if I am going to stop contorting myself into being Useful then maybe deciding fuck it I'm just gonna learn math and stop pretending it's for any reason than because I like it is a good direction to go
a large part of me is beginning to wonder (or, well, maybe has been wondering for awhile) if the worst thing that ever happened to math was its "STEM-ification", the transformation of it from simply a fun way of connecting ideas to something that represented intellect, progress, innovation, technology. it... makes it really hard to explain to people that math isn't valuable because it's useful. math's value should have nothing to do with how useful it is. a day of interfacing with a system through pen and paper, or through computer, or whatever else and seeing patterns pop out and then trying to understand those patterns, weave them together, is inherently fun and it's really hard to articulate why I find that so valuable or to figure out what kind of role I think it serves.