This is weird. I was going over a list of basic troubleshooting tips for mac OS X and the fourth thing listed is "create a new user account, and see if the problem persists there." I did that just now and maya is running like it supposed to.

It's a lot better than having it not work at all. But I still don't know what's corrupting maya in my main user account, where all my work is. How do I figure out what's causing this so I can fix it, or at the very least, prevent it from reoccurring in a new user account?