complain as much as you want here.


I remember when you encouraged me to get back into some math(s) back in 2015.   I did not realize that rejuvenating an intense interest in a specific kind of mathematics would be just enough to motivate me (on a daily basis, month after month, and now even year after year) to just flat out abstain from imbibing alcohol.

I think that you, Holden, are one of the few people in this world who would actually believe me when I credit the study of mathematics as my "method for abstaining from alcoholic inebriation."

Part of me used to love to drink, even first thing in the morning.   

Drinking robbed me of the ability to find satisfaction in such a mundane way of life as "studying math every day."

Maybe you might one day claim that full time employment robs you in a similar manner. 

This world is full of shiit, and as Henry Fool told Simon Grimm, "maybe you're good at walking through shiit, but I am certainly not."

Maybe you are more like Henry Fool than Simon Grimm; that is, maybe you are not as good at walking through shiit as you would like to be.   There's no shame in not being able to acclimate yourself to what office employment demands ... They can't tie a fence around all men.   

The most profound and radical advice Henry gives Simon?

"Quit your job."

You know the rest ...

Myself, I would not give you such advice.  It is not my place to do so.  Life is serious business.  Life is no film show.   I am only pointing out the obvious culprit in what is keeping you from being able to reflect upon mathematical ideas more often.   Your brain is literally hijacked.
You are like me in this way, as I used to be intensely aware of how I had to sacrifice my "agenda" whenever reporting to work.  Maybe the more "free-spirited" the human or animal, the more inner resistance exists against the domesticating submission to employment of any kind. 

There's just something about it that doesn't work out for many of us.

Even when Descartes made the commitment to help the Queen of Sweden (or somewhere around there) study math, they started at 5AM each morning.  After a few months of this, Descartes dropped dead.  He was used to a more pleasant climate, and sleeping until 11AM as I have said before.  I may be misinformed as to the cause of death, as there are some theories that he was poisoned.

They say "hard work never killed anyone."   That's bullshiit.  Sometimes all it takes to kill someone is an obligation to some arbitrary "boss" doing things you would rather not be doing, when you might have been better off hiding under your blankets as you have stated is your humblest and most sincere desire on many mornings.

What a mind-fuuck, no?