I feel like I spend most of my time reading definitions instead of ideas

Second year postdoc here. In my field (geometric analysis) I feel like my passion and hence motivation has been in steady decline ever since I started in my PhD. For two reasons: I feel like I’m spending more time reading and learning than problem solving , most of my time is spent deciphering and unstucking myself in reading and understanding what on earth the authors are talking about in books and papers. I understand that if you go into fields like combinatorics with lower entry threshold and less reading, it’s even harder to produce results since the field is so accessible that most ideas you can think of has already been done. But still? I would rather have spent 6 years problem solving instead of reading, and to be frank I spend most of my time stressing and taking break from stressing from reading, this doesn’t feel normal or fun to me. Definitely not the experience that lured me into math in the first place (the dopamine from competition math and solving problems) I probably would complain less if I’m actually reading big ideas and smart ideas. But I feel like even at my level I’m still reading tons of definitions, and results that are considered basic theory and machinery they are not even worthy of mention in a paper. Rarely do I feel like I’m reading about the “brilliant ideas”. Here’s a concrete example, you might think the Gauss Bonnet theorem is a clever idea, but to understand it (for general manifolds) you have to read enough about topology, smooth manifold and Riemannian manifolds to even have the machinery and definition to understand the statement, let alone the proof. It Feels like this with every new project I take on it’s tons of learning basic stuff before I even get to the central idea. This is definitely not the experience I was hoping yo get going into math, I wanted to learn cool brilliant ideas and solve problems. Most of the time I don’t feel like I’m doing that. What’s another field I might try that isn’t like this besides combinatorics? Representation theory? Combinatorics? Thanks for sharing!