Back in the day, when I first fired up a text editor and started hammering out HTML, I'd just finished college, I didn't have (or need) a car, I was living with a crazy, wonderful German roommate in a top-floor flat in the best part of town, my girlfriend (who is now my wife) was living on the other side of the world, and I hated my job.
It was a season when there was a little bit of everything. I was deeply and satisfyingly in love with the city where I was living. I felt incredibly alone. I loved my apartment. I felt like I was being wasted at work. My senses were as sharp as they've ever been (Fall never smelled so good, the Winter sun was never so beautiful, the sound of the city pulsing underneath my bay window was never so rich). I felt like I could scream and no-one would hear me.
I was an emotional wreck, but that's not always a bad thing. I was hypersensitive to everything. So when something was right, it was so right. And when something was wrong, well. . .
Here's the question that worries me: do I have to recapture that state-of-mind to recapture all of the creative energy I had back then? Or are the two things--living on the bare edge of sanity, and creativity--unrelated?
