The Moment Of Clarity

I remember someone saying something along the lines of this to me a couple months ago:

If you want to be the best programmer in your field, that is driven by a desire for respect at it’s core. You want to be respected so you drive to improve yourself.

This never sat right with me but at the time. And now I remember why. All of my time as a programmer, all of that time spent improving myself wasn’t spent chasing respect, it was spent chasing that Moment, The Moment.

I can never predict when it will strike, I can only increase the odds by making my mind a more comfortable place for it to nestle. Still, I have good days and bad days when it comes to this, and I’ve been on a bad day streak.

But I felt it again recently, that brush against the edge. When everything fell away except me, the code and the problem I was supposed to solve. No actually, I fell away too, my body and its burden vanished and my mind entered the abstract world of the problem, my thoughts and emotions fading into the background.

Before my eyes, the fog clears and I’m graced with a moment of utmost Clarity. The problem unfurled itself into a string of logic, and as if by divine mandate, the solution leaves my mind and begins pouring into reality, unbroken, unhesistant. There is no Vim, no laptop, no compiler, just a bold, and aggressive manifestation of the code.

I blink. It’s 5 hours later. I have done 2 weeks of work.