A state of ceaseless and gathering excitement over one’s own ideas.

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For the better part of a decade, I spent my nights in the back of a New Jersey diner, frothing with excitement to talk to my friends.

Night after night we’d sit at our regular table, and one by one we’d slip into spouts of jittery, over-caffeinated babble, every sentence enjambed together by, “one sec…” hand gestures and dramatically semicolonic drags from a Camel Light.

We were fresh to college – swimming in new ideas… and desperate to show them off to one another.

We criticized movies and books, made political pronouncements, lobbed clunky new philosophies back and forth like a frisbee… and always a little more loudly whenever a pretty girl happened by.

I’m willing to bet that not a single word I spoke in those years made a jot of sense. Not one idea was original or creative or new.

But goddamn were they delightful to create, share, and behold.

Sometimes I miss being young.