On holding grievances
Feb. 27th, 2026 05:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
posicScott D. Clary writes in Facebook -- https://www.facebook.com/scottdclarypage/posts/pfbid021CyMtsWo9tGNxKafLCJDEnaGrJYnhKLw1JSzDnL6zitEKiALBd9mepwKXUjRFBMDl :
You're not the same person you were five years ago. If you're still holding grievances from that version of your life, you're letting someone you no longer are keep you stuck. People change. So do you. Give yourself the same room to grow you'd give someone else.
***
Well, I am still holding grievances from fourteen years ago. My peer-reviewing boycott policy attests to that.
How exactly is it holding me back? Which, specifically, papers of mine would be publishable in Advances, Duke, Crelle, or JAMS if I weren't boycotting these prestigious journals? May I humbly suggest that such papers of mine don't seem to exist?
Furthermore, even if I had a couple of such publications, how exactly would it help me to go forward? In what direction? There are all too many mathematicians who do have articles in the mentioned journals. In what sense, exactly, have they made greater contributions to mathematics than me?
I would proceed to claim that, in all the relevant respects, I am still the same person I was fourteen years ago. The same extreme nonconformist, aesthetics-driven mathematician avoiding popular, fashionable topics.
I wasted quite a lot of energy back in 2011-14 getting hurt by the insulting, absurd responses arriving from all those big-name journals. I am saving my energy now by not submitting to those journals anymore. It is only fair that I get even by not reviewing for them, either.
You're not the same person you were five years ago. If you're still holding grievances from that version of your life, you're letting someone you no longer are keep you stuck. People change. So do you. Give yourself the same room to grow you'd give someone else.
***
Well, I am still holding grievances from fourteen years ago. My peer-reviewing boycott policy attests to that.
How exactly is it holding me back? Which, specifically, papers of mine would be publishable in Advances, Duke, Crelle, or JAMS if I weren't boycotting these prestigious journals? May I humbly suggest that such papers of mine don't seem to exist?
Furthermore, even if I had a couple of such publications, how exactly would it help me to go forward? In what direction? There are all too many mathematicians who do have articles in the mentioned journals. In what sense, exactly, have they made greater contributions to mathematics than me?
I would proceed to claim that, in all the relevant respects, I am still the same person I was fourteen years ago. The same extreme nonconformist, aesthetics-driven mathematician avoiding popular, fashionable topics.
I wasted quite a lot of energy back in 2011-14 getting hurt by the insulting, absurd responses arriving from all those big-name journals. I am saving my energy now by not submitting to those journals anymore. It is only fair that I get even by not reviewing for them, either.
