Mathematics a reality check?

Strangely, doing mathematics seems to be a bit of reality check for me. I still do mathematics off and on and am now trying a slightly different method than before. Last year, revising an unpublished paper, I thought that I saw some thing new that was mildly interesting. Off and on, I worked on it for six months and finally convinced myself after a few drafts. Then I went on a trip came back, it was difficult to get back to mathematics and easier to read other stuff. Finally after four months I slowly started looking at it again and could not understand much. After a few weeks, various steps involved emerged and I could see the general trend though not the details. Before when I was working it was generally rather intense and I used to loose appetite and often sleep until I was exhausted. This time, I started just meditating slowly about each step between doing other things at home and not continuously, even though the particular theme seemed to be in front of my mind most of the time. So, I would let it soak slowly until it seemed more and more clearer and so on with other steps. Then about how to put them together since there seemed different ways of doing it. At the moment much of it is becoming clearer without putting the pen on paper, and I am not loosing sleep. It remains to be seen what happens when I tried to write it down. And whether there is a lesson from this about learning and thinking about other topics.