I turned my back on academia because in my eyes, it seems to be very toxic towards playful exploration of mathematical or other scientific topics. Often, you ar

I turned my back on academia because in my eyes, it seems to be very toxic towards playful exploration of mathematical or other scientific topics. Often, you are forced into working on one particular issue, whereas exploring maths is more like jumping from island to island where each one of them contains secrets, and it definitely makes sense to follow the path wherever it takes you. The structure is too rigid, every step needs justification. How can you justify playing around with numbers and formulas, sometimes a bit aimlessly, when you're in pursuit of a proof? And then you have so much overhead because you have to document it all. Documentation makes sense, but let it be terse. And then, of course, there is the pressure to achieve when hard work is only one part of the equation, the other part being that ideas are essentially 'god given' and come randomly. Thanks but no thanks.