"People who get nostalgic about childhood were obviously never children." --Calvin, from Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes
I rarely, if ever, get nostalgic about my childhood (for many reasons). But for some reason, I do when I start listening to a few pieces I wrote 5-10 years ago on Finale. I had very little idea how to write for specific instruments (my trumpet parts were almost always way too high to be playable, let alone sustainable), and I had a very loose grasp on form--or to say, none at all, really. But over the last year or so I've been trying to figure out how to resurrect some of the melodic ideas or sequences I came up with from those earlier days. Man, those were brilliant. I wish I could come up with more stuff like that.