Eureka
For the last 4 and a half months, I've been banging my head against one of the largest breadth technical problems I've ever tried to solve. A problem with huge scope, and varied constraints. If I've ever looked distraught or confused over the past few months, it's because I've spent way too much time thinking about this problem. Sure I came up with many potential solutions, even interim solutions-- but all were suboptimal.
I recently adopted a new definition for the word "innovation". Innovation is what happens when you are able to bridge the gap between different clusters of context (thanks Drew).
Well 8 fucking bridges later, I think I've got it figured out.
It's weird because the connections seem so obvious now (that whole 20/20 hindsight thing), but it took months of thinking and experimenting (and frustration) until I finally figured it out.
It's weird because the solution isn't really that technically challenging, more of a big huge integration problem.
It's weird because this discovery will indirectly address many other problems that have been peeking over the horizon, solving some of them while throwing others right in my way.
My brain is weird in that sometimes I block HARD on certain things. Like when I was waiting to hear back about a certain job offer, I couldn't study effectively, work effectively, or even party effectively (I could only check my email effectively).
I can only imagine what's been waiting for this problem to go away.