Mock Submission Turned Real.

Yikes, I inadvertently submitted my manuscript today. :O

Yesterday my manuscript was rejected, so naturally I felt sad. The referee was kind by acknowledging that it was well-written, so I felt not so sad. Relatively recently by going over the manuscript, learning more relevant stuff and thinking, I thought of some more potential applications of this work. I intended to add these to the introduction section before submission to another journal. I tossed and turned in bed, unable to sleep because I was too excited by the prospect.

Then today came. I decided on the journal and then browsed to its website to see if there were requirements on styles of TeX files. I would have to edit my manuscript accordingly and while editing, I would put in what I had thought about at night. Then the fateful moment came. I decided to do a mock-submission to see if there would be some difficult questions in the submission form. I filled in my full name and clicked Next. (Thank God, I didn't put in garbage characters.) The next page asked for the manuscript. I hesitated a little. Yet on seeing that the button was labelled Next, I decided to go ahead. Initially I selected a random test file. Then to make the mock-submission truer, I picked my manuscript, completely unaltered since last submission. Then I hit Next and was presented with the cheerful sentence that thanked me for my submission. That was a Submit button in the guise of the Next button!!! Panic mode started. Hey, let me cancel this submission. What?! I need a reference number that will be sent to the provided email address in a few DAYS?!

I ended the panic mode because really it would not help, and returned to the ever-more frustrating life. On a positive note, I saved a lot of time by not given the chance to ruminate on the manuscript. To be honest, this work may be a dead end as some people say. It may be a bad decision to be still attached to it. However by going back to it, I did get to see a lot of unattempted aspects that I had little idea of but would like to explore. They excited me, but they also scared me because I did not know if I would get anything fruitful in the foreseeable future. I cannot afford unfruitful exploration in my current status. Also I have plan to work on some unrelated stuff. I don't know how this developed that I need to shuttle between two parts and the knowledge on one does not contribute to the other. So the natural solution is to clone myself.

If there is a big gap so that I need to learn a lot before I can attempt my vague idea, I may get side-tracked while learning and totally forget about my original intention. The natural solution is to increase my processing power to shorten the time needed to learn things. I have a need to write a tree structured blog article. See easily getting side-tracked.

I am glad that I had a chance that made me think about how my work fit in the big picture. Whatever the outcome of this endeavour, I have a better knowledge of what I do and besides I know what to expect next time. On a negative note, there is no next time for me.